TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) vs. CallFire vs. Google Hangouts (Classic)

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Amazon SNS

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AAmazon Web Services offers the Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) which provides pub/sub messaging and push notifications to iOS and Android devices. It is meant to operate in a microservices architecture and which can support event-driven contingencies and support the decoupling of applications.

    $0.01

    per 1 million

    CallFire

    Score9.7 out of 10
    N/ACallFire is a VoIP and messaging solution designed for both external B2C interactions and internal company use. It includes features such as text messaging, call tracking, voice broadcasting, and an interactive voice response (IVR) system. Subscription pricing starts at $99 per month.

    $99

    per month

    Google Hangouts (Classic)

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/AThe classic version of Google Hangouts included messaging, voice, VoIP, and video call capabilities. It was replaced by the Hangouts Chat collaboration tool, and Google continues to support conferencing via the new Hangouts Meet.N/A
    Pricing
    Amazon SNSCallFireGoogle Hangouts (Classic)
    Editions & Modules
    API Requests & Payload Data
    $0.01
    per 1 million
    API Requests
    $0.50
    per 1 million requests
    Notification Deliveries
    $0.50
    per million notifications
    Lite
    $99.00
    per month
    Startup
    $199.00
    per month
    Grow
    $299.00
    per month
    Pro
    $599.00
    per month
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Amazon SNSCallFireGoogle Hangouts (Classic)
    Free Trial
    NoNoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details———
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Amazon SNSCallFireGoogle Hangouts (Classic)
    Considered Multiple Products
    Amazon AWS
    No answer on this topic
    CallFire
    No answer on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    20 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    83%
    Would buy again
    44 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    20 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    46 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    20 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    89%
    Happy with the feature set
    47 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    13 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    19 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    41 Answers
    Features
    Amazon SNSCallFireGoogle Hangouts (Classic)
    Cloud PBX
    Comparison of Cloud PBX features of Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) and CallFire and Google Hangouts (Classic)
    Feature
    Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
    -
    Ratings
    CallFire
    7.6
    11 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Google Hangouts (Classic)
    6.3
    57 Ratings
    23% below category average
    Hosted PBX00 Ratings6.02 Ratings6.915 Ratings
    Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)00 Ratings9.07 Ratings7.725 Ratings
    User templates00 Ratings7.04 Ratings5.022 Ratings
    Call reports00 Ratings7.210 Ratings9.034 Ratings
    Directory of employee names00 Ratings9.05 Ratings3.045 Ratings
    Call Management
    Comparison of Call Management features of Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) and CallFire and Google Hangouts (Classic)
    Feature
    Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
    -
    Ratings
    CallFire
    9.3
    10 Ratings
    12% above category average
    Google Hangouts (Classic)
    8.0
    66 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Answering rules00 Ratings8.07 Ratings8.033 Ratings
    Call recording00 Ratings10.010 Ratings7.937 Ratings
    Call park00 Ratings8.53 Ratings7.018 Ratings
    Call screening00 Ratings10.04 Ratings9.036 Ratings
    Message alerts00 Ratings10.05 Ratings8.058 Ratings
    VoIP system collaboration
    Comparison of VoIP system collaboration features of Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) and CallFire and Google Hangouts (Classic)
    Feature
    Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
    -
    Ratings
    CallFire
    10.0
    1 Ratings
    23% above category average
    Google Hangouts (Classic)
    8.6
    84 Ratings
    8% above category average
    Video conferencing00 Ratings10.01 Ratings9.079 Ratings
    Audio conferencing00 Ratings10.01 Ratings9.079 Ratings
    Video screen sharing00 Ratings00 Ratings7.148 Ratings
    Instant messaging00 Ratings00 Ratings9.052 Ratings
    Mobile apps
    Comparison of Mobile apps features of Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) and CallFire and Google Hangouts (Classic)
    Feature
    Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
    -
    Ratings
    CallFire
    8.3
    2 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Google Hangouts (Classic)
    8.0
    85 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Mobile app for iOS00 Ratings8.52 Ratings8.173 Ratings
    Mobile app for Android00 Ratings8.01 Ratings8.071 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Amazon SNSCallFireGoogle Hangouts (Classic)
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Aircall
    Score8 out of 10
    CallFire
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Confluent
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Fuze
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Fuze
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Google Cloud Pub/Sub
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
    Score8.3 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Amazon SNSCallFireGoogle Hangouts (Classic)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (25 ratings)
    9.4
    (15 ratings)
    8.0
    (91 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (7 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.4
    (14 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (36 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Amazon SNSCallFireGoogle Hangouts (Classic)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Amazon AWS
    The Amazon SNS service is well suited to support event notifications, monitoring applications, workflow systems, time-sensitive information updates, and mobile applications that generates or consumes notifications. It can be used to relay time-critical events to mobile applications and devices. It provides significant advantages to developers who build mobile applications that rely on real-time events. It is not well suited for hybrid cross platform mobile application frameworks at this juncture. An optimal version to meet the needs of a cross platform mobile developer is needed as generally the frameworks are not meant to manage real-time events. It is also not suited for cases where the queue management needs improvement or requires special workflows/tooling.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    CallFire
    If you need to find a test candidate for your client quickly, this is one of the best ways. Pull yourself a hot list of a couple hundred potential candidates and load them in to CallFire. Then get ready to hit about 50-60 calls per hour. You should have a great test candidate for your client in about 24 hours! It's amazing how quickly you can show your clients the true speed of your company.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Had I completed this review a couple years ago, I would have given a rating of 9 or 10 as Hangouts (Classic) is an excellent product. However, now that Google Chat has succeeded Hangouts, I would not recommend that any new users begin using it where other more modern options are available. Android users who want an internet based instant messaging that also supports calling and video calling could benefit from using Hangouts (Classic) as Google Chat requires the user to also have Google Meet installed to make video calls and there is no voice only calling option.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Amazon AWS
    • Built in for quicker setup within AWS ecosystem.
    • Trusted as you control the users and configuration via IAM and easy access controls.
    • Can be sent to S3 simple storage or for long term storage if required.
    • Can be used in many regions, same configs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    CallFire
    • CallFire provides detailed analytics that show what/when callers select within the phone system
    • The text message broadcast feature is a game changer. This allows a company to dispatch text campaigns with specific calls-to-action, with tracking analytics.
    • The voice broadcast feature allows a mass automated message to be sent to client phones. This saves a lot of time when the same notification needs to go out to multiple clients.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Google Hangouts (Classic) is embedded within Gmail's scheduler, so setting up the link is as quick as a click of the button. It's a one-step process.
    • Google Hangouts (Classic) is user-friendly and [has] features to share screens easily.
    • Google Hangouts (Classic) is much easier to use than its competitors.
    • Google Hangouts (Classic) have [a] good connection time and there are few glitches.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Amazon AWS
    • At times you receive access denied errors which are annoying.
    • Rarely do you receive internal failure errors where you can't access the information. It is rare but it does happen.
    • You are required to add an MWS Authentication Token every so often. I wish it would pull that information automatically for you so you don't have to go searching for it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    CallFire
    • The services are easy to use and robust, but there is room for improvement. Unfortunately, not much has changed over the last 2 years of use. There haven't been any new features or innovations in that time.
    • API integration and automation is not easy for most folks to jump into and there is very little technical support or documentation to take advantage of such features.
    • The standard reports are generally sufficient, but there isn't any customization or intelligence available.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • I would like to see improved video support, so that saved videos can be sent back and forth via Hangouts more easily, without having to start a separate meet chat
    • More pronounced notifications of messages would be helpful; pop up notifications are good, but once there is one, additional messages do not pop up
    • Custom muting times would be great, so that if I am in a 90 minute Zoom meeting, I can set it for that time; right now, it is 1 hour or 2 hours. Easy to forget.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    CallFire
    There is no reason not to, it has proven effective in the usage
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Amazon AWS
    It is useful for applications developed using event driven architecture. It helps in tracking and logging the events in a very timely and efficient manner. The dashboards are a little difficult to implement. But overall it is very easy to integrate with other AWS services like Lambda, API GW, S3 and DynamoDB. The permissions to access should be resolved before using it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    CallFire
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    The tool is almost self-implemented. It is likely to be available in every pc or mobile device a user or potential user might have, and all you need to do is adding the company's account and you are done. Once you are setted up, you have almost all actual communication methods available in one tool
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Amazon AWS
    Amazon Simple Notification Sevices (SNS) support depends on your usage pattern and definitely on your support plan as an enterprise with AWS. Before reaching out to support you should read their documentation, as they have mentioned almost all the common issues and their solutions there. However, for specific issues, they generally respond in 1-2 business days.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    CallFire
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    Google Hangouts works great and does not require a lot of work to troubleshoot. Everything is simple and easy to use. Google provides all of the tools that one requires to utilize Google Hangouts and any information can be found in the built-in help tools. There is also a forum for users to report issues and typically, Google responds well and will try to work out any issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Amazon AWS
    Amazon’s SNS is incredibly easy to set up compared to the
    more powerful, but complex, Kafka flavours.

