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Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) vs. Grasshopper vs. Twilio

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Amazon SES

    Score9.2 out of 10
    N/AAmazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is an outbound-only email-sending service useful for marketing and transactional email, relying on the infrastructure of Amazon. Amazon SES provides the requisite statistics and built-in notifications for bounces, complaints, and deliveries for optimization of campaigns. Emails are sent via SMTP or the Amazon SES API. Amazon's pricing is per usage, presently at $.10 per thousand sends. The service is free for users of Amazon EC2 (up to 62,000 messages),…

    $0.10

    for emails after the first 1,000

    Grasshopper

    Score6.1 out of 10
    N/AGrasshopper 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

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/ATwilio 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
    Amazon SESGrasshopperTwilio
    Editions & Modules
    Sending Emails from an Application Hosted in Amazon EC2
    $0.10 ($0.12)
    for every 1,000 emails after 62,000 (for each GB of storage)
    Sending Emails from Another Email Client or Software Package
    $0.10 ($0.12)
    for every 1,000 emails (for each GB of storage)
    Receiving Email
    $0.10
    for emails after the first 1,000
    Sending Emails from an Application Hosted in Amazon EC2
    Free
    for first 62,000 emails
    Receiving Email
    Free
    for the first 1,000 emails
    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
    Amazon SESGrasshopperTwilio
    Free Trial
    NoYesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details—20% discount available for annual pricing.1. Pay-as-you-go pricing: Simple usage-based pricing without contracts. 2. Volume discounts: Discounts trigger as usage grows. 3. Free trial credit that includes full API access.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Amazon SESGrasshopperTwilio
    Considered Multiple Products
    Amazon AWS
    Chose Amazon SES
    They have fix cost and not pay per use model like Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) and moreover selecting best suited plan is also difficult as per our organisation use case.
    Incentivized
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    No answer on this topic
    Twilio
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    13 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    46 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    66 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    45 Answers
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    58 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    43 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    68 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    9 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    42 Answers
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    45 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    46 Answers
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    56 Answers
    Features
    Amazon SESGrasshopperTwilio
    Cloud PBX
    Comparison of Cloud PBX features of Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) and Grasshopper and Twilio
    Feature
    Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)
    -
    Ratings
    Grasshopper
    9.7
    46 Ratings
    20% above category average
    Twilio
    -
    Ratings
    Hosted PBX00 Ratings9.423 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)00 Ratings10.024 Ratings00 Ratings
    User templates00 Ratings10.019 Ratings00 Ratings
    Call reports00 Ratings9.433 Ratings00 Ratings
    Directory of employee names00 Ratings9.434 Ratings00 Ratings
    Call Management
    Comparison of Call Management features of Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) and Grasshopper and Twilio
    Feature
    Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)
    -
    Ratings
    Grasshopper
    9.6
    51 Ratings
    15% above category average
    Twilio
    -
    Ratings
    Answering rules00 Ratings9.247 Ratings00 Ratings
    Call recording00 Ratings9.622 Ratings00 Ratings
    Call park00 Ratings9.812 Ratings00 Ratings
    Call screening00 Ratings10.036 Ratings00 Ratings
    Message alerts00 Ratings9.243 Ratings00 Ratings
    VoIP system collaboration
    Comparison of VoIP system collaboration features of Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) and Grasshopper and Twilio
    Feature
    Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)
    -
    Ratings
    Grasshopper
    7.9
    12 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Twilio
    -
    Ratings
    Video conferencing00 Ratings7.93 Ratings00 Ratings
    Audio conferencing00 Ratings7.77 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video screen sharing00 Ratings8.23 Ratings00 Ratings
    Instant messaging00 Ratings8.09 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile apps
    Comparison of Mobile apps features of Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) and Grasshopper and Twilio
    Feature
    Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)
    -
    Ratings
    Grasshopper
    8.9
    48 Ratings
    12% above category average
    Twilio
    -
    Ratings
    Mobile app for iOS00 Ratings8.935 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile app for Android00 Ratings8.929 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Amazon SESGrasshopperTwilio
    Small Businesses
    Postmark
    Score7.7 out of 10
    CallFire
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Simplify360
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Postmark
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Fuze
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Customer.io
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
    Score8.3 out of 10
    SAP Service Cloud
    Score8.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Amazon SESGrasshopperTwilio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (23 ratings)
    7.8
    (56 ratings)
    8.1
    (94 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.5
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.5
    (10 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (38 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.3
    (8 ratings)
    9.0
    (42 ratings)
    5.7
    (16 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Amazon SESGrasshopperTwilio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Amazon AWS
    Amazon Simple Email Service comes with the bundle of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and it also offers a limited number of emails per month for free. One who has a technical background and wants to send custom emails with custom domains in a professional way can go with Amazon Simple Email Service. If you have no technical background or tech team, it might not be useful for you.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    Grasshopper is well suited for basic needs of texting in and out as well as calling out if you would like to avoid using your personal line. It also eliminates the need to have a dedicated land land in your office or business. You can obtain a vanity number and forward calls through grasshopper.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    I have tried other competitors. But I always end up going back to Twilio because I feel like it is dependable, easy to use, and, has competitive pricing. The only time I wouldn't recommend Twilio to someone as if they are completely inexperienced about using webhooks or APIs. Because you can't really just sign up and start using Twilio without connecting it to another platform first.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Amazon AWS
