Studies show that more customers prefer to get transactional communications from businesses by SMS than over any other channel. That’s why it’s critical that you have an SMS API provider that offers you not only high deliverability at global scale, but also the best pricing, feature set, and support. Is it time for you to reassess your SMS API provider?
Two options you should consider: Adding a redundant SMS API provider to ensure higher availability and uptime, or switching over completely to a Twilio alternative. Unsure which is the right decision for your situation? Consider these factors, all of which drive companies to seek out a different partner:
- Improved deliverability
- Ease of migration
- Proactive service engagement
- Lower cost of ownership
Let’s take a closer look at each factor and see why a Twilio alternative like Plivo might be the upgrade your company needs.
Improved deliverability
A provider is only as good as their carrier relationships, and if the provider doesn’t work with carriers in regions key to your business, or hasn’t invested in network redundancies to protect service in those areas, you’ll want to explore secondary providers for those regions.
Plivo has direct relationships with local carriers globally. We connect customers to more than 1,600 carrier networks across 190+ countries. This robust carrier network ensures you can send messages anywhere in the world without worrying about coverage or deliverability.
By investing in the best infrastructure and global connections, Plivo offers its customers:
- High SMS deliverability by avoiding aggregators and resellers and connecting directly to carriers.
- Multiple local in-country carriers for the best connections possible without a single point of failure.
- High carrier quality thanks to a detailed evaluation process that ensures carriers meet or exceed benchmarks for highest deliverability.
- No route blending to ensure a high quality of service that isn’t compromised by low-quality network routes.
- Scalability via a distributed routing strategy and multivendor interoperability.
- Instant phone number provisioning thanks to a bank of ready-to-use mobile, local, and toll-free numbers.
Ease of migration
Twilio offers a solid SMS API platform, but on third-party review sites, Twilio customers report continuing issues using the platform’s billing and payment system, searching and viewing transactional logs, and sorting large amounts of SMS data through the web interface.
By contrast, Plivo’s user interface and API are consistently recognized as being some of the best on the market — and excellent documentation makes it easy for businesses to migrate to Plivo. In the words of one developer{ :target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow” }, “The API is one of the best documented I’ve ever read.”
Along with its easy-to-use API, Plivo also offers built-in visual templates that make it easy to create, customize, and implement complex workflows.
If you’re not ready to migrate entirely from Twilio, consider adding Plivo as a redundant API integration to mitigate risk of downtime or service failures in any region of the world. Because Plivo offers full feature parity with Twilio, you’ll keep the functionality you need with a more economical price point and better customer service. When you’re ready to migrate away, Plivo’s familiar API constructs let you implement SMS functionality quickly with a low learning curve.
Proactive service engagement
You turn to your provider’s customer service team for timely support when you have questions about your SMS services or need help troubleshooting feature integration. Your provider’s support team should also offer solution engineering during onboarding to ensure you have all the information you need for your use case. If customer support isn’t available or lacks expertise, you may experience prolonged issues, frustrating your customers and jeopardizing revenue.
With Plivo, companies can access timely and highly rated customer support.
Not only will a quality SMS provider help you navigate technical issues, but they’ll advise you on how to build a program that best fits your business use case. Or, as one customer said of Plivo, “What makes a company stand apart is the after sales/customer engagement […] Kudos to the team.”
Plivo is known for really listening to its customers, and we pride ourselves on offering clients hands-on customer engagement, whether you’re adding services to augment your Twilio program or are switching over entirely. Customers laud us for our accessible, consultative solution advice not only as they’re getting started but also as they grow and scale.
Cost of ownership
Look for a Twilio alternative that offers competitive pricing to maintain your total cost of ownership (TCO) or lower it, while still guaranteeing full feature parity.
When you’re choosing an alternative provider for your failover strategy or looking to switch your primary SMS API, you’ll want to focus on reach and reliability first and foremost. But better SMS rates overall make a migration choice a lot easier.
Plivo promises customers best-in-class functionality and global coverage with lower cost of ownership.
Plivo offers better pricing than Twilio in all categories:
- We promise lower phone number pricing than Twilio, saving customers as much as 20% for local and toll-free number types.
- We offer better standard SMS pricing across all message types, including outbound and inbound local numbers and short codes, plus free inbound SMS messaging.
- We charge less for inbound and outbound MMS messages, saving customers 20% per MMS message.
That means that if you’re sending, for example, 1 million messages via short codes to customers in the US, your company would save approximately 40% by switching to Plivo. International pricing varies, but international businesses enjoy similar savings when they make the change.
Don’t wait: Explore our Twilio alternative today
Customers love Plivo because they get the quality and features they’re used to with Twilio’s SMS API, but with better pricing, more attentive service, and, according to many of our users, better documentation and ease of use.
Thousands of innovative companies rely on Plivo’s global, enterprise-grade SMS API. Sign up for free today, or talk to one of our communications experts to learn more about how Plivo can support your business.
