Respond.io is a business messaging platform from the Hong Kong based company of the same name, that connects customers from any channel to every team. As consumers grow to demand personal communication on a wide variety of channels, businesses are looking to their software vendors and partners to innovate and deliver these customer experiences. Respond.io is designed to meet this challenge, simply.
$99
per month
Twilio
Score 7.8 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
Respond.io
Twilio
Editions & Modules
Team
$99
per month
Business
$299
per month
Enterprise
Custom
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
Respond.io
Twilio
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
—
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.
If you're looking to implement the WhatsApp business api for your official number in your product Respond.io is the solution to go because the truth is that there is no easy way and most of the providers will assume that you have developers in order to create your own implementation and many of the other solutions our there are not even close to Respond.io and they are usually expensive. Also, most of the Customer Service software out there will offer you the typical channel but will skip Whatsapp while Respond.io does the opposite (check it out for the free tier if you're not convinced).
Twilio is well suited to sending SMS reminders to prospects on the lead-up to sales appointments. This has helped us improve attendance rates for these meetings. We also use Twilio to communicate with these prospects post-meeting to make offers on products and services and for feedback on their meeting.
You have to be patient with Respond.io since many features are still in development I wish they can make features faster
In order to use WhatsApp business api you need a number that is provided by Twilio they also have implemented other number providers but it will be nice that they add more WhatsApp business number providers (since we have a US number instead of a Mexican number)
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.
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.
The problem tends to be us, the user, rather than Twilio. We don't reach out to support fast enough (spend time struggling), but when we have, they've solved our issue immediately. We are rural, so there are signal issues to accommodate, however, we find that a few staff on a few cellular networks can triangulate where we all have signal to put up a sign.
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.
When we were implementing WhatsApp business api number in Bussi. We had 2 options the first Zendesk smooch.io and the second one a Twilio WhatsApp number. In the beginning, it seemed that Zendesk smooch.io was the option to go but the conversation was quite slow also the integration was easy but you needed to manage this conversation from zendesk which we were not completely sure about since it's more like a ticketing platform. Fortunately, we were looking and testing solutions until we found Respond.io, and even if they didn't have at the time the broadcast feature they let us know that feature was already in development so we felt that they were building a solution we were looking for so we decided to give them a few months and in those few months they built this feature and is a more dynamic way to answer customers than tickets so we decided to go with them.
Twilio was referred to me by a business colleague, and I can't be more thankful! Twilio has helped my Facebook page by leaps and bounds, and I haven't even considered trying another chat option for my page. It is easy to set up, and customer service is quick to answer any and all questions you may have. I highly recommend it!
Most options we saw before Respond.io needed a minimum number of messages, contracts, or costly integrations from the side of the vendor while Respond.io is actually helping you to integrate the product with no extra cost.
Our users choose the communication channel they want so before we were losing leads and money because we were not able to attend this channel.
It requires a $0 investment to implement or maintain from the side of the developer area so we use our technical resources to develop our main core product not a WhatsApp chat integration feature.
