18 Twilio Alternatives and Competitors: WhatsApp for Business
You’d have most definitely come across Twilio in your search for a WhatsApp Business solution provider. But is that the best solution for you? Read on to find out!
Chee Yong Qing
Content Marketer
Reading time: 10minutes
As one of the most popular cloud communications platform as a service (CPaaS) solutions out there, Twilio enables business communications through the use of API.
Application Programming Interface (API) is used to describe a software intermediary that allows two applications to interact with one another. In other words, Twilio enables businesses to make WhatsApp conversations while using their existing business software.
However, as we always say, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Twilio might be suitable for some businesses, but might not be suitable for yours.
That said, what are some other WhatsApp Business providers out there?
Let’s take a look at the alternative business solution providers that offer business messaging solutions through the use of WhatsApp API.
Contents
What makes Twilio great
Flexible solutions through API
Twilio’s API supports a wide variety of programming languages. Businesses’ in-house developers will very likely find themselves easily integrating Twilio with the existing business software they have.
This makes Twilio a powerful option for larger businesses to seamlessly integrate WhatsApp to expand their communication needs. There’s no need for team members to learn how to use completely new software, or even add new software to use in everyday workflows just to access and use the WhatsApp platform.
Customer experience-centric
Twilio is just as natural to use for customers as it is for businesses.
No matter how businesses integrate Twilio’s WhatsApp API with their business software, customers will have no visible difference in their experience when interacting with the business via WhatsApp.
The customer service team may be sending messages from CRM tools, while notifications and shipping updates are also sent out from business transaction software. But Twilio maintains this unified experience for the customer in their WhatsApp interactions with the business.
This is important for larger businesses that may use software to concurrently send WhatsApp messages to customers.
Pay-as-you-go
Twilio stresses the importance of only paying for the features that you are using. Even though Twilio supports other business communication solutions, they will only charge you for the use of WhatsApp API if you choose to only adopt that solution from them.
Twilio’s transparency in pricing makes it easy for businesses to make an informed consideration over its adoption.
Twilio’s weaknesses
A complex solution
Twilio’s model of working as an integrated solution with existing business software means that it’s not a cookie-cutter solution.
This means that Twilio’s not so great for smaller businesses who may need a cookie-cutter solution for their WhatsApp business communications — a software that is easy to install and easy to use.
After all, smaller businesses will not appreciate having complicated software solutions in their daily business operations.
With a smaller customer base and smaller teams, these businesses may need a stronger WhatsApp solution than the WhatsApp Business app, but Twilio may be too complex and too expensive, especially if you don’t have any coders or developers on your team.
Lesser dedicated customer service
If you check out Twilio on customer review sites like this one, customers who gave poor ratings frequently cited a common reason for their dissatisfaction — a lack of frequent customer service support despite Twilio’s technical installation and integration with business software.
Although Twilio has a rich library of online resources, less tech-savvy business teams will have a harder time implementing Twilio for their WhatsApp needs. Perhaps due to Twilio’s immense size, businesses may find themselves being starved of more detailed and frequent guidance from customer service representatives during onboarding.
Top Twilio competitors
Ameyo
One of Ameyo’s products is a Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) solution for businesses to engage their customers through a variety of channels. This includes WhatsApp, which means Ameyo a strong Twilio WhatsApp competitor.
Ameyo offers services for WhatsApp Business API, including the entire account application and onboarding process of acquiring a WhatsApp Business API account.
Other than the standard features of encryption, in-app messaging features and semi-automated messages, Ameyo also offers a dashboard that offers insights for message monitoring.
✨ Best known for: Contact Center solution and an AI VoiceBot
💡 Standout feature: Analytics for message monitoring
💰 Pricing: Request for a quote
NovoChat
NovoChat is an omnichannel messaging solution for sales communications. Built for small and medium businesses, NovoChat enables businesses to conduct multi-agent customer support across WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, and LINE.
Its broadcast feature also bypasses all strict WhatsApp guidelines, such as the 24-hour session window, 256 recipient limit, and template rules. You can also send personalized messages in bulk by simply uploading a CSV. file of your contacts and adding custom placeholders.
✨Best known for: Broadcast feature, omnichannel messaging
Botmaker is a conversation communications solution that offers AI solutions through the use of bots and multi-channel integration, including WhatsApp.
