CloudTalk vs. Grasshopper vs. Twilio

Cloudtalk is by far the best value-for-price software out there for call center solutions. Packed with features, very accessible, kind and accessible customer support, and cheap, especially when compared with their competitors for the same range of features. Easy entry-level software, especially if you're a startup that doesn't want to make big initial commitments but needs a solution that scales with the business.

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

I found Twilio to be excellent and very easy to use for a programmer in all aspects related to voice, SMS, and other features utilizing their API. I found the node client to be excellent and helpful. We previously used the Apex client for Salesforce before it was discontinued. Although we try not to use Twilio from Apex anymore, using that client was easier than implementing our own.

Incentivized

• It's extremely simple to install and integrate
• Their smart dialer option reduces time spent typing in number and helps make more calls
• It makes life super easy to keep track of calls being made and how long calls are but also to listen back on calls made

Incentivized

• 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

• 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

• A lot of features are still missing, some of which are pretty basic like being able to select multiple filters instead of one.
• Desktop app has had some instability issue.
• IVR needs to be self-recorded which can lead to a lower quality.

Incentivized

• 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

• Segment’s email identifier is case-sensitive, which is ridiculous because emails themselves are not case-sensitive. This means that if I send a capitalized email address in an identify call, it will create a duplicate user rather than matching it with the lowercase email. I think this is a technical oversight that should be corrected.
• I’d like to see more information about the eventual transition of existing Frontline customers to Twilio Flex
• I’d like to see some integrations between Twilio Studio and OpenAI or another open source LLM to provide automated responses, if this hasn’t been done already
• I would like to be able to drag and move the actual lines connecting the steps in Twilio Studio, sometimes mine can get pretty messy
• I think a Bug Report form would be beneficial for developers

Incentivized

It is working and affordable

Incentivized

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

CloudTalk is super easy to use and has a great quality. It helps to communicate with the clients easily and we can feel that the sound quality is high, while speaking to the client and while listening to the recordings. This is for our department essential in our day to day work.

The admin functions are kind of confusing in the old interface which was my most recent experience on the admin side.

Incentivized

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

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

They are skilled, experienced, and anytime I need something and contact the support time, I get the right person who understands my needs and reacts to them accordingly. So far I was only pleasantly surprised by the level of support these guys provide and coming from a customer service oriented background myself, I can only say keep it up guys, you are doing a fantastic job!

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

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

The developer APIs and SDKs are super easy to follow.

Incentivized

It was a gamble if I'm being honest, plus this is a very nuanced and intricate topic. We didn't necessarily substitute one for the other, it was a much needed state of affairs where we needed the call monitoring and agent tracking pros of CloudTalk more so than ever before.

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

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

Being in South Africa, direct local currency support would be nice

Incentivized

• For a similar price it is not necessary to manage so many cell phone accounts
• Unlike basic telephony. It is possible to have more control of the interactions with our clients.
• For administrators it allows better control of commercial actions or the corresponding area for communication issues

• 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

• It helps drive the adoption of multi-factor authentication by making second-factor authentication quick and easy.
• Decreases the number of times a user spends migrating to a new device from an old one.
• Enables easy access to second-factors of authentication by offering multi-device support, making multi-factor authentication painless.

Incentivized