Ifbyphone and Cloudvox
Creating a brand new service? Two stellar options.
Summary
Ifbyphone provides over a dozen ready-made phone services, many of which can be integrated, extended, and heavily customized via Ifbyphone's developer API.
Check out Ifbyphone's list of services, especially NetGet and Survo functionality (example #1, example #2).
Cloudvox exposes complete call control to standalone applications over the Internet. Apps can be written in PHP, Ruby, Python, Java, or most other languages, using Asterisk (AGI/AMI) and its client libraries, HTTP/JSON, and/or SIP.
Cloudvox has a REST API for activating apps and phone numbers.
Ifbyphone
Ifbyphone provides pre-built voice/phone apps that do specific things. A few examples:
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a flexible call routing system -- by caller area code, ZIP code, whether a store is open, whether someone answers, etc. Great for franchises, retailers, and business logistics
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Web-based embedded "click to call" that lets a visitor enter their phone number and be connected to a sales rep or person
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call tracking, for tracking how many callers (sales leads) a marketing campaign generates, and then learning more about the
Ifbyphone also provides an API that lets you extend these prebuilt applications to use data from your own Web services. For example, if you have an existing CRM system that has customer phone numbers, or an existing database with employee work hours, you can integrate that data with Ifbyphone's apps with very little effort.
Cloudvox
Cloudvox lets developers and entrepreneurs write brand new applications in any common programming language. Developers can use Ruby, PHP, Perl, Python, Java, or other languages to control the phone call, and do anything they want with it.
Cloudvox is ideal for call flows that aren't met by Ifbyphone's premade suite of services, or where flexibility and creativity is paramount. It's also well suited for adding phone components to an existing codebase, and for apps that shouldn't be tied to a specific vendor.
Help Me Choose
If in doubt, just ask.