A quality voice API enables you to easily build and integrate customer engagement flows without dealing with the complexity of telecommunications. Maybe you used an API provider like Twilio to help you get started, but now you realize your needs have changed. You still expect best-in-class call quality, but you want better customer service, more global coverage, or a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
If this sounds familiar, you have two options:
- Add a Twilio alternative as a failover strategy to bolster your voice communication integration.
- Replace Twilio with a new voice API service provider that offers full feature parity.
Either way, you need to know what to look for. Here are five things to assess when deciding whether it’s time to add or switch providers.
Call quality
Twilio’s infrastructure is reliable but it’s not perfect. If your customer base is global, you can’t risk spotty coverage in any region where you do business.
The ideal Twilio alternative has direct relationships with Tier 1 carriers around the world and has invested in its network infrastructure so that it can offer high-quality voice calls that don’t drop audio or have annoying lags and delays.
If you’ve noticed poor call quality with your existing voice service or have been inconvenienced by outages, consider switching voice API providers or adding a second company as a failover option.
By using Plivo as a redundant API provider, you get access to our premium global carrier network with seven regional points of presence (PoP), which gives you high call quality while mitigating the risk of a Twilio service failure. Plivo offers better voice quality than Twilio in some geographies.
Ease of use
Twilio may have been the first to market with a developer-friendly voice API platform, but it’s not the only competitive option around. Other providers offer better service and easier-to-use platforms.
Twilio customers report that the company’s API can be complex to navigate and hard to learn, while Plivo customers laud its extensive API documentation. Or, as one customer put it, “API documentation and ease of use have been my strongest ‘likes’ of Plivo.”
If you’re thinking of switching to a new primary provider or adding on a failover solution, Plivo’s Voice API offers guaranteed ease of use, so you spend less time coding and more time delivering on customers’ needs.
Feature parity
Twilio offers a robust set of features, and you shouldn’t have to sacrifice the capabilities you need to get better coverage or a better price point. Luckily, you don’t have to, as long as you choose a quality Twilio alternative.
Customers who add redundancy with or migrate to Plivo can use all features they’re accustomed to getting from Twilio, such as voice transcription, call transfer, call queuing, call whisper, and call hunting and documentation to support a variety of use cases, including:
- Two-factor authentication
- Voice notification
- Phone verification
- Phone system IVR
- Voice surveys
- Click to call
- Call forwarding
- Call tracking
- Number masking
Plivo’s best-in-class feature set ensures that you don’t have to compromise on functionality. Instead, you can enjoy the same capabilities at a better price with more reliability.
Better pricing
If you’ve scaled your voice service and found that differences in voice rates have started to add up, it might be time to switch.
But before you commit to migration, don’t look at just the price. A good Twilio alternative will balance per-minute and per-number rates with quality-based routing alongside high voice call quality thanks to its direct relationships with voice carriers in each geographic area. Evaluate each provider’s available volume discounts to see which offers the best savings for your business.
For instance, you can see in this price breakdown that Plivo offers consistently lower price points than Twilio.
Plivo customers can save as much as 50% on the cost of similar programs relative to Twilio. Plivo’s low customer acquisition costs and direct relationships with underlying carriers let us pass our savings on to our customers.
World-class customer support
If you’re frustrated with Twilio’s customer service wait times, you’re not alone.
Find a voice service provider who offers 24/7 customer support with a fast turnaround so you’re not waiting hours — or days — to get answers. Also, find out if the API provider you’re considering as a Twilio alternative has experience helping companies implement the use cases you need most, so they can guide your migration and implementation and quickly troubleshoot any issues that arise.
Plivo customers often report that the company’s support team isn’t just quick to respond, but also friendly and dedicated to finding collaborative solutions for each of their clients’ use cases.
Want better voice quality? Plivo delivers
Every month, Plivo handles more than 1 billion API requests on our premium carrier network. We promise high-quality service and low-latency voice calls across more than 190 countries.
Plivo has helped thousands of innovative companies worldwide create cutting-edge customer experiences and streamline their operations with voice services. Leveraging our Voice API platform, businesses can easily make calls to all regions and buy virtual phone numbers in 65 of them.
And the strengths of Plivo voice service extend beyond our best-in-class coverage. Companies like IBM, Intel, and PagerDuty turn to us because our simple API allows their developers to work smarter and faster.
With our voice API, you can quickly reduce response times to customer inquiries, make your team more productive by reducing call center volumes, and easily manage voice notifications, appointment reminders, and service updates.
To get started, sign up for free or talk to a Plivo migration expert today.
