Grasshopper is an IP telephony business communication solution that provides companies with a toll-free or local phone number. It has both desktop and mobile applications and includes features such as custom greeting recording, call forwarding, call transfer, call reporting, and voicemail.
$18
per month for a single user
Twilio
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Twilio offers a CPaaS and CCaaS solution, with the combination of its programmable Voice, Video, and Messaging APIs, as well as the Twilio Flex cloud contact center. Additional capabilities include Twilio's Elastic SIP Trunking, as well as API for WhatsApp.
$0
per min per participant
Pricing
Grasshopper
Twilio
Editions & Modules
True Solo
$18
per month for a single user
Solo Plus
$32
per month
Small Business
$70
per month
Programmable Video
$0.0015
per min per participant
WhatsApp Business API
$0.0042
Per WhatsApp Template message sent
WhatsApp Business API
$0.005
Per WhatsApp session message
Elastic SIP Trunking
$0.007
Per min for termination
Programmable Messaging
$0.0075
per message sent or received
Programmable Voice
$0.0085
per minute to receive a call
Programmable Voice
$0.013
per min to make a call
Elastic SIP Trunking
$0.045
Per min for origination
Twilio Conversations
$0.05
per active user per month
Twilio Authy
$0.09
per authentication
Programmable Wireless
$0.1
per MB
Twilio Flex (Contact Center)
$1
per active user hour (5000 hours free)
Programmable Wireless
$2.00
per SIM card
Twilio SendGrid Email API
$14.95
per month up to 100k emails. (Up to 40k emails free for 30 days)
Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns
$15
per month for 5,000 contacts and 15,000 emails. Your first 2,000 contacts are free
Twilio Flex (Contact Center)
$150
per named user per month (5000 hours free)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Grasshopper
Twilio
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
20% discount available for annual pricing.
1. Pay-as-you-go pricing: Simple usage-based pricing means you don’t get locked into big contracts.
2. Volume discounts: Discounts trigger as your usage grows, so you always get a fair price.
3. Start building today with free trial credit and full API access.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Grasshopper
Twilio
Features
Grasshopper
Twilio
Cloud PBX
Comparison of Cloud PBX features of Product A and Product B
Grasshopper
9.7
Ratings
20% above category average
Twilio
-
Ratings
Hosted PBX
9.40 Ratings
00 Ratings
Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
10.00 Ratings
00 Ratings
User templates
10.00 Ratings
00 Ratings
Call reports
9.40 Ratings
00 Ratings
Directory of employee names
9.40 Ratings
00 Ratings
Call Management
Comparison of Call Management features of Product A and Product B
Grasshopper
9.6
Ratings
14% above category average
Twilio
-
Ratings
Answering rules
9.20 Ratings
00 Ratings
Call recording
9.60 Ratings
00 Ratings
Call park
9.80 Ratings
00 Ratings
Call screening
10.00 Ratings
00 Ratings
Message alerts
9.20 Ratings
00 Ratings
VoIP system collaboration
Comparison of VoIP system collaboration features of Product A and Product B
Grasshopper
7.9
Ratings
1% below category average
Twilio
-
Ratings
Video conferencing
7.90 Ratings
00 Ratings
Audio conferencing
7.70 Ratings
00 Ratings
Video screen sharing
8.20 Ratings
00 Ratings
Instant messaging
8.00 Ratings
00 Ratings
Mobile apps
Comparison of Mobile apps features of Product A and Product B
Seems like it is perfectly suited for ANY small to medium business. I can imagine that a business would outgrow the system eventually, but probably around 75-100 employees? Great system for offices that are not managed full time, companies with remote workers, budget conscience start ups, anyone with a need for a registered office line.
Twilio is well suited to sending SMS reminders to prospects on the lead-up to sales appointments. This has helped us improve attendance rates for these meetings. We also use Twilio to communicate with these prospects post-meeting to make offers on products and services and for feedback on their meeting.
Since calls always come into my cell phone from the same Grasshopper number I just saved that number in my phone as my company name. So I always know when a call is coming in for my company and that it's not a personal call. Of course, all calls are saved and logged in Grasshopper so if I need to go back and check the actual caller ID I can do that.
