Twilio Alternatives for SMS, Voice, WhatsApp and Online Surveys
Twilio helps many organizations to communicate with people around the globe. SMS, voice calls, video, email, authentication—Twilio does all these things. It’s also a huge, publicly traded, very successful company. But every tool has its purpose, and sometimes you need something else. In this blog post we’ll talk about Twilio alternatives—but with a twist.
Because it’s so gigantic, there are many lists for Twilio alternatives out there. Here, we want to focus on alternatives for non-profits: non-governmental organizations, including international development organizations and other humanitarian organizations, as well as university researchers and UN agencies. Because that’s whom we at engageSPARK serve.
Know what you’re looking for? Here are the use-cases we’ll look at for alternatives:
- Alternatives for SMS APIs
- Alternatives for SMS Surveys
- Alternatives for Voice IVR Surveys
- Alternatives for WhatsApp Surveys
- Alternatives for online marketing and online surveys
But if you’re not 100% sure what you’re looking for, read on. Let’s clear up first what Twilio is.
What is Twilio?
Founded in 2008, it’s a $14 billion publicly traded company. Yup, it’s been around a while, and it’s pretty big. Here is what Twilio says about itself, according to its About page:
We’re a software company that strengthens businesses by unifying their data to build insightful paths to customers, so they’re smarter with every interaction and able to outmaneuver their competition.
The key here is “software company”. By and large, Twilio is speaking to developers to integrate its services into the applications they build. It’s a high-tech solution.
That’s the first big crossroad: if your organization is developing its own apps, chances are you should look at using Twilio. If, on the other hand, you’re looking to run campaigns to interact with your participants / beneficiaries—using a no-code or low-code solution—then Twilio might not be the best fit for you.
What does Twilio offer?
Twilio offers a lot around communication. We’ll name a few examples here. The point isn’t to be comprehensive, but to show the spectrum of what’s available to—mostly—app developers.
At the heart of the following communication tools is Twilio’s Communications Platform as a Service:
- SMS: With Twilio you can send SMS all over the world. If you register sender IDs in accordance with local regulations, you can also send branded SMS. With SMS-capable phone numbers you can also receive SMS.
- Voice Calls: You can make automated phone calls and receive them.
- WhatsApp: You can send and receive WhatsApp messages, including fancy features such as videos, buttons, lists.
- Email: You can send email campaigns—using SendGrid, their mass-email acquisition.
You can put the above pieces together using Twilio Studio—a web-based no-code tool where you can build flow-charts. This is a very generic tool, so it can do a lot, but you need to be quite technically minded. On the upside, it allows you to use a lot of Twilio’s capabilities without using APIs programmatically.
And then there is the “solutions” part of Twilio:
- Authentication: Twilio makes it easy to authenticate users when logging into your app. For example, it helps you perform two-factor authentication (2FA) via SMS or another of the above channels.
- Serverless: run applications in the Twilio cloud.
- Flex: Twilio offers an “Engagement Center”, a call center / customer ticket product based on the other offerings mentioned here.
- Segment allows you to aggregate data from various sources. Like SendGrid, this is a product that Twilio acquired.
That is a lot of good stuff—so, why not Twilio?
Why would you look for Twilio alternatives?
The biggest advantage to Twilio is convenience: you get all the above from a single provider. Twilio is like the Swiss army knife for your communications picnic. It’s just so useful—from peeling apples and cutting cheese to opening a wine bottle.
If you can bring only one thing for all those tasks, then it’s great! That’s why we love Twilio and we use it, too. But is it the best tool for most of these tasks? Arguably not really.
In the end, why you might want to look for alternatives really comes down to one of the following:
- Price: You’re looking for cheaper—sending SMS in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for less than what Twilio is offering, doing phone number lookups cheaper, etc.
- Route quality: Twilio provides communication across the globe and their routes are pretty great. However, they are focusing on high-income countries, so you might find out that, for example, voice calls in Somalia aren’t what you expect.
- Are you a developer? As mentioned, Twilio is a software company and its services target developers—most people are not.
- Generic building blocks: Twilio provides building blocks, and what you build with them is up to you. Can you build an SMS Survey with Twilio? Yes. You can absolutely use Twilio Studio to click a flow together that resembles an SMS survey and then figure out how to run your phone numbers through that. But does Twilio Studio make it easy to run an SMS Survey or an IVR survey (robocall survey)? Arguably not. There, a more specialized tool might save you a lot of time and headaches.
