you can do the same with Dropbox, and it automatically backs up your photos from plugged-in devices

this was long written down. why is this a story?

I supposed it depends where your client is located. In the US northeast, a senior developer makes around $50-80/hr. I've done a few fix rate Rails projects that took about 20-30 hours in all for about $5k, so around $25/hr.

The client is New York based. BTW do you mean $250/hr for fixed projects?

Pretty sure he said $25 and not $250..

$5000/20 hours = $250/hr

Your math is right, but his suggestion is wrong. No way should he charge $250. That's crazy, unless you are in the top 1% in mobile apps. Even then is sounds a little high.

Completely agree - but it does bring up an interesting point: bidding on projects at a fixed rate can lead to higher hourly rates (although definitely not always, especially for someone just starting).

node.js is the best tool for this job. a PHP/Rails/Django framework can get you there as well but you'll have to worry about code deduplication and slowness associated with translating pieces of language from one to another, especially if this is UI heavy.

was this planned? I didn't get an email

I have several free (experimental as they call them) deployments with them and I did not receive any email prior to the "maintenance."

Did anyone who paid for the service receive notice?

I dont think it was. I actually was working on it as it started acting up. Wrote them an email, they said "some issues with UI," and a few minutes later it was down.

Someone who would want to sell phone management services to third parties. You could set this up to accept payments to create accounts, which give you credits with which you can buy phone numbers and accept calls, design phone flows, etc. Basically a Grasshopper-like service.

One thing that I couldn't understand from the openvbx documentation was how it fit in with the phonelines in your business. How would a business with a PBX with 30 extensions replace the PBX with openvbx?

Would the employees only be able to call through a browser or is there something else available?

Employees can call out through the browser and receive calls through the browser as well, or forward their extension to a different physical phone number to pick up. In fact, the default action is to forward to a phone number or take a voicemail if you choose to not accept calls online via the browser.

I've just updated the code repo with a complete competitive analysis of this platform that was performed - it provides some useful points, such as market research, price point suggestions, feature subset recommendations to maximize profit, etc. (https://github.com/andreioprisan/igroups/raw/master/vbx_busi...) Screenshots: https://github.com/andreioprisan/igroups/raw/master/vbx_scre...

same here, I haven't touched our OpenVBX installation in more than a year

yes just a fork of OpenVBX and added a few features on top, different UI, Stripe support, etc.

The project is based on OpenVBX (big fans here!). We added a few modules, such as call queueing, call cost tracking (incoming, outgoing), the ability to export call flows to files, import/export of those files, SMS polls, automated phone call flow initiation, in-browser call flow testing, as well as Stripe integration to charge for more credits, then top-up the tenant account for more SMS and call credits. A different theme is also applied. Many things can be abstracted further and improved, feel free to take from it what you wish :)

After a quick recursive diff, it looks like you're a few versions behind OpenVBX master. Have you considered rebasing your changes off of that?

There are a number of fixes, improvements, and features that have come into play recently.

Hi Keith, thanks for taking a look at this, and thanks for working on OpenVBX, amazing project! Yes it's been a while since touching this code (~6mo-1yr) but once I have some more free time I'd like to bring it up to date with the current OpenVBX version and post some screenshots as well.