Getting the Most Out of Your Twilio Voice Project

Twilio Voice handles 50+ billion call minutes a year—powering everything from contact centers to notifications to interactive voice responses (IVR). That’s why millions of developers turn to Twilio to build reliable communications into their applications.

This guide will walk you through the most common questions you may have as you get started with Twilio Voice. And it's a work in progress—we'll update this guide over time.

• Building Voice applications on Twilio
• Sign-ups, upgrades, and how to fund your account
• Selecting the best phone number for your use case
• Geographic differences
• Pricing information
• Compliance and regulatory concerns
• Building on Twilio

You can get started without needing a software developer or technical support depending on your use case. More advanced use cases may require engineering help, but our documentation and APIs make it straightforward to build new projects. The following sections will help you find the proper support to build your voice application.

Do you need a developer?

Before looking for technical help, consider there may already be a solution that meets your needs. Twilio and our trusted partners have prebuilt apps to cover many common voice use cases. However, if you’re building a popular use case such as one of the following, you may not need a developer on your team:

• Cloud phone
• CRM integrations
• Payment systems
• Flex: Twilio's Contact Center
• Contact centers by our partners
• And many more use cases and integrations

Before you commit to building a use case yourself, browse through the technology solutions on the Partner Showcase to see if a prebuilt service meets your needs. If you search the database using the Partner Database's search functionality (look for the search box at the top), you may find that you can get started quickly after signing up for a service.

Browse Twilio’s Partner Showcase, or learn more about our partner program.

Finding development help

Software developers can make your vision a reality with our extensive documentation, sample use cases, and tutorials. If you're looking for software developers, you can work with a Twilio Consulting Partner or hire a software developer.

Working with a Consulting Partner

You can find Twilio consulting partners on our Partner Showcase to help build your solution. Twilio’s consulting partners program ensures that all our partners are fully vetted, have experience with Twilio, and are ready to build your communications use cases.

Hiring a software developer

Software developers don’t necessarily need prior communication technology experience to get started with Twilio. You can build Voice applications using our no-code tool Twilio Studio, TwiML Bins, or our Voice API. Additionally, you can also mix and match these capabilities as needed.

The Voice API is accessible from any programming language, but developers can get started quicker and be more productive with a programming language where we have library support. Twilio has seven server-side helper libraries: C# (.NET), Go, Java, Node.js (JavaScript), PHP, Python, and Ruby. Building around our libraries sets you up for success if you choose to build more functionality later or add channels, products, or services.

Developers familiar with Node.js can deploy their solution directly to Twilio’s serverless platform, reducing the need to maintain server and network infrastructure.

Twilio Voice will communicate with your application over the internet using HTTP. This means developers will need experience building HTTP-based server applications. However, for very advanced scenarios, developers will need experience with WebSockets.

To summarize, look for developers that:

• Have experience integrating HTTP APIs
• Know how to build HTTP-based server applications
• Are familiar with C# (.NET), Go, Java, Node.js (JavaScript), PHP, Python, or Ruby (optionally)
• Have experience building WebSocket applications (optionally)

Some of these skills are also attainable through:

• Superclass On-Demand or live training
• Our docs, tutorials, and video training

Architecting your Twilio Voice application

Whether you hire, consult with a developer or team, or build on your own, Twilio’s Professional Services team can help guide you. From the planning stage to implementation and onboarding (and even after you launch), we can offer technical guidance, best practices, advice, and optimization help.

Professional Services can provide additional assistance on account setup, phone number management, trust and compliance, and other aspects of building and scaling your voice application.

To start, you’ll need to sign up for a free trial account. While you’ll be able to see everything we have to offer in the Twilio Console, some trial limitations will apply until you upgrade your account. Upgrading your account will simply require you to add a payment method and deposit a minimum balance of $20.

You can enable an automated recharge so your funds never run out or access your current balance and add additional funds through the billing overview page.

You’ll need to select a phone number that meets your geographic and feature needs. If you need a new number, you can quickly search for and provision phone numbers directly from the Twilio Console. Twilio offers local, national, toll-free, and mobile phone numbers with calling capabilities. Learn more about the types of Twilio phone numbers, and their benefits and limitations.

Additionally, if you’d like to port a US-based phone number to Twilio, you can do so in the Console. The process can take up to four weeks and includes coordination between our upstream provider and your service provider to transfer the number to Twilio. Check out this resource for more information on porting phone numbers (including non-US numbers) to Twilio.

Twilio offers voice-enabled phone numbers globally, but the local phone number availability and capabilities depend on the country. There are also different guidelines and best practices based on your locale and regulatory guidelines.

To use Voice, you'll need to acquire a Twilio phone number that incurs a monthly charge. Stated up front before you buy the phone number, the monthly recurring charge varies based on the type of phone number, its capabilities, and the number’s country of origin.

Twilio charges you based on your usage using a pay-as-you-go pricing. The price varies depending on the duration of the call, the number’s country of origin, the type of phone number, the destination country, the intelligent services you opt to use, and more.

You can bring Twilio Voice capabilities to your existing phone numbers residing with your carrier using Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) Trunking. Making and receiving calls through BYOC Trunking will incur additional usage charges based on call duration.

You can head to twilio.com/voice/pricing to see the current prices and select the country of your choice.

Voice calls made through Twilio must comply with the Twilio Voice Services Policy and our Acceptable Use Policy. In the US, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulates phone calls, while other countries also have unique regulations and guidelines you need to follow.

Hopefully, this post helped lay out how to build your Voice application with Twilio.

If you need help along the way, head over to the Console Support page to explore additional Support options.

We can’t wait to see what you build!