With that last bit about specialized tools, it is high time that we talk about engageSPARK and our natural bias. 😉
Our bias (and what this article is about)
Let’s put our cards on the table: we’re not exactly a 100% unbiased advisor here. Of course, we’re looking for customers. But! We have no problem in sending you somewhere else if we know we’re not the right partner for you. Nothing worse than to waste both our time, right?
That’s what this article is about: a good-faith effort to send you in the right direction—even if it’s not our direction.
What is engageSPARK?
So, who are we? engageSPARK is a boutique communications agency for international development organizations, UN agencies, and research universities. We are a social enterprise.
We help these organizations gather data from hard-to-reach populations. Think Voice IVR surveys in Sudan or WhatsApp Surveys in Colombia. And we help these organizations distribute information, for example typhoon warnings to staff in the Philippines using WhatsApp and SMS.
To make our bias clear in the sections below, we’ll tell you straight up when we’d like your business. And if not, we’ll tell you that, too.
When should you consider engageSPARK as an alternative to Twilio?
Here are examples when you should consider talking to us:
- You want to do any sort of survey in a low- and middle-income country (LMIC).
- MEAL / M&E / Monitoring & Evaluation
- Warn your Filipino staff in case of emergencies, such as flooding or typhoon events.
- You run a financial literacy course for female entrepreneurs in Somaliland.
- Demographic baseline survey in Mali.
- You educate coconut farmers in Indonesia about how to generate higher yields.
- Needs assessment survey in Paraguay.
- A post-workshop satisfaction survey.
- You need to stay in touch with individual (citizen) donors all over the globe.
Does that sound like something you want to do? Say hi in our live chat! We’ll get right back to you.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about alternatives to Twilio and why you might need one.
What is the best Twilio Alternative?
What the best alternative is depends really on who you are, what you want to do, and why exactly you’re looking for something else.
As mentioned, we’ll focus in this article on humanitarian organizations. But even here, the differences are huge.
For example, if your organization is serving people in the United States, chances are you have way more alternatives to choose from than if you’re looking at, say, Zimbabwe. Even if a country is technically supported by Twilio, the routes may not give you the reliability you’re looking for.
Next, it’s not just about the where but also about what you’re trying to do. Finding an API to send SMS is fairly easy—it gets more complicated to get Branded SMS working, or to allow people to reply. (That’s 2-way SMS.)
Speaking of 2-way SMS, launching an SMS Survey is a different beast entirely—here you suddenly need a user-interface to design the survey with. And perhaps you need someone to help you with that, not just a tool? And so on. In short: what you want to do matters, a lot.
That’s why in the rest of this article, we’ll focus on Twilio alternatives with respect to particular use-cases. But first, we need to make sure that Twilio isn’t actually the right place for you after all.
Twilio.org: Cheaper than Twilio(.com)
Let’s say you’re working with Twilio already and you’re happy, but times are tough, budgets are being squeezed dry, and you’re looking to save a few bucks. Then we really recommend that you look at Twilio.org, the non-profit focused arm of Twilio.com.
To be sure, twilio.org gives non-profit and humanitarian organizations great discounts, and maybe that’s all you need. If it’s not, keep reading.
Twilio Alternative to send SMS via API
If you’re looking to integrate SMS sending and perhaps receiving into an app, then Twilio is a good place to start. That said, here are a few alternatives with global reach that you might want to look at, ordered alphabetically:
- Bird (formerly MessageBird).
Bird’s focus isn’t necessarily on LMICs and currently they’re describing themselves as “The AI-first CRM”, but you should still check them out, particularly if you’re engaging with people in high-income countries. Note they have an offering specifically for NGOs.
Messagebird website | SMS API docs - Clickatell.
Started in South Africa, Clickatell developed expertise working in LMICs through local partnerships, particularly in Africa.
Clickatell website | API docs - engageSPARK.
Yes, that’s us. We offer simple but powerful APIs for humanitarian orgs, for example to send SMS. That said, typically our customers use our APIs in conjunction with other parts, for example a survey or educational campaign.
engageSPARK website | API docs - Infobip.
Competitive pricing and global routes. Started in Croatia, Infobip focused on building up local telecom connections across the world to be able to provide local rates and connections for local organizations in addition to a global footprint. Infobip website | SMS API docs - Plivo.
Starting out as an open-source project, Plivo got Y-combinator funding. Plivo offers competitive pricing.
