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Amazon SES vs Twilio: What are the differences?

Introduction

Amazon SES and Twilio are two popular cloud communication platforms that provide services for sending and receiving emails and SMS messages. While both platforms offer similar features, there are key differences that set them apart. In this article, we will explore these differences and highlight the unique capabilities of each platform.

  1. Message Types: One key difference between Amazon SES and Twilio is the type of messages they primarily handle. Amazon SES focuses on email delivery, providing a reliable and scalable solution for sending transactional and marketing emails. On the other hand, Twilio specializes in SMS messaging, allowing businesses to send and receive text messages globally. While both platforms support email and SMS, their primary focus differs.

  2. Pricing Model: Another significant difference lies in the pricing model offered by Amazon SES and Twilio. Amazon SES employs a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where users pay per email sent, with separate charges for data transfer and other additional services. In contrast, Twilio adopts a usage-based pricing approach, where users are charged based on the number of SMS messages sent and received, with additional charges for features like phone number rental, voice calls, and video messages. The pricing structure can significantly impact the cost for businesses depending on their communication needs.

  3. Email Deliverability: When it comes to email deliverability, Amazon SES offers advanced features and infrastructure to ensure high inbox placement rates. It provides dedicated IP addresses, automated bounce handling, and reputation monitoring, allowing businesses to improve their email deliverability. Twilio, while also providing reliable email delivery, may not offer the same level of deliverability tools and features as Amazon SES, making it more suitable for businesses primarily focused on SMS messaging.

  4. Integration Capabilities: Both platforms offer robust integration capabilities, allowing users to easily integrate their applications or websites with the communication services provided. However, Amazon SES has broader integration support with various AWS services, making it an ideal choice for businesses already leveraging the AWS ecosystem. Twilio, on the other hand, offers integrations with popular CRM systems, messaging apps, and other third-party services, catering to businesses with diverse integration requirements.

  5. Geographical Coverage: Geographical coverage is another aspect where Amazon SES and Twilio differ. Amazon SES provides global coverage, allowing businesses to send emails to recipients worldwide. Twilio, while also supporting global SMS messaging, may have varying availability and features depending on the country. Therefore, businesses with specific geographical targeting requirements should consider the coverage provided by each platform.

  6. Additional Features: Apart from the core features, both Amazon SES and Twilio offer additional features that enhance the communication capabilities for businesses. Amazon SES provides features like customizable email templates, email analytics, and email open/click tracking. Twilio, on the other hand, offers features like two-factor authentication, voice calls, video messaging, and programmable chat. The additional features provided by each platform allow businesses to tailor their communication strategy according to their specific needs.

In summary, Amazon SES primarily focuses on email delivery, offers advanced deliverability tools, has broad integration support with AWS services, and provides global coverage. Twilio specializes in SMS messaging, adopts a distinct pricing model, integrates with popular CRM systems, offers global SMS messaging with additional features like two-factor authentication and programmable chat. The choice between Amazon SES and Twilio depends on the specific communication needs and priorities of businesses.

Advice on Amazon SES and Twilio
Needs advice
on
MessageBirdMessageBird
and
TwilioTwilio

Hey! We need an omnichannel inbox that's housed within Salesforce Sales Cloud that makes it super easy for our reps to respond to inbound communication (needs: clean inbox, provides historical context, etc.). We're a high-volume call center, and we get a ton of incoming SMS and email every day. We'd love a solution that lets us view all of that in one place — ideally Salesforce, as that's where our reps work, and we want to avoid needing them to switch between windows. Thanks!

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Replies (2)
Recommends

if the inbound SMS are sales rep specific you could potentially have twilio fwd that msg to a google voice phone number which will in turn put an email in their inbox (so they're looking at 1 inbox instead of multiple places) Just an idea. Probably way off in left field compared to what you're thinking and I also invision. I'm not all familiar with MessageBird nor am I at all familiar w/ your data flow / business process. Would be happy to help brainstorm anytime! 10+ years experience on the sfdc platform

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Ryan Hitchler
CEO & Co-founder at Centro · | 1 upvotes · 105.8K views
Recommends
on
TwilioTwilio
at

Check out Centro. We built this to solve this exact problem! We used tools like Twilio but wrapped it up in a application that runs on Slack.

