9 Best Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) Providers

As consumer reliance on mobile devices increases, enterprises are more aware of the importance of creating communications strategies and solutions that meet customers where they are. As a result, the communication platform as a service (CPaaS) market is on the rise.

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What is Communication Platform as a Service?

Communication platforms as a service provide highly customizable communications infrastructure and tools for development teams to build custom, front-facing applications for their customers as well as create new communication capabilities for existing applications.

CPaaS enables development teams to connect their applications to SMS, voice, and verification features through APIs (application programming interfaces). These communication capabilities include text notifications, voice connectivity, and user-to-user chatting.

However, CPaaS goes beyond basic communication functionality to provide features such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) via email and text.

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How to Choose a CPaaS Provider

To ensure you select the best CPaaS provider for your organization, there are a few considerations to make.

• Global Reach: The features offered by a provider may vary around the world. If your organization has to extend communications into foreign markets and satisfy customers on their preferred platforms, then you should prioritize vendors with highly reliable networks and global reach. 
• Enterprise-Grade Security: Providers in consideration should offer enterprise-grade security through encryption of information sent through their APIs. The provider must also ensure data at rest and in transit is secure through encryption and security measures.
• Compliance: An understanding of each provider’s offering helps to understand the sectors in which the provider is compliant. Your prospective provider should be aligned with your compliance requirements.
• Technical Support: Technical support is key to ensuring development teams are not hampered by technical challenges. You should consider providers with highly effective and available technical support teams.

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Best CPaaS Providers

• Twilio
• Bandwidth
• Plivo
• TextUs
• Vonage Communications
• Zipwhip
• thinQ
• Botmaker
• CPaaS Vendor Comparison Chart

Twilio

Twilio powers engaging interactions that enterprises create for their customers by providing simple tools offered as a globally available developer-first cloud platform. The provider enables the embedding of phones; VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol); and messaging into web, desktop, and mobile software to support the future of business communications.

Twilio’s cloud API is available globally to enable developers to create complex and intelligent communications systems.

Key Differentiators

• Intelligent Engagement: Twilio offers personalization at scale to enable enterprises to truly know their customers. Twilio Segment customer data platform (CDP) provides a complete picture of customers in addition to real-time first-party data that improves the understanding that enterprises have of their customers.
• Innovation Agility: The agility to innovate provided by Twilio helps enterprises satisfy their unique and desired use cases, as they have the freedom to build standout experiences for their customers through customizable apps.
• Built-In Trust: Twilio handles trust and compliance through built-in trust. This is handled by building data privacy, protection, and compliance into each layer of Twilio’s platform, thus showing care for customer data and preferences and securing their data across interactions and channels.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth delivers a suite of flexible and scalable APIs for messaging, voice, and 911 access across North America to meet the business needs of customers. The provider also stands as one of the few CPaaS providers that own a nationwide all-IP voice network.

Bandwidth provides its users with the ability to leverage Bandwidth’s APIs and network to meet their communication service goals.

Key Differentiators

• Voice: Bandwidth uses a Tier 1 nationwide all-IP voice network to offer its customers the reach, scalability, reliability, and quality they require, regardless of whether they are carriers seeking to widen their footprints, applications owners looking to add voice, or resellers aiming to widen their portfolios.
• Messaging API: The Bandwidth Messaging API enables Bandwidth customers to introduce the power of text messaging into their applications in a handful of minutes.
• Enterprise 911: Bandwidth’s Enterprise 911 allows Bandwidth customers to reliably, quickly, and accurately connect their users to emergency services.

Plivo

Plivo helps enterprises modernize their business communications through a scalable, quick, and easy cloud communications platform. Through its API platform, Plivo enables businesses to rapidly integrate voice and text messaging capabilities into their applications. Plivo also delivers phone number rental services and SIP trunking.

The platform makes it possible for businesses to build and deploy text and voice solutions in a matter of hours through clear and brief developer documentation, client-side and server-side SDKs (software development kits), and prepackaged templates.

Key Differentiators

• SMS API Platform: Plivo provides an SMS API platform that provides businesses with global interaction with their customers, as they can programmatically send and receive text messages.
• MMS API Platform: The MMS API platform enables users to visually engage their customers across phone numbers in the U.S. and Canada.
• Voice API Platform: Plivo users can integrate voice calling within their applications to programmatically make, receive, and control calls globally.
• Zentrunk: Plivo’s cloud-based SIP trunking helps businesses connect their VoIP infrastructure in minutes. It offers global connectivity and unlimited concurrent calls with on-demand pricing.

TextUs

TextUs is a versatile communication and text marketing platform that takes advantage of the power of two-way text conversations.