Plivo website | API Docs - Telerivet.
Began as envayaSMS, an SMS gateway via Android that organizations could use to run 2-way SMS campaigns in any country via an Android phone.
Telerivet website | API Docs - Vonage (formerly Nexmo).
Through its acquisition of Nexmo, Vonage offers high-quality routes all over the world. Find its SMS docs here.
Vonage website | API Docs
Regional and local SMS API providers
If you’re only focused on Africa, here are Twilio alternatives that cover this region:
For India in particular, there are a huge number of SMS API providers. However, we don’t have enough insights to list anything other than what Google provides.
For high-income countries, like the United States or many of the European countries, there are many providers focused on these relatively “simple” markets, mostly competing on price.
Don’t forget: If you’re interested in only sending to one particular country, you can always check what the telcos in question have to offer.
DIY vs Managed Surveys
Below, we’ll discuss tools & providers for various types of surveys. You can distinguish them roughly into two categories: DIY tools & managed providers.
It’s important to understand the difference, as it affects how much control you have, what you pay for, and what kind of work you need to do.
DIY survey tools:
- You’re the one creating the surveys using some sort of user interface (UI) or code. That means you have full control, but you also need to do the work of implementing the survey.
- Depending on the tool, you might be pretty much left alone with minimal support, or you get hands-on support to implement and run your survey.
- You have to provide or find the phone numbers of the survey participants.
- Usually, you’ll pay based on unit cost, perhaps with a subscription plan.
Fully managed survey providers:
- Here we’re talking more about research and consulting firms, and less about survey tools.
- You provide a questionnaire, for example as an Excel table, and the provider implements the survey according to your guidance using internal tools they have. (They might even use engageSPARK for that! :] )
- You will not have the same insight into the details of the surveys as if you’re doing it yourself, but also a lot less work.
- These research firms often maintain their own phone number databases for specific demographics per location, i.e. survey panels.
- Oftentimes, you’ll pay based on completed surveys plus hefty consulting fees.
There is no “right” approach here—which is best for you depends on how much control you want, how much budget you have, and if you know the people you want to reach.
We at engageSPARK offer a hybrid approach: we provide a DIY tool, but we’ve also learned that many customers value our hands-on approach to support. In some cases, we even manage the surveys for our customers. We do not provide phone numbers, but we offer random-digit dialing (RDD) as an option to acquire phone numbers for broad surveys and voice, SMS, and WhatsApp phone numbers to help you build your own opt-in database.
Twilio Alternatives for SMS Surveys
SMS Survey providers allow you to get answers to a questionnaire using only text messages. Compared to SMS API providers, you’ll need more than just the ability to send SMS: you’re looking for a provider for two-way SMS, and you’ll need functionality for timeouts, to handle wrong replies, validating input data, ask questions based on previous responses, etc. Below, we list tools & providers that cover these functions.
We at engageSPARK do SMS Surveys and we’d love to talk to you—you can say hi by clicking here or on the chat bubble in the bottom right.
- engageSPARK.
Yes, that’s us. We help you create and run SMS Surveys, using a hybrid managed-DIY approach. With us, you have full control over how you create your survey using our easy-to-use UI and campaign templates. And you get to see results in real-time as survey responses come in. We don’t provide phone numbers for you to reach out to (a contact database), though we help you get them using random digit-dialing (RDD) or by providing a keyword for people to text to a number to opt-in. We do offer the telecom connections and 2-way SMS phone numbers (e.g., toll-free shortcodes) that you’ll need to run your SMS surveys. We put a special focus on support, helping you every step of the way.
More about our SMS Surveys | Usage Pricing - Geopoll.
A research firm, Geopoll conducts surveys for humanitarian orgs and businesses. Like us they’ll help you with survey design, but unlike us, Geopoll provides a managed service, conducting and running these surveys themselves. They also maintain their own phone number databases and panels, and—importantly—Geopoll also has local connections in some countries, which significantly lowers messaging costs.
Geopoll website - TextIt.
Focused on the humanitarian world, TextIt is building and hosting a DIY platform that is well-suited to run SMS surveys. If you’re happy with Twilio Studio, you should definitely have a look at TextIt, because it features a powerful flow-designer which is probably the closest thing to Twilio Studio. Unlike with Twilio, however, you’re responsible for connecting to telco partners for the actual SMS sending and receiving, and for building and running your surveys. That said, if you like the platform but need help, they will put you in touch with companies that can help. You also need to bring your own telecom connections (such as an SMS aggregator account and two-way SMS numbers) and contact database. Fun fact: TextIt is the company behind the well-known open-source platform RapidPro. Note that TextIt offers discounts for registered non-profits.