    • As compare to other vendors that I have integrated response is very quick.
    • You can verify both domain or email to send out the emails from.
    • While setup you can easily configure it with your domain with few clicks like adding CNAME, DKIM records
    • Easy to use with or without access key and secret key within aws servers. You can directly map permissions to servers to go without credentials using boto3.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    • I like that there are differing voicemails for each extension, to keep up with the image of calling a separate line.
    • I love the voicemail text emails. I believe we pay a little extra, but worth every penny for those urgent calls while I am in a meeting.
    • The cost is very reasonable for the value added to our company.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Amazon AWS
    • While the service limits are one of the main points that keep the delivery metrics so reliable, it can be stressful to get a new implementation out the door quickly.
    • If you're looking for a point-and-click style email delivery tool, this is not the right type of product for you. Amazon Simple Email Service is for a developer-centric approach to implementation into existing applications, processes, and services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    • It would be nice to have the ability to transfer some calls to another Grasshopper IVR, for those customers who mistakenly dial the wrong number (we have two incoming numbers, one for corporate and one for sales).
    • Likewise, it would be nice to have the ability to forward to a toll-free number, which would have allowed us to work around the inability to transfer between IVRs (see above).
    • Lastly, it would be great to have an 'emergency' switch setting (default off but could be toggled on) that would let us override all IVR settings and transfer all incoming calls elsewhere (either to a direct dial or toll free number) for those rare times when we cannot take any calls (such as a weather emergency OR the one time each year we take all of our staff on a retreat) - that would allow us to send all calls to a backup answering service rather than just voicemail.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    • Control panel. Often, navigating through lists is challenging. I want endless scrolling, not pagination.
    • Conversational intelligence service require a Language. I would like it to detect it.
    • We would like to have some credit on clients that chose to use their own Twilio account.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    No answers on this topic
    Twilio
    Unless we can get this handled quickly -- less than 1 week -- we will likely switch to another provider who, in my opinion, we'll have to spend close to $3,000 in development time to build a new integration for texting. Our clients need texting and I feel Twilio has failed us miserably.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Amazon AWS
    1. Very less cost. 2. Fastest in market. 3. Negligible downtime. 4. Easy to integrate with other systems. 5. Easy to setup with your domain and email.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    The admin functions are kind of confusing in the old interface which was my most recent experience on the admin side.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    Twilio has well documented APIs and examples. There are several tutorials, videos and Q&As regarding their services. So, usability is very good. I must say that advanced knowledge of telephony, API/Programming and error-handling is essential to make good use of Twilio. It's not just plug-and-play unless you are integrated with a system that has all of the programming built for it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    No answers on this topic
    Twilio
    Twilio executes what it is designed to do: send SMS messages at scale while providing very good deliverability. I believe that Twilio is very good at what we use for adding SMS messages to our comms strategy. We can see those messages get opened and replied to, which is exactly what we are looking to achieve.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Amazon AWS
    We did not have the need of contacting Amazon for support. The documentation they provide is of great quality. Examples are easy to follow. One thing to have into consideration is we didn't have the premium support for AWS, so I can't provide details on how good or bad this service is, but in general, the basic support I had was great.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    I have not had to communicate with Twilio support in the last 3 years but my past experience with them has been very positive. They replied to my previous requests promptly and kept me well informed to resolve my inquiries. With their documentation that's available, I hardly imagine why anyone would need to contact support since it's all there in a concise and easy to understand format. It would probably take you longer to type out a support ticket than to just open their doc websites.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    No answers on this topic
    Twilio
    The developer APIs and SDKs are super easy to follow.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Amazon AWS
    Mailchimp has a fixed monthly price, and with the number of emails that we sent, it's pretty expensive. Since our mailings are quite infrequent, using Mailchimp didn't make financial sense for us, even though Mailchimp is a more polished, packaged solution for email marketing. We evaluated other email delivery solutions as well and didn't find anything that matches Amazon SES on reliability and pricing.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    I have not used any other phone services like Grasshopper. I know that there is another option out there called Ruby, which is more like a virtual receptionist but since I did not try it out I cannot compare the two. When I started my company I found the services that Grasshopper offers to be perfect. It still works for us and we have no need to change to anything else right now.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    We evaluated many fundraising-based text-to-give programs and found the subscriptions prohibitively expensive for our small scale and uncertain first few years of development. While we may be willing to invest that kind of money after discovering how things work, we're happy with Twilio now and have no desire to start over.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    No answers on this topic
    Twilio
    Being in South Africa, direct local currency support would be nice
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Amazon AWS
    • SES is still more cost effective than other email services like Mailgun.
    • Unless we have a high-traffic month, staying within the free tier is very nice for our bottom line.
    • Not having to spend time worrying about SES reliability saves us frustration and money.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    GoTo formerly LogMeIn
    • It's allowed us to keep cost down. Other phone systems can seriously get outrageous in implementation and monthly fees!
    • It's allowed our team the confidence to work in locations outside of the office and still be seen as professionals.
    • It's decreased the amount of time spent on unwanted sales calls via the call screening application.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    • 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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Twilio Screenshots

    Screenshot of the “Explore Products” section, which is where to build products.Screenshot of the optional drag-and-drop visual editor and code editor.Screenshot of Flex, which is a programmable Contact Center that puts you in control.