SendBird vs. Twilio

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SendBird
Score 8.9 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
SendBird is a packaged messaging-as-a-service that is designed to help developers build and manage messaging function in less than 5 minutes. SendBird says it strives to build the whole messaging SDK and backend from the scratch to help developers save time and resources in order to allow them to focus on making apps and services more engaging. SendBird allows mobile developers to easily attach 1-on-1 messaging and group chat to their application. The developer kit also comes with…
$0
Up to 1,000 chat MAU
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
SendBirdTwilio
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Up to 1,000 chat MAU
SPROUT
$49
Up to 10,000 chat MAU
TREE
$149
Up to 30,000 chat MAU, Broadcasting message is available
PARK
$499
Up to 100,000 chat MAU, Broadcasting message is available
ENTERPRISE
Contact us
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
SendBirdTwilio
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsWe offer Free plan but your Chat MAU will be limited to your service 1,000 and you’ll be limited to send only test broadcasting messages. Q. How is the Chat MAU calculated? A. Chat MAU (monthly active user) is calculated as any user who has sent or received a messaging data using SendBird platform during 30 days. Q. What happens if my app’s popularity explodes and I go beyond the Chat MAU quota? A. We don't have hard ceilings to prevent the Chat MAU rate from exceeding the pricing plan's quota (except for with the Sandbox option), but you will be charged for additional users beyond the stated limit. If your app exceeds the Chat MAU quota, you will be charged $0.012/user with Sprout pricing, $0.011/user with Tree pricing, $0.010/user with Park pricing, and even lower with Enterprise pricing. Q. Can I change the credit card information to another one? A. You can change your credit information on your Dashboard > Billing page.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
SendBirdTwilio
Best Alternatives
SendBirdTwilio
Small Businesses
Telegram
Telegram
Score 9.1 out of 10
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Telegram
Telegram
Score 9.1 out of 10
Dialpad Support
Dialpad Support
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Telegram
Telegram
Score 9.1 out of 10
Verint Community
Verint Community
Score 9.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
SendBirdTwilio
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(0 ratings)
6.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.5
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.4
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
5.7
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SendBirdTwilio
Likelihood to Recommend
SendBird is well suited tool for those who are having sound technical knowledge and in-hand experience of app development and APIs. One might find it difficult to integrate if not having a technical team or a good technical background. Once implemented, using or management is not an issue. Startups having low budget might find it a little bit costier.
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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.
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Pros
  • It has nice user interface
  • We don't have to face any downtime using SendBird
  • It has nice performance and great efficiency
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  • Easy to see my team in one place, when they log in and out and what call status they are in.
  • Twilio is a simple, user friendly way to log in and out of work activities.
  • Excellent services and support.
  • The omnichannel feature which allows agents to get request from all channels.
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Cons
  • Pricing can get expensive once you go over the 100 MAU limit for the Developer tier.
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  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
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.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
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.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
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.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
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.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
The developer APIs and SDKs are super easy to follow.
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Alternatives Considered
No answers on this topic
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
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Return on Investment
  • Using SendBird has decreased the number of support calls to where we were able to hold off on increasing our customer support team's headcount.
  • Customers have raved about having the chat functionality to review & assess their healthcare options without having to call in.
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  • 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
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ScreenShots

SendBird Screenshots

Screenshot of SendBirdScreenshot of SendBird chat roomScreenshot of Administration dashboard

Twilio Screenshots

Screenshot of To access any of the products in Console, head over to the “Explore Products” section and start building.Screenshot of Whether you prefer to build with a drag-and-drop visual editor or with code, Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns helps you engage your customers through email.Screenshot of Flex is a programmable Contact Center that puts you in control.