TextIt website - Telerivet.
Another DIY tool, Telerivet offers a very powerful but also fairly technical platform. While mostly targeted at developers, the Telerivet platform does offer a rules engine, and if you’re happy with Twilio, do have a look. As with the other DIY tools, you’ll need to bring your own contact database and will build and run the survey yourself. To run surveys in LMICs, you’ll also be responsible for connecting to telco partners and procuring your own 2-way SMS numbers for the actual SMS sending and receiving.
Telerivet website - Viamo:
Last but not least, Viamo offers managed SMS Surveys for humanitarian orgs. Similar to Geopoll, they maintain their own phone number databases and survey panels and will roll out and manage the surveys for you. A distinguishing feature is that Viamo maintains local connections in many countries, and because of this can offer low per-message prices using local connections. Do consider them if you’re looking for a provider for fully managed surveys.
Viamo Website
Twilio Alternatives for Voice IVR Surveys
Voice surveys—AKA robocall surveys or IVR surveys—are a powerful way to collect data from people with even simple feature phones. They create urgency, and they are able to reach illiterate populations, all over the world. Perhaps most importantly, they don’t rely on a 2-way SMS number or WhatsApp. In short, there are plenty of reasons why you might want to run a survey via calls rather than text messages—learn more about that here.
Like with SMS Surveys, you’ll need more than the ability to make calls—you’ll need a way for participants to reply, for example using keypresses or with spoken replies. You’ll need conditional logic so you can ask participants hand-tailored questions. So, the below list focuses on providers with these capabilities.
IVR hotlines—where participants call a phone number—are sort of the reverse of an IVR survey. Instead of you pushing the survey out to contacts by having a tool call them, people call into a number either to take a survey or go through a menu to leave feedback or to get information. (The below tools and providers can typically also be used for voice hotlines in a very similar way to how they are used for IVR surveys.)
Using Twilio, you’d probably use Twilio Studio to build your Voice IVR. So, which tools offer humanitarian orgs a user-interface to build non-trivial Voice IVR Surveys?
Below, we list the tools & providers that help you run these kinds of Voice IVR Surveys and voice hotlines.
And yes, we at engageSPARK do these kinds of phone surveys, and we’d love to talk to you! Please say hi by clicking here or on the chat bubble in the bottom right.
- engageSPARK.
Yes, that’s us. We help you create and run Voice IVR Surveys, using an approach that’s somewhere between DIY and managed. With us, you have full control over how you create your survey using our easy-to-use UI and campaign templates. We do not provide you with phone numbers. That said, for voice call surveys, random digit-dialing (RDD) may be an option and we can help you with that. Voice IVR Surveys aren’t trivial to run, so we put a special focus on support, helping you every step of the way. We’ve also built features into our platform to specifically improve engagement and survey completion rates in LMICs.
More about our Voice IVR Surveys | Usage Pricing - Geopoll.
A research firm, Geopoll conducts surveys for humanitarian orgs and businesses. Like us, they’ll help you with the design of the phone survey, but unlike us, Geopoll provides a managed service, conducting and running these surveys themselves. They also maintain their own phone number databases and panels.
Geopoll website
TextIt.
Also a DIY tool, Text-It allows you to run IVR surveys via its workflows user–interface. If you’re happy with Twilio Studio, you should definitely have a look at TextIt, because it features a powerful flow-designer which is probably the closest thing to Twilio Studio. Unlike with Twilio, however, you’re responsible for connecting to telco partners for the actual voice calls and for building and running your surveys. That said, if you like the platform but need help, they will put you in touch with companies that can help. You also need to bring your own telecom connections (such as a Voice aggregator account and voice numbers) and your own contact database.
TextIt website
Telerivet.
Another DIY tool, Telerivet offers a very powerful but also fairly technical platform. While mostly targeted at developers, the Telerivet platform does offer a rules engine, and if you’re happy with Twilio, do have a look. As with the other DIY tools, you’ll need to bring your own phone numbers and will build and run the IVR survey yourself.
