Twilio Vs Plivo: Which is the Right One for You?

According to the experts from Money magazine, a reliable phone system is vital for any business owner to build and strengthen client relations. Many customers want to stay in touch – in fact, over 40% of consumers blatantly state that they like when brands contact them via text messages.

Not sure which communications platform is right for your company? In this article, we’ll dive into the two popular platforms – Twilio vs Plivo, to help you pick the best SMS and voice messaging service.

What is Twilio?

Twilio is a customer engagement cloud communications platform. Businesses and developers use it to build trusting relationships with their clients through SMS alerts and two-way communication. Twilio allows you to program apps for audio and video calls, sending messages, email, WhatsApp, LiveChat and other personalized communications. 

Image source: GetApp

They offer APIs and software for companies across 180 countries.

What is Plivo?

In essence, Plivo is a similar cloud communication platform, offering its users SMS API, Voice API and SIP Trunking solutions. Businesses and developers across the globe use it to build apps for more effective, personalized real-time communications.

Image source: GetApp

The no-code building blocks allow you to easily create programmable, trigger-based sequences for automated marketing and an overall better customer experience. The latter is crucial – studies show that 60% of consumers abandon purchases due to poor user experiences.

Twilio vs Plivo: How they compare

Twilio and Plivo are CPaaS providers. They offer communication APIs for companies to integrate voice and text messaging into their applications.

While they have some similarities, like messaging and SMS APIs with SDKs, intuitive builders without the need for any coding knowledge and built-in routing features, they also differ in some aspects. Those include channel offerings, use cases and pricing.

However, the main difference between Plivo and Twilio is that the former option only offers programmable SMS APIs, while Twilio supports conversational messaging APIs with non-SMS channels (e.g., Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, web chat etc.).

Let’s look into Plivo vs Twilio to help you pick the best CPaaS provider.

Twilio vs Plivo: Features

Twilio offers key features such as:

• SMS and MMS APIs
• Two-way conversational messaging
• Messaging via MessagingX, covering mediums such as SMS, WhatsApp, LiveChat, MMS, Google and Facebook Messenger
• Options to communicate through video
• Notifications, marketing messages and alerts to staff and customers
• Highly customizable voice messages solutions
• Drag-and-drop flow builder
• Route calls
• Dashboard for monitoring delivery statuses
• Clear documentation with all reports on one dashboard
• Targets developers, so it may not be intuitive for regular users
• Available SDKs – C#, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby and Go
• Available in 180 countries

Image source: TrustRadius

The Plivo console comes with the following features:

• SMS and MMS APIs
• Forwarding SMS to email
• Automatic MMS converter
• Call routing
• HTTP API
• Highly customizable voice messages solutions
• Drag-and-drop flow builder without the need for programming languages knowledge
• Individual reports for each API
• Dashboard for monitoring delivery performance
• Good UI/UX, easy setup and customization
• Available SDKs – .NET, Java, Go, Ruby, Python, PHP and Node
• Available in 190 countries

Image source: G2

As you can see, Twilio offers a more robust feature set, while Plivo’s APIs only cover SMS and MMS.

Twilio vs Plivo: Integrations

As CPaaS APIs, Twilio and Plivo can easily integrate with practically any app. You can also use Zapier to connect them with thousands of the most popular apps, including Google Workspace, Mailchimp, Facebook, Slack, HubSpot, Zendesk, Trello, Salesforce and many more.

Twilio vs Plivo: Pricing

Twilio has usage-based pricing, so you don’t have to worry about big contracts. They have different costs for each of their products, which can get quite confusing and, in the end, amount to significant sums. Here are some examples (for the US):

• SMS and MMS pricing:
  • $0,0079/SMS to send messages
  • $0,0079/SMS to receive text messages
  • $0,0200/MMS for outbound messaging
  • from $0,0100/MMS for an incoming message
• Twilio leased phone numbers:
  • $1,15/month for long codes
  • $2,15/month for toll-free numbers
  • $1,000/quarterly for a random short code
  • $1,500/quarterly for a vanity short code

The Twilio console offers automatic volume discounts for voice calls (from 1,000 numbers) and SMS messages (from 150,000 text messages). It’s also worth knowing that all Twilio short codes have a $500 one-time setup fee.

