Twilio vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Twilio
Score 7.9 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
Zendesk Suite
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk is a customer support solution with built-in ticketing, conversational messaging, and live chat, designed to help businesses of all sizes and industries deliver personalized service at scale. Zendesk's AI agents are trained in CX to help Service teams resolve customer issues faster and more accurately while still providing a human-centered experience. Zendesk ultimately aims to help businesses improve time to value, reduce effort per ticket, and keep costs low.
$69
per month per agent
Pricing
TwilioZendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
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)
Suite Team
$69
per month per agent
Suite Growth
$115
per month per agent
Suite Professional
$149
per month per agent
Suite Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
TwilioZendesk Suite
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional Details1. Pay-as-you-go pricing: Simple usage-based pricing without contracts. 2. Volume discounts: Discounts trigger as usage grows. 3. Free trial credit that includes full API access.20% discount available with annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
TwilioZendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
Twilio
Chose Twilio
Out of all these other platforms I tried, I used ClickSend the longest before switching back to Twilio. I always kept going back to Twilio because it outperformed and and the savings were always bigger with Twilio.
Chose Twilio
Before Twilio, we used Take Blip for WhatsApp (chat) support and LogMeIn for call support.

Antes da Twilio, usávamos o Take Blip para os atendimentos de Whatsapp (chat) e o LogMeIn para os atendimentos de ligações (call).
Chose Twilio
I'll be honest it wasn't my decision to go with Twilio and I wasn't part of the buying committee. We chose to go with them since a different department of ours used their services previously and recommended and led the process with them when our issues were brought up to them.
Chose Twilio
It's more customizable and scalable. It's more of an enterprise solution with a complete platform that provides good SLAs compared to other vendors, which often will need to be supplemented to meet the full product suite
Chose Twilio
This is really geography-dependent. Bandwidth is good in the US, but they had a reliability issue a few years ago. They have similar pricing and are more open to partnering. Sinch is more telco-focused and has great reliability, not big in the US market. Infobip is EU based and …
Chose Twilio
Twilio was already there when I started.
Chose Twilio
We have looked at some of Twilio competitors, like Infobip, Sich and Bandwith. Prices on all of them for voice minutes and SMS are way cheaper than Twilio. But none of them seem to offer as many features and ease of use as Twilio. Specially from an API point of view
Chose Twilio
I haven't looked at other solutions
Chose Twilio
Some of the products we used were MSG91 and SMSala but the issue with them we got to know after the integrations that at some part of the world these integrations are not able to deliver important OTP sms and also it was hard to find solutions in their site. Then we switched to …
Chose Twilio
I think Twilio is as stable as Avaya in the sense that it comunicates well, but the market is really more into Avaya, so we had to go into a lot of effort to convince everyone in the company that Twilio was good and would work. I think it doesn't hold up againt Watson, because …
Chose Twilio
I've also worked with ChatApp which is another communications integration platform for multiple channels such as WhatsApp and Telegram. I did find their integration setup process a bit more streamlined plus they don't have a WhatsApp template approval process. This then begs …
Chose Twilio
Twilio is the idea solution for our needs, which involves sending targeted SMS messages to prospects who have opted into our ads. We do this to communicate offers/services and also to remind prospects in the lead-up to sales appointments (plus post-meeting communications). We …
Chose Twilio
Twilio stacks up against competitors with its knowledge and experience in the messaging industry. Others lack the ability and know how, to compete effectively. Twilio knows how to do business in complex regions worldwide, and we are so happy to have Twilio as our partner to …
Chose Twilio
Twilio has given us more competitive rates than the other providers.
Chose Twilio
Twilio is most easy to implement and operate comparing with other solutions in the wide-industry. Easy to use, quickly integration, and excellent API documentation was helpful to developers for integrate Twilio solutions in our applications.
Chose Twilio
I’m using or have used these services. I like to try multiple applications. I’ve selected Twilio because the documentation in C# is amazing.
Chose Twilio
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 …
Chose Twilio
We needed a tool that could be implemented into our software. Since Twilio offers libraries that can be programmed into any software, we decided to use Twilio. Also, the documentation and prices were better.
Chose Twilio
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 …
Chose Twilio
This software is so complex we can say that Twilio works so much better in the interface, also the features provided by Twilio are far better than this software it also includes SMS, MMS, and so many other functionalities which helps a developer to communicate with the help of …
Zendesk Suite
Chose Zendesk Suite
it was much more user friendly and to the end users doesn't feel like they are submitting a ticket. it is much more conversational.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite is far simpler to set up from an admin perspective, and the pricing was much better for our needs as well
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite is a better product all round for customer support - it is designed specifically as a level 1 helpdesk platform and compares favourably to JIRA. While JIRA has some extra features and can do things like change management and service management it does not do them …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite blows what I have used before out the water. The base features alone are a level of advancement far above my previously used systems. Also, the ingenuity of the software to mold to my needs is priceless.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite has been a much better fit for us than Salesforce Experience Cloud and Salesforce Knowledge. With Salesforce, many basic knowledge base needs require custom development or AppExchange add-ons, from UI tweaks to more advanced analytics. Authoring and formatting …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Much easier to use, better organized, and aligns with business needs much better, so that it's more of a useful tool than a bottleneck.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Even these two have a ticketing system but that I also used previously but Zendesk Suite has a very clear ticketing system - it does not take much time to understand and use it, the interface is easy and the automation system also works up to the expectation, it is not just …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Here are the explanations for my preference of analysis Zendesk Suite to this end:

Power + Usability: Zendesk Suite has abundant omnichannel coverage, acceptable automation, and decent reporting but does not go all in to full-custom dev mode, so hangs nicely in the space of …
Chose Zendesk Suite
We use JIRA for some IT Tickets but we ended up using JIRA as our second line of defense. If support couldn't resolve a Zendesk ticket, they create a JIRA ticket and someone else is pulled in to help troubleshoot something more complex. We haven't really had an issue having to …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Salesforce and servicenow are not user friendly, no room for much customization, and comparatively slow as well
Chose Zendesk Suite
We Initially started working the Zendesk Suite and it is more easier to understand all the functionalities and workflows. It is more secured and well managed platform
Chose Zendesk Suite
I haven't really used other services of this kind for some time now, but that is simply because Zendesk Suite has provided us with everything that we have needed, and have also continue improving a developing new features through time.
Chose Zendesk Suite
I like the Zendesk Suite because it can run on any of most browser that is compatible. The navigational experience is better than most CRM tools I have encountered with and far more advance with the embedded UI and plugins. Back then, the dialer for calls we has to use a …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Hands down winner. Not even a competition.
Chose Zendesk Suite
I used Remedi, but I didn't like it. I used Remedi, but I didn't like it.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite seemed to have a lot more customization and flexibility. We have multiple "brands" that need to follow different flows and have different needs and Zendesk Suite allowed us to easily do that. We also had strong needs for a help center and liked how their worked …
Chose Zendesk Suite
We appreciated the app features and the overall features so we decided to stay with Zendesk Suite for our business needs
Chose Zendesk Suite
Although Zendesk Suites has a higher value when it comes to it's pricing, Zendesk offers more features and functionality also Zendesk Suites has already established it's name and is trusted by many businesses and organizations. Other similar products maybe cheaper and simple …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Just a simpler experience that doesn't need all the bells and whistles of a fully ITIL based platform.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite is very similar to the companies we listed, but, in my opinion, there are a lot of things that these companies do right that Zendesk Suite fails at. Particularly reporting and phone systems. We have looked into Five9 in great detail to replace our current phone …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite comes with a complete package. Right from receiving customer calls to responding emails. Managing tickets and following up with customers for required information. This tool feels like the place where you can Manage more of the things
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite ultimately is very capable and highly configurable. When you really get to know what options exist, there are a lot of workflows you can build for your support operation that can improve agent efficiency, and lead to higher CSAT.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Create mobile-friendly, personalized support request forms with Formstack’s easy-to-use builder ,Auto-add new support tickets to Zendesk CRM and alert your first available team member Build better customer relationships by storing everything in one, secure place and improving …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite is way less complicated than Salesforce. The response from the team is prompt if the company is in need. It's all in one place. Commercial friendly as well. Cost effective to what we pay. Used by MNC's hence better clarity of the suite even brand wise. Zendesk …
Features
TwilioZendesk Suite
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Twilio
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.8
Ratings
7% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Twilio
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.2
Ratings
2% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Twilio
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.8
Ratings
10% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
TwilioZendesk Suite
Small Businesses
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Dialpad Support
Dialpad Support
Score 9.1 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Verint Community
Verint Community
Score 10.0 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
TwilioZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.5
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.5
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.8
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.7
(0 ratings)
5.5
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.5
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
TwilioZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
I have tried other competitors. But I always end up going back to Twilio because I feel like it is dependable, easy to use, and, has competitive pricing. The only time I wouldn't recommend Twilio to someone as if they are completely inexperienced about using webhooks or APIs. Because you can't really just sign up and start using Twilio without connecting it to another platform first.
Read full review
Benefits of Zendesk Suite:
Support across channels In the case of a retail company with chat, email, WhatsApp and social DMs all piling up together, agents do not have to change tabs - everything comes into one screen in the Suite.
An example could be a representative for this e-commerce company on a sale weekend when they have live chat up, and also must deal with emails and complaints on social. Zendesk Suite handled all of this interaction seamlessly.
Knowledge base + self service: A SaaS platform receiving constant flow of "how do I reset my password" questions. You set up a help centre once, and are able to deflect hundreds of tickets for months and years.
Even better when combining with Answer Bot, where the bot begins suggesting articles without even a human interacting with the tickets.
Scaling customer service teams: A startup that has just expanded from 5 customer service representatives to 50 customer service representatives. Zendesk Suite automates routing, SLAs, macros, and analytics, when it could never work with Google Workspace + sticky notes.
This is especially helpful when managers want to be able to report or analyze ticketing conversations to see trends in perhaps their backlog, or a customer service representative is running into consistent workflows.
Globalization: A company with support teams that are spread across time zones and languages. Zendesk Suite enables for business hours, language packs, and localized help centers. It even comes with routing either by skill or region
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Pros
