SwitchCoder – Build Voice and SMS Apps with No Infrastructure

I am excited to be writing about a project I have been working on for the last four or five months.  SwitchCoder is an application which allows you to build voice and SMS applications and deploy them, all from a browser.  Application developers will have no longer have to maintain their own infrastructure or deal with complex integrations to other systems if not required.

Background

Voice and SMS applications have traditionally been built using a 3rd-party API.  Either the carriers themselves or 3rd party companies have provided these services to developers in the past.  The availability of Communications as a Service (CaaS) has evolved over the last few years to where providing voice and SMS integration is now quite common.  Where SwitchCoder departs from these traditional approaches is two-fold and very important:

• SwitchCoder does not require the developer to run their own servers or develop a new application.  In many cases, the applications developers need can be built 100% on SwitchCoder’s platform with no other external dependencies.
• SwitchCoder runs at the carrier.  Third-party service providers have to integrate to the carrier network.  SwitchCoder is running in the same network infrastructure as iNetwork, which powers some of the largest voice and text customers in the country.

How Does It Work?

For a brief introduction, watch the video below.

Here are a couple more videos that show the service in action:

Group Messaging

How to Invoke Scripts:

What’s Next

With the product being barely a week old, we are anxious to get feedback from users about both the approach we have taken as well as the execution.  If you are interested, please sign up for the service and let me know what you think.  You get $10 in credit to try the service out before you have to spend any of your own money.

Give it a shot and drop me a note in the comments or contact us on Twitter.