All voicemails are immediately sent as audio files in an email to the email address on file for each extension. I personally love this feature. I can choose to go into the Grasshopper app to listen to them but its use so much more convenient to get an email, open it up and listen right from the email. The caller ID for the call is also included in the email text. So all the info I need for any missed calls is right there. Great stuff.
By far, one of my favorite features is the option to receive faxes to the same business number. Even though fax is being used less these days it is still used quite a bit and being able to receive faxes and having them immediately emailed to me is great.
The ability to transfer calls from extension to extension (as in cell phone to cell phone) is great. It doesn't matter where my colleague is. I can send the call to the right person and it's ringing on their phone in seconds.
Making calls from your Grasshopper phone number - Sometimes (well, most of the time) I'll just make a call directly from my cell phone because the process of opening the app, typing in the number I want to call and then making the call can take more time than the call itself.
Missed Calls - Myself and other coworkers have experienced frustration with Grasshopper and "missed" calls. Sometimes my phone won't ring, but I'll get an email with a voicemail. So it skips ringing my phone all together and goes directly to voicemail. I've had my phone in my hand before, ringer on, and never receive a call but received an email with a voicemail.
Checking Voicemails on your phone - In order to hear a voicemail from your mobile device, you have to log into the app. But the voicemail shows up under missed calls / voicemails like normal phone calls but when you try to listen to it, it's just a recording of grasshopper telling you that you have a voicemail.
Transferring Voicemails - You have to memorize all the extensions and the process for transferring voicemails. While it's just memorization needed to make the process work correctly, it takes a lot of time to remember how to transfer the call, the extension you want to transfer it to, and sometimes after going through all of the steps I accidentally hang up on the caller. It's user error, but I feel like if they made the process simpler, and they gave you a directory when you indicate you want to transfer the call, it'd make it a lot easier.
Authy does not support the "push button" multi-factor authentication from your application's native apps. This means if you want to use Authy, you still need to use TOTP based codes.
Not really a shortcoming of Authy, but it does nothing to help with multi-factor authentication using text messages - those are still sent to your platform's messaging app.
Authy doesn't always display how much time is left before your current token expires, making it difficult to know how much time you have left to enter the current code.
We are happy with Twilio because the price per message is low. The API is not difficult to implement and the documentation is very complete. Twilio as a company keeps you well informed of issues that happen. They also offer free online workshops or conferences to make notices of new laws, etc.
Overall the product API is extremely well documented so it is very easy to build a product with their technology. The website is a little bit cumbersome to use as they have greatly expanded the number of products that they have over the years, but the dashboard UI has not been improved much since.
The problem tends to be us, the user, rather than Twilio. We don't reach out to support fast enough (spend time struggling), but when we have, they've solved our issue immediately. We are rural, so there are signal issues to accommodate, however, we find that a few staff on a few cellular networks can triangulate where we all have signal to put up a sign.
When I was setting up my account I contacted support a couple of times. They were also very professional, personable, and helpful. Their response is prompt and thorough. I'm confident I can get any question answered as well as help with any issue I might have. That's pretty important to me.
Good interface to connect with different API systems for communication through different channel[s]. Twilio has good market coverage of the client across the globe for generating revenue through multi-channel approach. It works with [a] programmable feature that makes life easy for every user. Automated call is one of the advance[d] feature[s] of this tool.
We moved away from Grasshopper when we implemented an answering service that had an application which provided the same functions as grasshopper for calling and texting. We initially selected Grasshopper as our communication solution because our original answering service just handled incoming calls and did not have an app available to clients.
We have looked at some of Twilio competitors, like Infobip, Sich and Bandwith. Prices on all of them for voice minutes and SMS are way cheaper than Twilio. But none of them seem to offer as many features and ease of use as Twilio. Specially from an API point of view
We found that associates who had the opportunity to respond to a survey about their assigned job were 37% more likely to return to a job site
We were able to reduce the number of resources required to manually respond to associates using Twilio Studio, so those resources could have more time to complete other tasks
We were able to scale the number of associates who received survey messages at least by a factor of 8 without increasing our resource demand