What is Twilio and what are its top alternatives?
Top Alternatives to 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. ...
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. ...
OpenTok
It adds the clarity and emotion of face-to-face communication to your brand whether you're developing for the web, iOS, or Android. We make the integration of high-quality live video a breeze so that you can focus on building a great product. ...
Bandwidth
A Communications Platform as a Service company offering a full suite of voice, messaging, and 9-1-1 APIs, all built atop the company's own all-IP voice network. ...
RingCentral
Since RingCentral is cloud based, you enjoy the freedom to connect and manage multiple locations, devices and workers within your cloud phone system. You can easily customize users, departments, and call handling rules. No matter where you, or the users, are. You only need a high-speed Internet connection and your phone system is ready to work lightning fast, anytime and anyplace. There’s no PBX hardware. ...
Amazon Connect
The self-service graphical interface in Amazon Connect makes it easy for non-technical users to design contact flows, manage agents, and track performance metrics – no specialized skills required. ...
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. ...
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. ...
Twilio alternatives & related posts
- For outbound and inbound SMS16
- Cheap11
- Simple REST API9
- Broad coverage3
- Most reliable global communication vendor w/simple APIs3
- Implement inbound SMS2
- Super fast and easy to use2
- Excellent support team2
- Cheap short-code SMS1
related Nexmo posts
Nexmo vs Twilio ?
Back in the early days at SmartZip Analytics, that evaluation had - for whatever reason - been made by Product Management. Some developers might have been consulted, but we hadn't made the final call and some key engineering aspects of it were omitted.
When revamping the platform, I made sure to flip the decision process how it should be. Business provided an input but Engineering lead the way and has the final say on all implementation matters. My engineers and I decided on re-evaluating the criteria and vendor selection. Not only did we need SMS support, but were we not thinking about #VoiceAndSms support as the use cases evolved.
Also, on an engineering standpoint, SDK mattered. Nexmo didn't have any. Twilio did. No-one would ever want to re-build from scratch integration layers vendors should naturally come up with and provide their customers with.
Twilio won on all fronts. Including costs and implementation timelines. No-one even noticed the vendor switch.
Many years later, Twilio demonstrated its position as a leader by holding conferences in the Bay Area, announcing features like Twilio Functions. Even acquired Authy which we also used for 2FA. Twilio's growth has been amazing. Its recent acquisition of SendGrid continues to show it.
- SMS gateway8
- Pricing5
- Voice API service3
- 24/7 Support2
- Trial account with positive balance2
related Plivo posts
I use Plivo because Tropo discontinued their services. It provides clean event logs, categorized and filterable. Super easy to troubleshoot problems. Tropo was a fine service but event logging was horrendous.
OpenTok
- Video Archiving to s34
- Easy setup2
related OpenTok posts
related Bandwidth posts
- Powered by Zoom1
- Very Limited Use (Free)1
- Lacking in Features1
- Video Conferencing is very buggy1
- Uses an old version of Zoom Video Conferencing1
related RingCentral posts
related Amazon Connect posts
- Low cost9
- Supports multi subscribers3
related Amazon SNS posts









We decided to use AWS Lambda for several serverless tasks such as
- Managing AWS backups
- Processing emails received on Amazon SES and stored to Amazon S3 and notified via Amazon SNS, so as to push a message on our Redis so our Sidekiq Rails workers can process inbound emails
- Pushing some relevant Amazon CloudWatch metrics and alarms to Slack
Instead of Amazon SNS, which is currently being used to send outbound push notification and including SMS, we want to build the 2 Way SMS using Amazon Pinpoint. Just want to know about Pinpoint and any outstanding issues if we drop SNS since it does not support 2 Way and use Pinpoint for both incoming and outgoing flow.
Agora
- RESTful API1
- Easy setup1
related Agora posts
Hello. So, I wanted to make a decision on whether to use WebRTC or Amazon Chime for a conference call (meeting). My plan is to build an app with features like video broadcasting, and the ability for all the participants to talk and chat. I have used Agora's web SDK for video broadcasting, and Socket.IO for chat features. As I read the comparison between Amazon Chime and WebRTC, it further intrigues me on what I should use given my scenario? Is there any way that so many related technologies could be a hindrance to the other? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks. Ritwik Neema