Customer.io vs. Twilio

This tool is well-suited for companies looking to run email marketing campaigns or send out newsletters regularly to their users/customers. The workflow setup is especially useful for companies who want to send specific emails based on user behavior - i.e. they've not logged in recently, have bought a specific product, haven't opened any emails, etc. This could also be useful for freelancers like me since you can create different workspaces within Customer.io. I have configured it this way to handle email marketing for a few of my clients, and the software keeps everything organized and separate. This might not be the best tool for small businesses, considering the price. It may be better to start out with a cheaper email marketing tool, and then if/when necessary, scale-up with a tool like Customer.io.

Twilio excels in customer service applications, enabling automated SMS updates or voice calls for order confirmations and support. It's ideal for implementing two-factor authentication, enhancing security for online services. However, it's less suitable for businesses needing in-depth, custom telephony infrastructure, as it primarily offers standard, API-driven solutions, or for regions with limited internet connectivity, where cloud-based services may be unreliable.

Incentivized

• Managing users, attributes and events. You are easily able to modify any user, based on their ID, and add or remove attributes, assign events to them. That makes it very easy to segment later and to assign them to several campaigns based on behavior. Just a warning: this integration isn't so easy (at least it wasn't for us).
• Creating workflows of campaigns is very easy. You can quickly create behavioral campaigns based on attributes, segments and add elements to the workflow. You can send an email, then wait, then send another, then exit the campaign if they converted, etc. The workflow is easy to configure and very powerful for automation.
• We don't use many email templates (we make them in MJML) but it's very easy to add senders, to change templates and in general to test designs.
• Deliverability works very well, at least for us. It sends emails pretty fast and without issues.
• Exporting is very quick and easy. Importing wasn't a feature until recently, but it works well too.
• Seeing activity it's also useful. In general, logs are awesome (be it of a customer, of activity on the site, email sends, etc.).
• We don't use environments, but it might be very useful for a bigger 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

• Push notifications are very rudimentary. Everything has to be done by hand unless you're sending an extremely simple message.
• A bit too email centric.
• Lacks an ability to schedule messages on a daily, weekly, etc. basis.

Incentivized

• In my opinion, online support is extremely subpar for clients.
• In my experience, no way to talk with anyone without a $1,500 investment monthly in their service.
• In my experience, be prepared to wait at least 2-4 days to receive even one response from their support.

Incentivized

We have standardized our processes surrounding Twilio. The entire process just works! There is no significant gap that we need to fill. Instead of thinking about Twilio's replacement, we'd rather focus on our customers with Twilio. It meets all our uses-cases currently. We haven't even explored the entire suite of applications to determine what other use cases we may potentially use.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I've never had to contact Authy's support. Of course, that's because Authy is so simple and easy to use that there hasn't been any need to. Authy correctly implements the time-based one-time password (TOTP) protocol, and becomes it conforms to the standard, it easily replaces Google Authenticator for your needs.

Incentivized

The developer APIs and SDKs are super easy to follow.

Incentivized

Customer.io was really the first pure, full-featured drip email program on the market and as far as I know, it's still the simplest and best overall for that specific function. SendGrid has also added drip campaign features, but I would seriously evaluate Customer.io against any other drip email provider because they really have all the key elements you need to make it work.

Incentivized

Twilio was referred to me by a business colleague, and I can't be more thankful! Twilio has helped my Facebook page by leaps and bounds, and I haven't even considered trying another chat option for my page. It is easy to set up, and customer service is quick to answer any and all questions you may have. I highly recommend it!

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Fast testing for new products to specific groups. It saves a lot of time and money.
• Removed workload from marketing = more time to make it better.
• Better contact with specific groups, seeing a increase in sales because of this.

Incentivized

• Adding in phone numbers onto our onboarding sequence has increased our user activity by about 30%. We believe due to the users being more invested in the application now.
• On top of that, our first SMS has increased our week 1 retention by about 15%. Pushing users to go on the app more than 2-3 times has been a struggle and SMS seems to be a solid driver in retention.

Incentivized