TextUs provides text messaging services to businesses that seek real-time conversations with customers, staff, leads, and more. The provider powers these conversations at scale with greater response rates than voice and email.

Key Differentiators

• Campaigns Pro: Campaigns Pro provides users with complete transparency into their top-performing text messages to drive higher engagement, better response rates, and maximized conversion rates.
• Enterprise-Level Flexibility and Control Over Text Messaging: With TextUs, users enjoy enterprise-grade management, control, and insight over text messaging all through their organizations. These features include organization mapping, opt-out management, and analytics insight.
• Real-Time Conversations Inbox: Real-time communication directly contributes to increased conversation volumes. TextUs has a real-time conversations inbox that provides rich features, enabling users to maximize the impact of their text messaging. Conversation management, quick compose and quick contact add, text message dictation, and conversation funnel analytics are some of these features.

Vonage Communications 

Through programmable text, voice, video, and more, Vonage Communications APIs help businesses transform their customer experiences, as they equip agile enterprises and growing startups to build first-rate communications solutions at scale.

Vonage provides a global platform and an exhaustive suite of communications channels to ensure businesses provide their customers with the most helpful and intuitive experience possible.

Key Differentiators

• Voice API: The Vonage programmable Voice API allows users to personalize their WebRTC and PSTN calling experiences and innovate, scale, and streamline with flexible voice capabilities. The Voice API is billed on a per-second basis.
• Video API: The Video API boosts engagement through interactive live video calls, as the API simplifies building custom video experiences within mobile, web, and desktop applications.
• SMS: Vonage’s SMS API helps users create customer journeys through conversations. It supports secure text messaging through private SMS communication and ensures users send their customers the right message at the right time.
• Verify API: Vonage uses patented two-factor authentication technology to protect users against fraud, solidify trust, and better conversion. The Verify API helps users validate their customers globally at scale.

Zipwhip

Zipwhip provides a carrier-grade texting platform to assist mobile and landline operators to modernize their text messaging. The provider offers Texting for Business to enable organizations to enjoy faster and more effective engagement with their customers.

Zipwhip’s texting solution integrates with several top applications, making it easy to infuse texting into existing workflows.

Key Differentiators

• Subscriber List Building: Zipwhip uses manual imports and opt-in keywords as primary list builders. Users can import subscribers through CSV files as well as easily set up and edit opt-in keywords to build contact lists.
• Message Creation: Users can send MMS messages and templates as well as include custom fields. They can also schedule messages to be sent to customers at predetermined times. The message creation feature also gives an automated warning when users utilize an empty custom field to prevent the sending of incorrectly formatted messages.
• Campaign Building: Campaign building in Zipwhip allows users to create mass texting campaigns. Alongside its unlimited messaging, Zipwhip’s mass texting campaigns can be quite useful for marketers seeking non-personalized mass texting.

thinQ

thinQ by Commio enables users to quickly get up and running with their integrated thinQ.io portal as well as flexible APIs to ultimately power voice and text messaging in the cloud. thinQ simplifies the process of adding your own 40 high-quality carriers to Twilio, Plivo, Nexmo, SignalWire, or any SIP connection.

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Key Differentiators

• Intelligent Voice: The thinQ Voice API connects to existing CPaaS technology stacks such as Twilio to facilitate higher-quality international, domestic, and toll-free calling. Through intelligent routing and multi-carrier interconnections, thinQ scales to meet call requirements and guarantee maximum uptime.
• Easy Number Management: thinQ by Commio simplifies the process of buying or bringing your own phone numbers, so businesses can power their solutions without number management hassles.
• Smarter Toll-Free: thinQ uses toll-free intelligent routing technology to improve toll-free performance for its users at the best value. thinQ’s software keeps track of each call and maximizes carrier routing to consistently deliver high-quality calls.

Botmaker

Botmaker is an advanced conversational platform that enables its users to provide quick and intelligent answers to their customers across digital channels.

Users can create digital experiences involving both live agents and hybrid bots and grow their businesses through automated chat, customer service, help desk, and commerce solutions. Additionally, Botmaker’s platform utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to help users to anticipate and understand their customers’ needs.

Key Differentiators

• Chatbots Platform: With Botmaker, users can improve their conversational strategies through the use of bots with expertise in specific topics and flows. These bots can be used to streamline queries, automate sales processes, and track chats. They can also be managed from a central account.
• AI Engine: Botmaker uses a proprietary AI engine to interpret user intentions, expressed through natural language in the form of text or voice. The engine impresses in natural language processing, machine learning, and cognitive interpretation to ensure bots excel in customer use cases.
• Live Chat: Through a multi-agent live chat module, users can use Botmaker to provide customer service. The module can be integrated through APIs with other chat, social media, and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

CPaaS Vendor Comparison Chart