Image source: TrustRadius

Plivo offers a pay-as-you-go pricing system that differs across countries. For the US, the costs are as follows:

• SMS API Platform:
  • $0,00500/SMS for outbound messages
  • $0,0000/SMS for incoming messages
• Voice API Platform
  • from $0,01000/min for making phone calls
  • $0,00550/min to receive phone calls
• Zentrunk SIP Trunking service
  • from $0,00650/min to make voice calls
  • $0,00250/min to receive calls
• Phone Number Rental
  • $0,50/month for local numbers
  • $1/month for toll-free numbers
  • from $500/month for short codes
• Omnichannel Contact Center for B2C customer service teams – from $35/user/month

Image source: GetApp

Both offer free services for testing out their products. Plivo is the more affordable option out of the two.

Twilio vs Plivo: Customer support

Twilio users get customer support via the help center, FAQ page or by submitting a request. All the company’s products come with detailed documentation.

There is also an option to pay for professional support that gets you 24/7 phone and email support, a dedicated technical account manager and a guaranteed response. The costs are as follows:

• Production – 4% of monthly spend or $250 minimum
• Business – 6% of monthly spend or $1,500 minimum
• Personalized – 8% of monthly expenses or $5,000 minimum

For Plivo, basic customer support is included with all user accounts. The available options include:

• Submitting a support ticket
• Using the content resource library
• Knowledge base for developers

For guaranteed customer support, you need to subscribe to the premium support plan. The Plivo pricing options include:

• Priority Plan – $250/month
• Business Plan – $750/month
• Personalized Plan – $2,500/month

In this category of the Twilio vs Plivo comparison, both companies offer similar support, but Twilio’s plans are more expensive.

Twilio vs Plivo: User rating

Here are the ratings of both tools on popular review sites. Satisfaction levels of multiple customers will help you make a more informed decision before buying. 

Tool	Score on G2	Score on Capterra	Score on Trustpilot	Score on Software Advice
Twilio	4.4/5 (429 reviews)	4.5/5 (409 reviews)	1.3/5 (368 reviews)	4.53/5 (405 reviews)
Plivo	4.5/5 (700 reviews)	4.3/5 (83 reviews)	2.0/5 (66 reviews)	4.33/5 (82 reviews)

Check out our other Twilio comparison: Twilio vs RingCentral!

Ringblaze: Twilio and Plivo alternative

That being said, Twilio and Plivo aren’t the only two options within this fastest-growing communication industry – and not necessarily the best. Some alternatives offer other features that might better suit your needs, at a more affordable price.

Another cloud communications platform, Ringblaze, allows setting up multiple phone numbers – one for every department. The versatile admin controls help save time by call forwarding, assigning them to owners and using comments.

There’s also the added bonus of a shared central dashboard to keep your team on the same page. No more internal miscommunication or missed calls from potential customers!

With our interactive voice response, global reach, VoIP communication, unlimited business texting and MMS, collaboration tools and productivity tracking, you’re sure to excel at maximizing your customer satisfaction. Ringblaze helps your team to solve customer issues in real time as they browse your site.

Image source: Ringblaze

Why choose Ringblaze over Twilio and Plivo?

There are many reasons to pick Ringblaze over both Plivo and Twilio. They include:

• Easy setup – you can have your optimized phone system running in just 15 minutes
• Chat support – you can always easily reach our customer services team
• Supports Macs and Windows PCs – Ringblaze is easy to use on all computers
• Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based – access your personalized communication platform from any place, time and device type

At Ringblaze, we offer a much simpler pricing plan – with just $15/user/month (billed annually, or $4 more in monthly payments) for a free local number, unlimited calls to US & Canada, a desktop app and advanced features. There is also a free trial available and if you don’t want to commit to annual billing, you can pay monthly.

Image source: Ringblaze

Twilio vs Plivo vs Ringblaze: Comparison table

Platform	Features	Pricing
Ringblaze	Create phone numbers Receive and make calls globally Forward and record calls Team collaboration Business texting Manage open and resolved issues Customer support Call Widget Access to Customer History Access on desktop and mobile Auto attendant Quick setup	Starts at $15
Twilio	SMS service Two-way conversational messaging Messaging via MessagingX Video calls Notifications Reports dashboard	Starts at $0,0079/SMS or $1,15/month for phone number
Plivo	SMS service SIP Trunking service Forwarding SMS to email Automatic multimedia message converter Drag-and-drop flow builder Individual reports Monitoring delivery performance	Starts at $0,005/SMS or $0,50/month for phone number

Conclusion

In the face-off between Plivo vs Twilio, there is no clear champion. Both of these services have their own advantages. In general, Twilio has a more robust feature set, while Plivo is more affordable.

However, if you want a solution with a simple and inexpensive pricing plan, business messages, various voice messaging options and additional collaboration and productivity features, Ringblaze might be the answer. On top of all that, we offer free email, chat and help center support for all our users.

Ready to give it a try? Sign up for a free demo.

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