OneSignal’s omnichannel customer engagement platform offers push notifications, email, in-app messages, and SMS. OneSignal’s automated customer Journeys and one-off campaigns allow users to create messaging strategies that convert, inform, and retain audiences, with little to no coding required for setup.
$9
per month
Twilio Zipwhip (discontinued)
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Zipwhip, a texting-for-businesses application for two-way text between a company and its customers, was acquired by Twilio, and discontinued.
I think One Signal is very well suited for mobile app owners who want to be in touch with their user base more easily by sending push notifications and in-app messages. I'm not sure how well that works for SMS messaging as I haven't yet tried it. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it if your in-apps are very rare.
Zipwhip is well suited for many scenarios. Not only do we save money and time with integrations with other programs we have, but we can follow up with a client regarding a trip, should we need further information. A client makes an online reservation and we receive a notification. While we have most of the trip details, the number portion for the drop-off location is missing, so we can reach out directly to the client via Zipwhip and request this information. All aspects of the booking can be done online and with texting and without emails or calls, which is often what many clients who book online prefer. Zipwhip has improved its images/ photos which is fantastic as we use this to send vehicle images to clients, which helps secure bookings. Our employees also use it to send us images of receipts, vehicle engine warning lights that may come on, and other issues (such as a client who may have left a mess in a vehicle). We're also able to send clients documents too, which is great. Obviously, if we have a client with an issue or who is upset, texting is not the best platform on which to address their issues, but it helps us to assess the situation/ issue and gather information before we call the client in person.
Is still in development: we know OneSignal is still in development and sometimes it takes longer to create or fulfill certain features.
Payment: payment menu is not at the glance, [and] is just difficult sometimes to find -it is a minor issue.
Send to certain custom segments through specific OneSignal IDs; you can do it though API doing a GET call with tools like Postman. If this can be done from OneSignal it would be great.
I give an 8 in this question mainly for 2 reasons: the products even if they look like complete and are highly customizable and usable, they are still missing some logical features. For example, send messages to a list of users - now days you can do it with postman and get calls. A second example is App messaging that is still in development and has many opportunities.
It was very easy for users to use, straight forward, and user friendly. The desktop app is very basic but easy to reply to an incoming text, but the user had to know to allow Chrome notifications to see new incoming text via the web browser, which is how they mainly used it.
Their customer support has been top-notch. They are able to assist you in getting through any problems that you may have and respond in a very timely manner. I've dealt with them on 4-5 instances over the years and my issues were always resolved within a matter of a few business days.
Swift response time, multiple people have been willing to help with any issue, really anything you could be looking for from a service standpoint, they offer.
In my opinion, OneSignal documentation / API is more friendly [than] Firebase. Maybe because Firebase is already "too big," but OneSignal is focused on one solution that giving our notification through to our customer. In that case, OneSignal is chosen by our company. Several years after that, Firebase announced it supported [the] iOs platform too but our company already using OneSignal to our notification provider.
Zipwhip is just a little bit more user-friendly than AliveChat because it allows you to text people on more scale. AliveChat has a great website chat function, but its texting platform is a little more clunky than Zipwhip. Zipwhip is a little more expensive but definitely the better product.