Telerivet Website - Viamo:
Last but not least, Viamo offers managed Phone Surveys for humanitarian orgs. Similar to Geopoll, they maintain their own phone number databases and survey panels and will roll out and manage the surveys for you. A distinguishing feature is that Viamo maintains local connections in many countries, and because of this can offer low per-minute prices using local connections, though they do charge consulting fees for implementing the surveys on your behalf. Do consider them if you’re looking for a provider for fully managed surveys.
Viamo Website
Twilio Alternatives for WhatsApp surveys
WhatsApp is a super powerful way to reach people all over the world … if they have internet access regularly or have a WhatsApp-only phone plan. For example, in Nigeria, people can buy 100MB of WhatsApp data per day for less than $0.01 USD; they do not have access to any part of the Internet except sending and receiving WhatsApp messages.
As long as your survey participants have internet access or a WhatsApp-only phone plan, WhatsApp Surveys can be very cost-effective and provide you with high quality data.
As with SMS Surveys, you’ll need a bunch of features that make the survey come to life: mechanisms to deal with participants who don’t reply or reply invalidly, reporting functionality, conditional logic to not ask every question to everyone the same way, etc. You’ll also want to take advantage of WhatsApp specialties such as buttons, lists, document messages, etc.
The catch with WhatsApp is that it looks easy but there are a few gotchas: getting started with a Meta business profile and the infamous 24h sessions being two of them. WhatsApp Surveys really are a bit more intricate than we’d like. Below, we’re listing tools & providers that cover at least the basics of WhatsApp Surveys.
And I think you might have guessed it from the above: we at engageSPARK do WhatsApp Surveys and we’d love to talk to you—you can say hi by clicking here or on the chat bubble in the bottom right.
- engageSPARK
Yes, that’s us. We help you create and run WhatsApp Surveys, using a hybrid managed -DIY approach. With us, you have full control over how you create your survey using our easy-to-use UI and campaign templates. We don’t provide phone numbers, but we put a special focus on support, guiding you through the Meta-WhatsApp setup process and helping you run the survey successfully.
More about our WhatsApp Surveys | Usage Pricing - Geopoll.
A research firm, Geopoll conducts surveys for humanitarian orgs and businesses. Like us they’ll help you with survey design, but unlike us, Geopoll provides a managed service, conducting and running these surveys themselves. They also maintain their own phone number databases and panels.
Geopoll website
- TextIt.
Focused on the humanitarian world, TextIt is building and hosting a DIY platform that is well-suited to run WhatsApp surveys. If you’re happy with Twilio Studio you should definitely have a look at TextIt, because it features a powerful flow-designer, which might just be the next best thing. If you fancy a bit more help than TextIt support provides, they will happily put you in touch with companies who provide this service. You also need to bring your own phone numbers and WhatsApp Business API integration.
TextIt website - Telerivet.
Another DIY tool, Telerivet offers a very powerful but also fairly technical platform. While mostly targeted at developers, the Telerivet platform does offer a rules engine, and if you’re happy with Twilio, do have a look. As with the other DIY tools, you’ll need to bring your own contact database and WhatsApp Business API account, and you will build and run the survey yourself.
Telerivet website - Turn.io.
Coming from the world of chatbots, turn.io is an exciting Twilio alternative and you should definitely look at them if you want to engage people on WhatsApp. Because they’re focusing on chatbots, we’re not 100% sure how easy or possible it is to build an actual non-trivial survey using Turn, but do have a look.
Turn website - Viamo:
Last but not least, Viamo offers managed WhatsApp Surveys for humanitarian orgs. Similar to Geopoll, they maintain their own phone number databases and survey panels and will roll out and manage the surveys for you. Do consider them if you’re looking for a provider for fully managed surveys.
Viamo Website
Twilio Alternatives for online marketing and surveys
For the record, we at engageSPARK don’t do online marketing campaigns or surveys—unless you count WhatsApp.
If you’re looking to collect data online, here are a few easy DIY contenders.
- Google Forms:
The default choice for many: Google Forms is free, easy to use, and is good enough in many cases.
Google Forms website - SurveyMonkey:
Full of features, SurveyMonkey might be what you’re looking for, if you’re not looking for free.
SurveyMonkey website - Typeform:
Direct Google Forms competitor. Depending on your taste, it has a nicer design.
Typeform website - Qualtrics:
Most sophisticated of the bunch, widely used by universities / academic researchers.
Qualtrics website.
Why is my business not listed?
Do you provide services for humanitarian organizations and think your business should be listed here? Let us know in the chat!