How to evaluate an SMS API provider
Virtually every business can enhance their relationships with their customers by taking advantage of SMS text messaging to stay in touch. Consider some possible use cases:
- Order status updates
- Delivery and shipping notifications
- Financial transaction alerts
- Appointment reminders
- Two-factor authentication and password resets
What about your business? Bet you’ve already thought of a way to use text messaging, and you want to consider how to start a pilot project — or maybe you already use an SMS API, but you want to add a second one for fault tolerance. Now you need to decide what SMS API provider to use.
The simple answer is: use Plivo. But if you’re one of those troublesome people who won’t settle for simple answers and require evidence before making a decision, we’ve put together a guide to choosing an SMS API provider. It walks you through the evaluation process, from figuring out how you want to use text messaging to highlighting the features you should look for. This post gives you a taste of the contents, but you should download the guide for the full story.
What to look for
Focus your evaluation on a few broad factors about each platform: features, geographic reach, and pricing.
By features, we’re talking about support for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), long code numbers (including 10DLC), short codes, and toll-free numbers, as well as things like rate limiting and message queuing, support for GSM and Unicode characters and smart encoding, and long message concatenation.
Geographic reach is an obvious factor. Your platform should be able to send messages to every country and region where you might have customers — and where you might have them in the future. Just to be on the safe side, look for a partner with a global presence, including relationships with in-country Tier 1 carriers with direct interconnectivity to local telecom network operators.
And while pricing isn’t necessarily your primary purchase criterion, it’s something everyone has to deal with. Look for transparent pricing, published on the vendor’s website. If you compare other platforms’ rates with Plivo’s prices, you’ll find we’re generally lower across the board.
The best SMS API
Features, reach, and pricing are important factors to consider. Check out our guide for details on those factors and more, then compare SMS API platforms. We think you’ll come to the conclusion that Plivo’s your best choice. Get started today for free.
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