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Dainis Duļbinskis
Marketing project manager at Colortime · | 2 upvotes · 112.7K views
Needs advice
on
PlivoPlivo
and
TwilioTwilio

Hello! We need to integrate an SMS gateway into our app for user phone verification. As we are just starting, we are searching for the most affordable/best price/performance option for SMS gateway to verify client phone numbers with the code, maybe you can suggest something between those two or maybe something else. We are planning to do business in Europe

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Replies (4)
Recommends
on
NexmoNexmo

Twilio is the leader. Strong API, excellent documentation and reliable service. I suggest Nexmo since their API has smaller learning curve, offering better prices and also reliable solution. Also Nexmo offers more call per sec. 3 vs 2 and 2, out of the box. Good luck

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Recommends
on
TwilioTwilio
at

Twilio documentation is very good and as a platform it just works. It's robust and reliable. We road-tested plivo and it wasn't anywhere near in terms of docs or support. In fact their support was terrible at replying to us. 48 hours to answer basic questions.

That's said, were also using sendgrid by twilio and that's not been pleasant . Their email builder appears to be react based but written by a team who don't understand react very well. That's a nightmare as yet

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Recommends
on
TwilioTwilio

Twilio might be not cheapest, but they have awesome documentation (a lot of examples), easy to use API and libraries. I think it's a very good product to start. If the bill will become too heavy, you can shop around for economical options.

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Andrew Voirol
Founder at The Social Diner · | 1 upvotes · 112.2K views
Recommends
on
PlivoPlivo

stackshare doesn't seem to have this in the stack list yet, but in my experience Twillio is attractive. It's good for basics, their acquisition of SendGrid gives them a bit more market share.. They are stronger at marketing to those that benefit them. That said from my understanding SendGrid leases the networks, channels, and lines. While their interface is friendly, their pricing suited for lower volume, you want to look at what they are using via an API, a contract, etc. Is it a more friend UI to a combination of others. What redunancies do to they have, try their support. It's not that Twillio is bad, it's about the volume, the use case, the liabiitlies you might have to your end-users if Twillio isn't the right choice. Another option is Bandwidth. You ask for affordable, Twillio is an option, but front end costs v/s the costs of support you'll need to consider. Bandwidth has more reliability but requires more engineering and more skillset. Another option that is worth considering, not the most affordable, but https://www.zipwhip.com/ have perhaps options that might be higher and the cost is relative. Wight costs, of support costs of integration, cost of scale, costs of a volume..

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Pros of Amazon SES
Pros of Twilio
  • 102
    Reliable
  • 96
    Cheap
  • 57
    Integrates with other aws services
  • 52
    Easy setup
  • 18
    Trackable
  • 2
    Easy rails setup
  • 148
    Powerful, simple, and well documented api
  • 88
    RESTful API
  • 66
    Clear pricing
  • 61
    Great sms services
  • 58
    Low cost of entry
  • 29
    Global SMS Gateway
  • 14
    Good value
  • 12
    Cloud IVR
  • 11
    Simple
  • 11
    Extremely simple to integrate with rails
  • 6
    Great for startups
  • 5
    SMS
  • 3
    Great developer program
  • 3
    Hassle free
  • 2
    Text me the app pages
  • 1
    New Features constantly rolling out
  • 1
    Many deployment options, from build from scratch to buy
  • 1
    Easy integration
  • 1
    Two factor authentication

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Cons of Amazon SES
Cons of Twilio
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 4
      Predictable pricing
    • 2
      Expensive

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is Amazon SES?

    Amazon SES eliminates the complexity and expense of building an in-house email solution or licensing, installing, and operating a third-party email service. The service integrates with other AWS services, making it easy to send emails from applications being hosted on services such as Amazon EC2.

    What is Twilio?

    Twilio offers developers a powerful API for phone services to make and receive phone calls, and send and receive text messages. Their product allows programmers to more easily integrate various communication methods into their software and programs.

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    Jul 2 2019 at 9:34PM

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    What are some alternatives to Amazon SES and Twilio?
    Twilio SendGrid
    Twilio SendGrid's cloud-based email infrastructure relieves businesses of the cost and complexity of maintaining custom email systems. Twilio SendGrid provides reliable delivery, scalability & real-time analytics along with flexible API's.
    Mailgun
    Mailgun is a set of powerful APIs that allow you to send, receive, track and store email effortlessly.
    Mailchimp
    MailChimp helps you design email newsletters, share them on social networks, integrate with services you already use, and track your results. It's like your own personal publishing platform.
    Amazon SNS
    Amazon Simple Notification Service makes it simple and cost-effective to push to mobile devices such as iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire, and internet connected smart devices, as well as pushing to other distributed services. Besides pushing cloud notifications directly to mobile devices, SNS can also deliver notifications by SMS text message or email, to Simple Queue Service (SQS) queues, or to any HTTP endpoint.
    Mandrill
    Mandrill is a new way for apps to send transactional email. It runs on the delivery infrastructure that powers MailChimp.
    See all alternatives