Relay Network vs. SimpleTexting vs. Twilio

SimpleTexting has been wonderful for the purposes for which we signed up. We wanted an easy-to-use platform that allowed 2-way texting, assigned a phone number, had the ability to collect phone numbers/contact easily (whether through an import or a user sign-up, spoiler SimpleTexting has both), etc. It has provided all of that and more easily, without a contract. And the platform is so easy to use for our team. One of the only issues we're having is wanting to expand our use of SimpleTexting, and using multiple options for texting (i.e., shortcode, toll-free, landline/business enabling) has been difficult on one account.

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

• SimpleTexting provides excellent value based on their messaging packages but also by allowing its customers to utilize multiple keywords. This is helpful for our organization because we utilize this software across many different departments.
• SimpleTexting analytics and reporting is a key strength of the software. The numbers they report weigh heavily on what we determine as a success of un-successful communication campaign.
• SImpleTexting has excellent customer service available at the click of a button. Their team has always been available and offered solutions when we have had questions or run into a problem.

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

• A lot of glitches and bugs, with promised fixes that keep dragging on for some time.
• Mobile notifications are very buggy. You have to keep force-closing the app and re-opening it multiple times to get the notifications to refresh.
• Constant toggling of 'Unread' and 'All' on mobile or desktop to get the notifications to clear and show up as opened, otherwise it will imply it's not read.
• Also, sometimes new notifications don't show up.

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

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

With SimpleTexting updating little things here and there almost daily. We reach out to their support team constantly. They have one of the best response rates I have ever experienced! Normally it takes less than a minute to speak to a real person, but even if they are busy they have an answer bot send you articles to see if you can solve the issue yourself first! One of the best support teams ever

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

SimpleTexting is just simple. From the pricing to the interface, it stacks up against the competition by just being as powerful and simple as possible. No extra distractions or confusion. For our company, we wanted texting software that we could easily upsell and integrate into our overall marketing campaigns and SimpleTexting did just that.

Incentivized

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

• Because we are able to reach more people through subscribing, our number of donations has increased and the number of volunteers has increased. We have gone from an average of 5 volunteers an even to 25-30. Our donations increased by 25%.

Incentivized

• 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