Kumulos vs. Twilio

We have promotions that we want to tell our members or a specific subset of them like they have a chance of winning a raffle. We use Kumulos to fire off the message and notification. Our members get it in their app and we can tell how many of them received it. We can also use the messages to direct them to specific web pages if we want to give them more information. We also use Kumulos to send announcements about things that are happening around the resort. Since we are located near the airport, when heads of state arrive, there are times that the roads are closed to allow them to pass. We use Kumulos to fire off notifications early enough that they know to avoid the area at a particular time. Where it doesn't do as well is when you need the notifications to be received immediately. Since the notifications pass through the Google/Apple network, it may take time to arrive. Sometimes you get it quick, sometimes you don't. So if timeliness is critical, it won't work as well. Also if you're sending to a lot of people, the rollout of the messages may take longer.

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

• Very, very easy to use - yet equally powerful
• Personalization of messages
• Data back feeds
• Running mobile and web campaigns in one place
• Awesome support

• 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

• The UI could use a lot of improvement. It's not very intuitive.
• Canceling of sent in-app messages can't be done through the dashboard. You have to contact support for them to do it.
• To send the same message again, you have to recreate the whole thing instead of just resending it.

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

Kumulos is doing everything we need and more. The cost is also very reasonable. It has cut down our need for SMS and has lowered our OPEX because of this. We also love the analytics that it provides and it gives us insight into the usage and engagement of our app.

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

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

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

Kumulos is just much easier to install, configure, and set up. Ongoing running costs are much much lower, especially because we don't need the constant support of a developer to complete day-to-day tasks. Other systems required a lot of technical support, not just in the setup but also in the ongoing operation.

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

• 81% increase in customer retention
• 27% increase in daily active users
• Cost of the system is very low compared to tangible financial benefits it as delivered

• 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