3) they don't support text as a sender. In many countries you can have "MyCompany" as a sender instead of a generic number or short code. This makes the communication much more effective.
4) They claim the pricing will be different for transactional & marketing traffic, but it's not clear how , they just provide one only price list.
5) first 100 messages to US numbers free (each month). I expect they will be soon abused and they will retire this offering.
6) they don't support 2-way communication
7) SMS prices usually go down when volumes increase
> 3) they don't support text as a sender. In many countries you can have "MyCompany" as a sender instead of a generic number or short code. This makes the communication much more effective.
They do support it in some countries [1]:
> AWS.SNS.SMS.SenderID
> A custom ID that contains up to 11 alphanumeric characters, including at least one letter and no spaces. The sender ID is displayed as the message sender on the receiving device. For example, you can use your business brand to make the message source easier to recognize.
> Support for sender IDs varies by country. For example, messages delivered to U.S. phone numbers will not display the sender ID.
> If you do not specify a sender ID, the message will display a long code as the sender ID in supported countries. For countries that require an alphabetic sender ID, the message displays NOTICE as the sender ID.
Twilio's cost structure is probably dominated by SMS charges from telco operators and customer acquisition, not their AWS bill. So I doubt it, but feel free to cite data that shows I'm wrong. (I read their s-1 and I don't think it got into that granularity of cost accounting)
But they also spend a bundle with AWS... Amazon can reach the same pricing with the telcos, but will have lower infrastructure costs. Twilio would honestly be a good acquisition for AWS, but maybe Bezos feels like doing it himself.
I think it's a market where winning is about customer acquisition and retention, not necessary cost-control, though I'll grant that could become more important over time.
Can we contrast the aggressive Amazon platform vs customer dynamic with other cloud providers?
Why would a new company opt for Amazon at the risk of being copied and competed with as we're seeing with Netflix, Twilio, and numerous Amazon store vendors? Why not go with Google or Microsoft?
Netflix has a lot of customers, IMO because they developed great recommendation IP, they have a large content library, and have invested heavily into customer acquisition and marketing to build a consumer brand.
Netflix will use AWS infrastructure if it benefits their business and go elsewhere if it doesn't. The fact that the two companies compete in some ways is pretty much irrelevant to Netflix's (operational) decision of hosting provider.
You said "considering that Twilio hosts with AWS" as if that's the competitive disadvantage they face vs. Amazon. However, their cost structure would be the same if they hosted on Azure, Google Cloud, Rackspace, or anywhere else. So yes, Amazon may compete on price but I'm not seeing how Twilio being on AWS factors into it given that they need to incur server hosting costs somewhere.
1) have a specific price for every single network makes it impossible to calculate which will be the final real cost for each country
2) it's crazy expensive outside the US. Every player in the SMS industry is 4x lower on average. IE: http://www.mailup.com/pricing/sms/
3) they don't support text as a sender. In many countries you can have "MyCompany" as a sender instead of a generic number or short code. This makes the communication much more effective.
4) They claim the pricing will be different for transactional & marketing traffic, but it's not clear how , they just provide one only price list.
5) first 100 messages to US numbers free (each month). I expect they will be soon abused and they will retire this offering.
6) they don't support 2-way communication
7) SMS prices usually go down when volumes increase