  • 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.
Read full review
  • UI/UX; mature macros and automations, slick and well thought out UI.
  • Reporting, reporting, reporting. With user, org, and ticket level tags, we can track every aspect of our ticket flow.
  • Extensibility; the app marketplace is a great resource for expanding functionality from the baseline offering.
Read full review
Cons
  • Authy does not support the "push button" multi-factor authentication from your application's native apps. This means if you want to use Authy, you still need to use TOTP based codes.
  • Not really a shortcoming of Authy, but it does nothing to help with multi-factor authentication using text messages - those are still sent to your platform's messaging app.
  • Authy doesn't always display how much time is left before your current token expires, making it difficult to know how much time you have left to enter the current code.
Read full review
  • The development of messaging out of the earlier Chat module is clunky and still has limitations for multi language flows.
  • When creating queries in Explore, you can't search for 'or' conditions, only 'And', meaning you have to build multiple queries and manually add them.
  • You can't download the charts in the reports, they come down as tables and then you have to make your own charts.
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Likelihood to Renew
We are happy with Twilio because the price per message is low. The API is not difficult to implement and the documentation is very complete. Twilio as a company keeps you well informed of issues that happen. They also offer free online workshops or conferences to make notices of new laws, etc.
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Zendesk is super easy to use and navigate. I really enjoy the sleek layout, the ability to tailor tickets, the macro option, and the quick key guide they have to make your use of time even more effective. My whole team loves working with Zendesk and rarely ever has problems.
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Usability
Overall the product API is extremely well documented so it is very easy to build a product with their technology. The website is a little bit cumbersome to use as they have greatly expanded the number of products that they have over the years, but the dashboard UI has not been improved much since.
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I used to work without a ticketing service, and everything was handled on an email provider, this made it very difficult to track, no integrations to the software complicating the use of internal tools or other software like Guru, Zendesk Suite wasn't hard to learn, in fact it was very easy, very straightforward, and I was an admin learning to use several tools at the same time.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
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Performance
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.
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There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
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Support Rating
Good interface to connect with different API systems for communication through different channel[s]. Twilio has good market coverage of the client across the globe for generating revenue through multi-channel approach. It works with [a] programmable feature that makes life easy for every user. Automated call is one of the advance[d] feature[s] of this tool.
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We rarely need to contact their support team, but when we do they are responsive. However there have been notable times when communication between myself and the support rep was challenging despite me providing clear explanation of the issue, screenshots, and a thorough explanation of the goal we hope to achieve. It took several back and forth attempt, on a few occasions, to get resolution on an otherwise simple request
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
Zendesk has tons of available material for training - videos, webinars, articles, etc. The only reason this is not a 10 is because it can be hard to figure out how to navigate to these things and find what you are looking for.
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Implementation Rating
The developer APIs and SDKs are super easy to follow.
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There is not a lot of implementation, it's all setup and you just start using it. We did do some email to ticket setup and that worked really well. The only thing that didn't work for us was the Salesforce integration, maybe your mileage will vary.
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Alternatives Considered
We have looked at some of Twilio competitors, like Infobip, Sich and Bandwith. Prices on all of them for voice minutes and SMS are way cheaper than Twilio. But none of them seem to offer as many features and ease of use as Twilio. Specially from an API point of view
Read full review
Even these two have a ticketing system but that I also used previously but Zendesk Suite has a very clear ticketing system - it does not take much time to understand and use it, the interface is easy and the automation system also works up to the expectation, it is not just easy for the users but for us from the backed support as well, it is so user-friendly.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
WHY we will use Zendesk in HR and PD internally
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Return on Investment
  • We found that associates who had the opportunity to respond to a survey about their assigned job were 37% more likely to return to a job site
  • We were able to reduce the number of resources required to manually respond to associates using Twilio Studio, so those resources could have more time to complete other tasks
  • We were able to scale the number of associates who received survey messages at least by a factor of 8 without increasing our resource demand
Read full review
  • Customer Success looks at ticket resolution surveys as part of their CSAT scores and either thanks their customer for a positive review or reaches out if it's a negative review.
  • Sales uses Zendesk to make sure their new prospects are getting POCs properly set up quickly and fix any issues while they do a trial of our tool.
  • Onboarding uses Zendesk to quickly make sure new customers implementations and user access are set up to help them start implementation faster.
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ScreenShots

Twilio Screenshots

Screenshot of the “Explore Products” section, which is where to build products.Screenshot of the optional drag-and-drop visual editor and code editor.Screenshot of Flex, which is a programmable Contact Center that puts you in control.

Zendesk Suite Screenshots

Screenshot of the Zendesk Agent WorkspaceScreenshot of Omnichannel MessagingScreenshot of Zendesk TicketingScreenshot of Bots powered by Zendesk AIScreenshot of Tone shift with Zendesk AIScreenshot of Zendesk ticketing side conversations