Apart from its live chat tools that allow direct interaction between agents and customers, botmaker’s greatest strength lies in their chatbots that are powerful for business communications, connecting with a wide variety of channels, such as all Facebook products, Twitter, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and more.
✨ Best known for: Its powerful chatbot solutions
💡 Standout feature: Omnichannel central inbox
💰 Pricing: One time cost of $99 for WhatsApp Business API account, Standard: $149, Full: $249, Pro: Request for a quote
CM.com
CM.com is a business communication solution that supports conversational commerce, through the use of multi-channel messaging, customer data platform, and payment functionality.
Their WhatsApp solution offers the standard WhatsApp messaging features and a chatbot. Just like Twilio, you can opt to adopt CM.com’s own API to connect to the WhatsApp platform. You can also choose to access WhatsApp Business API via their native software.
✨ Best known for: Concurrent use of their various products for business communication
💡 Standout feature: Choice of access to WhatsApp via CM.com’s API or software
💰 Pricing: One time cost of $595 for WhatsApp Business API solution, 500 unique customers: $118, 1000 unique customers: $178, 2500 unique customers: $298, and more. (Cost excludes cost per templated message.)
freshchat
freshchat from Freshworks is a business messaging software for customer engagement and support across different messaging channels. Its chatbot goes beyond asking frequently asked questions, providing a proactive approach to reach out to leads and customers by anticipating when they might require assistance.
With its centralized inbox, Freshchat also enables businesses to reach their customers via their preferred channel, with a range of options such as WhatsApp, Apple Business chat, Facebook Messenger, and LINE.
✨ Best known for: Part of the larger freshwork ecosystem, but can be used independently
💡 Standout feature: Clean omnichannel messaging solution with chatbot
💰 Pricing: $49 per number per month for WhatsApp Business API, plus per agent monthly plans – Sprout: Free, Blossom: $15, Garden: $29, Estate: $45, Forest: $69
Genesys
Genesys is a cloud call center software that enables businesses to connect with their customers. Their messaging feature supports WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS, and other channels to further support this business communication and connection.
Genesys offers chatbots to supplement their messaging feature, and also integrates with many workforce management systems, CRM tools, and other business software to bring about a unified contact center solution, including WhatsApp messaging.
✨ Best known for: Unified contact center solution
💡 Standout feature: Extensive integrations and messaging analytics
💰 Pricing: Request for a quote
Gupshup
Gupshup is a messaging communication solution for businesses to build conversational experiences with their customers. It supports channels such as WhatsApp, Instagram Messenger, SMS and Voice messages.
Gupshup’s WhatsApp offering has two kinds — the regular WhatsApp Business API that you can integrate with existing software, or a customer support tool that is a readily available plug and play option.
✨Best known for: Having two WhatsApp solution options
💡 Standout feature: Chatbots and centralized inbox
💰 Pricing: Details for each solution are on their website
Infobip
Infobip is an omnichannel messaging solution for businesses to improve conversational customer experiences. Some channels include WhatsApp, SMS, email, voice and video calls, Viber, Google Business Messages, LINE, and Telegram.
Like many others on this list, Infobip supports regular WhatsApp messaging features and also offers the option to deploy a chatbot. They also support their own real-time analytics, accessed via their dashboard.
✨ Best known for: Omnichannel messaging
💡 Standout feature: Chatbot and centralized inbox
💰 Pricing: Request for a quote
MessageBird
MessageBird is a communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) solution that offers omnichannel communication on a cloud platform. Its unified portal allows businesses to track all interactions with customers and easily view customer data.
It supports the use of WhatsApp Business API to integrate the MessageBird system with your business software, and also a native centralized inbox and flow builder for your team to directly access message conversations.
✨ Best known for: Omnichannel messaging
💡 Standout feature: Flow builder to manage messages
💰 Pricing: From $0.005 per WhatsApp message, plus monthly plans – Startup: Free, Pro: $50, Pro Plus: $150, Custom: Request for a quote
Respond.io
Respond.io is a business communication solution that supports omnichannel messaging. With a wide range of integrations with multiple messaging platforms, webpages, and CRM tools, respond.io supports business messaging needs all in one place.
Notably, respond.io allows customer profiles to be created for easy viewing and access, on top of the regular WhatsApp Business API messaging features and an analytics dashboard.
