Exotel is an advanced customer engagement platform that combines CPaaS, omnichannel contact centers, and Conversational AI. The platform is designed to foster richer, AI-powered, and contextual interactions, offering businesses unparalleled speed and scale in their communications.
$200
5 months Validity
Twilio
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Twilio 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
Exotel
Twilio
Editions & Modules
Dabbler
$200
5 months Validity
Believer
$500
11 months Validity
Influencer
$1000
11 months Validity
Custom
Get in touch
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
Exotel
Twilio
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
Optional
Additional Details
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1. Pay-as-you-go pricing: Simple usage-based pricing means you don’t get locked into big contracts.
2. Volume discounts: Discounts trigger as your usage grows, so you always get a fair price.
3. Start building today with free trial credit and full API access.
Exotel is well suited for: - Small and mid-sized Internet based businesses where it is necessary for them to have a very strong customer support team working round the clock and in different shifts. - Company making large number of calls and sending mass SMS's. They can do that on a single cloud based platform. Exotel might not be a good fit if: -it is not a call intensive business that you want to cater to. Though the setup cost is very low but it follows economies of scale i.e. more the number of calls, less will be per call cost.
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.
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
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.
For cold calling and outbound callings, to a certain extend Exotel serves the purpose as mutliple DID numbers are available at our fingertips. For company which use outcalling as a form of passing information to users can benefit from the flexibility it provides. They have a recharge and use model which doesnt have certain expiry. Basic API documentation available and lesser support from their support team on this matter makes it difficult to check if the API thows any error
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.
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.
Initially they had chat support which was available faster. But now the chat support gets routed to a virtual agent and unable to get in touch with an actual agent. They also have no support with respect to the API's and other integrations.
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.
Exotel was selected by us because of the following reasons: -Low set-up and maintenance cost as compared to its peers. -Prompt customer service: You want to upgrade your plan or facing any issues around the platform, Exotel team is just a call away. -Call recording Quality was also better than the peers.
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.
