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Exotel vs Twilio: What are the differences?

Introduction

Exotel and Twilio are popular cloud communication platforms that provide communication APIs and services for businesses. While both platforms offer similar capabilities, there are some key differences between them.

  1. Pricing Models: Exotel offers pay-as-you-go plans with lower starting prices and transparent pricing. On the other hand, Twilio follows a usage-based pricing model and does not offer fixed plans. This makes Exotel more suitable for businesses with lower communication requirements or those looking for budget-friendly options.

  2. Local Number Coverage: Exotel has a strong focus on supporting local numbers in India, making it an ideal choice for businesses operating in the Indian market. Twilio, on the other hand, has a wider global coverage for local numbers, making it more suitable for businesses with international operations.

  3. SMS Routing: Exotel allows users to configure SMS routing for better delivery rates, enabling businesses to optimize their SMS communication. Twilio, on the other hand, does not provide as much flexibility in SMS routing, which may limit customization options for certain use cases.

  4. Call Recording Retention: Exotel allows businesses to store call recordings for up to 90 days, providing a longer retention period. Twilio, on the other hand, offers call recording storage for up to 30 days. This longer retention period in Exotel may be beneficial for businesses that require longer-term call recording storage for compliance or analytics purposes.

  5. Integration Capabilities: Twilio has a larger ecosystem of integrations and third-party plugins, making it easier to connect with various other tools and platforms. This allows businesses to seamlessly integrate their communication workflows with existing systems. Exotel, while also offering integrations, may have a more limited range of options compared to Twilio.

  6. SMS Outbound Rate Limit: Twilio has an SMS outbound rate limit of 1 message per second, which may affect businesses with high-volume messaging requirements. Exotel, on the other hand, does not have a specific SMS outbound rate limit, providing more flexibility for businesses that need to send a large number of messages within a short period.

In summary, Exotel offers budget-friendly pricing, strong local number coverage in India, customizable SMS routing, longer call recording retention, while Twilio provides a wider range of integrations, broader global local number coverage, and more flexible SMS outbound rate limits.

Advice on Exotel 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 · 106.5K 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 · 113.3K 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 · 112.9K 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 Exotel
Pros of Twilio
    Be the first to leave a pro
    • 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

    Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

    Cons of Exotel
    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 Exotel?

      It is a cloud telephony platform that powers communication for enterprises, startups and small and medium enterprises in India and Southeast Asia. They provide APIs that help companies devise their own communication flow.

      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.

      Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

      What companies use Exotel?
      What companies use Twilio?
      See which teams inside your own company are using Exotel or Twilio.
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      What tools integrate with Exotel?
      What tools integrate with Twilio?

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      Jul 2 2019 at 9:34PM

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      What are some alternatives to Exotel and Twilio?
      Nexmo
      Nexmo connects your apps directly to carriers around the world. Integrate SMS and Voice messages using one simple API. Use Nexmo Verity to register users, verify transactions, and implement two factor authentication.
      Postscript
      Postscript lets you easily create and manage SMS marketing campaigns with detailed analytics designed to increase sales and revenue, not just clicks.
      Braze
      Braze is a comprehensive customer engagement platform that powers relevant and memorable experiences between consumers and the brands they love.
      Agora
      Agora.io provides building blocks for you to add real-time voice and video communications through a simple and powerful SDK. You can integrate the Agora SDK to enable real-time communications in your own application quickly.
      Plivo
      Plivo provides basic building block APIs in the form of Plivo XML and HTTP API, to create telephony apps, so developers can completely do away with learning the nitty-gritty of the telephony plumbing.
      See all alternatives