    SNS’s core advantages are –

    · no setup/no maintenance

    · either a queue (SQS) or a topic (SNS)

    · various limitations (on size, how long a message lives, etc)

    · limited throughput: you can do batch and concurrent requests, but still
    achieving high throughputs would be expensive

    · SNS has notifications for email, SMS, SQS, HTTP built-in.

    · no "message stream" concept Overall, it would be the best choice to get into the concepts of Pub/Sub concepts as although it has limitations it can provide significant capabilities and solutions
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    CallFire
    CallFire has a pricing structure that is attractive to us as a small business. The "pay as you use" options helps us keep our overhead low, especially with so many softwares already in our tech stack. It's a tremendous value for the cost!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Google is the white cotton socks of the conferencing world. It’s a great ad-hoc tool, but not too much more. If you are not looking to spend money or operate completely on WiFi (without data charges), it’s a great free option as well. The benefit of being free and open is also the liability. It doesn’t have a great integration story with other corporate tools, but [it doesn’t have to] if you aren’t looking for that. All in all, it’s as helpful and ubiquitous as a public payphone…without the pay…and with a video capability.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Amazon AWS
    • Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) saved us a lot of extra coding time by providing straightforward functionality we needed in our ad campaign automation tool.
    • Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) allows us to maintain a consistent, serverless model within our applications.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    CallFire
    • I sent out a broadcast message pretty deep in our data base, well three years out. I had one customer come in and buy thanking me for contacting her.
    • Our holiday season was up 35% over last year, this year we used CallFire more than we did in the past.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • I believe it was part of the google suite that was purchased. It was worth the cost as it was cheaper. I believe it is now free, but also becoming deprecated. It is much better to use Teams, Discord, Telegram, etc. Google does not provide enough support or features to make using hangouts worth it these days.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots