Kumulos vs. Twilio Segment

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

Best suited: - Merging emails coming from: Facebook leads forms, Unbounce or landing pages forms, Google forms, any other kind of lead generation tool and bundling all that information together for a single user "profile". - Passing events generated in multiple applications by the same user (product selected in web, product discarded in cart, etc) and delivering those events into other applications (like a CRM) Less appropriate: - Reading/updating data directly from segment from a frontend application

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

• Multi-platform. Segment has easy integrations in many different web, backend, and app platforms/frameworks. We use the Segment SDK in Android and iOS as well as our node.js backend.
• Segment is fairly affordable for early-stage companies that are trying out different analytics software. The "developer" plan is free and is suitable for most companies with products that have a small user base.
• The UI is great! It is extremely intuitive and easy-to-learn, and this made it take very little time to integrate this software into our analytics and marketing workflows.

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

• More and richer sources. For example, MailChimp is a source but the data you get from MailChimp is quite limited. I ended up writing my own scripts to take better advantage of MailChimp's API because Segment's integration was lacking.
• Better examples on how to set up event tracking. Pageview tracking is easy enough, but it would be nice if they had a sample app and corresponding code for it and showed you, via Git commits, how to add various kinds of events.

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

Over the period it took us to set up, we kept going back to their enablement team to help us with the setup, and they were always ready and were very helpful in the entire process. Even with their documentation, they took the time out to help us work through the process. We've never had a message/email unanswered for more than an hour on working days.

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 chose Twilio Segment for the good API integration and node resources, I would use Ontraport again, particularly if I didn't have the requirements for API and development/platform integration. Certainly the set up and management is easy and seamless with both the API and the user interface to use depending on circumstances and requirements.

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

• Segment has enabled us to get a full view of our front end activity, join it to our back-end activity, and get full visibility into our funnels and user activity.
• Segment lets us send events to ad tools with a full audit trail so all the numbers line up.
• Segment also brings data from other sources into our data warehouse, saving our data engineering time from building commodity connectors.