SMS.to is ideal when you have a large number of users and you need to be charged by SMS delivered not by number of users. Let's put an example other solutions out there wanted us to pay user or contact which is illogican for a product that has more than 100K users because it doesn't matter if you send no message or you send 10 messages they will charge you per contact in the other hand solutions as SMS.to they will charge per SMS delivered which makes really economic the scenario specially if you only send to specific segments of contacts by making use of contact lists. A least appropiate scenario is when you need to send emergency/urgent SMS because for some resaon the SMS in this platform will be sent after 20-30 minutes even an hour I ignore why it happens but that's why we always try to schedule our campaigns and be sure they are generic marketing messages. For emergency/urgent SMS is recommended to use another platform.
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.
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.
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.
I already pointed out this but basically we decided to go with SMS.to because 2 reasons:
1. It can be paid with paypal (first reason) we have some bad experience with other products because payment gateways may suddenly block your cards and you're unable to pay even if you want to use the service so when we saw that SMS.to has Paypal payment we just decided to go for this option.
2. You pay per message and not per contact this is ideal other platforms will ask you a monthly fee for marketing features that you're not looking plus paying per SMS or per contact we were just looking a straight forward software in order to send SMS campaigns.
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.