✨ Best known for: Variety of integration options
💡 Standout feature: Customer profiles and centralized inbox
💰 Pricing: Starter: Free, Pro: $29, Business: $79+, Custom: Request for a quote
Zendesk Sunshine
Zendesk’s Sunshine is a CRM platform that supports omnichannel messaging for supported business communications.
Apart from its CRM features, Sunshine also supports WhatsApp Business API among other messaging channels and integrations with Business Systems. Messaging features from Sunshine include group chats, outbound messaging, chatbots, and a chat flow builder to manage message conversations.
✨ Best known for: Omnichannel messaging
💡 Standout feature: Chat flow builder and integrations
💰 Pricing: Starter: $495, Premium: Request for a quote, Enterprise: Request for a quote
Telnyx
Telnyx is a business communications platform that supports messaging needs and calling needs. Similar to Twilio, it offers its own API to let customers integrate with their existing software. Telnyx supports WhatsApp. voice calls, SMS, and Microsoft Teams.
Telnyx offers the regular WhatsApp Business API messaging features and a chatbot, with analytics support.
✨ Best known for: Variety of business communication tools
💡 Standout feature: Telnyx’s own API and chatbot
💰 Pricing: Request for a quote
Userlike
Userlike is a business messaging solution to engage and nurture customers. Offering integrations with CRM tools, business websites, and messaging platforms including WhatsApp, Userlike eases business communications with its centralized message center.
Other features include chatbots, omnichannel messaging, assigned operators, and customer profiling. Regular WhatsApp Business API messaging features are also included.
✨Best known for: Omnichannel messaging and a variety of integrations
Vonage Communications API is a communication suite that offers a variety of API solutions, accessible from the Vonage platform. You can set up and access a variety of messaging platforms and communication tools, paying only for what you choose to use.
Apart from the regular messaging features for WhatsApp Business API, Vonage also offers its native API for easy integration, and a message API Sandbox to test your messaging campaigns before deployment.
✨ Best known for: Accessibility with the larger Vonage ecosystem
💡 Standout feature: Message API Sandbox
💰 Pricing: Varies depending on feature subscribed
WATI
WATI is a WhatsApp engagement tool for B2C businesses to serve and notify their customers via WhatsApp. WATI offers integrations with business websites and CRM tools.
Their native no-code chatbot builder makes the building and implementation of a chatbot a hassle-free experience, and supports message broadcasts using Google Sheets.
✨ Best known for: No-code chatbot
💡 Standout feature: Centralized inbox and chatbot
💰 Pricing: $49 per month (15,000 messages per month), $0.005 per message after limit
Woztell
Woztell is a WhatsApp engagement tool for businesses to connect with their customers using WhatsApp Business API. It offers integration with the Zoho ecosystem and zapier, among other CRM tools.
It offers all the regular messaging features you’d expect from WhatsApp Business API, and also its very own chatbot.
✨ Best known for: Chatbot capabilities
💡 Standout feature: Centralized inbox
💰 Pricing: Push: $44, Live ChatL $89, ChatBot: $79, Enterprise: Request for a quote
Zoko
Zoko is a WhatsApp engagement tool focused on growing businesses. With chat routing capabilities, Zoko supports multi-agent access for business teams to promptly follow up with their leads and customers.
It also features in-chat buttons for customers to interact with within WhatsApp, a chatbot, and integration with some business websites and CRM tools to ease your business workflows.
360dialog is a WhatsApp business service provider that provides WhatsApp messaging API and mobile automation solutions. Similar to Twilio, it offers its own API for businesses to adopt in their business software.
You can expect all regular WhatsApp Business API features from 360dialog’s API, and a local on-premise solution available if you wish to install it on your local server.
✨ Best known for: 360dialog’s own API for integration
💡 Standout feature: Can be hosted on local server
💰 Pricing: API only: $58, Professional: $118, Enterprise: $238 and above
Conclusion
And there goes our list of alternatives to Twilio for WhatsApp business solutions! 🥳
As you can see, there is a wide variety of Twilio WhatsApp competitors and solutions for businesses of different sizes and needs. There are also API solutions and ready-to-use solutions.
Want to avoid the hassle of adopting a WhatsApp Business API account and use a plug-and-play WhatsApp solution instead?
Take a deeper look into NovoChat and its features to see how it supports the WhatsApp business communications needs of small to medium-sized businesses!
Try NovoChat for free! 🚀
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