As a business leader, you know that one of the best ways to reach your customers is via text messaging. But you also know that finding an SMS provider and API that can reliably and cost-effectively reach your customer base across multiple geographies is difficult.

It may be time to find an additional or new SMS provider if

• you need better professional technical support and troubleshooting resources
• you need reliable global SMS coverage
• you need reliable network coverage and higher uptime
• you need robust, direct integration with third-party plugins
• you want to pay only for what you use.

Whether you’re looking for a backup provider to Twilio, planning on switching your primary provider to an SMS API with more features, or wanting to ensure that your messages make it to all your customers in every geography, it’s important to know how to evaluate each product as you shop around.

Steps to Choose the Right SMS Service Provider

The “right” SMS service provider means something different for every business. However, there are some key features to look for as you weigh your options. Evaluate features like coverage, integration ease, security, scalability, cost, and analytics to find the right fit. By prioritizing your needs and comparing providers, you can find the perfect partner to deliver your SMS marketing messages reliably.

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1. Look for an SMS provider with the essentials

At the end of the day, the most important thing an SMS API provider must do is ensure that your messages reach your customers. A suite of cutting-edge features is appealing, but there are a few key bases your provider must cover first.

Look for these five essential features in your SMS API provider:

• Character support across multiple languages with built-in, network-standard GSM and Unicode characters and emojis ensures that messages display as you’ve intended — whether you’re reaching customers in China, the United States, or Yemen.
• Multiple sender ID support allows you to use long codes, toll-free numbers, short codes, and alphanumeric sender IDs. Your provider should help you figure out which format is right for your business case.
• Long message concatenation prevents long texts from arriving at receivers in multiple parts by automatically concatenating them.
• Delivery report notifications allow you to track real-time delivery data from your messages and measure the performance of each SMS campaign you send.
• Message queuing reduces the amount of work you have to do per SMS campaign and lets you send multiple messages in a single API request. Your provider should ensure that you follow the throughput recommendations of your downstream carrier.

If you find an SMS provider that offers these five features, you’re well on your way to ensuring that messages reach customers as intended.

2. Check that your SMS API provider meets compliance standards

69% of consumers think that companies are vulnerable to cyberattacks, and only 25% think that companies handle sensitive data well. Your SMS provider must be able to help you keep customer information secure.

Local carrier rules change by location. You need an SMS provider that helps ensure you’re in compliance. The SMS API provider should also offer

• Purging and protection of sensitive data. Your provider shouldn’t store message details that contain sensitive, identifiable customer information, including phone numbers.
• Smart rate limiting. Every country has regulations around SMS messaging. Your provider should help you understand and comply with each country’s per-number messaging frequency limits and throughput regulations.
• Automatic opt-out handling. SMS API providers should support simple, automatic opt-outs and auto-replies such as “stop” and “cancel” on long code messages.

These three compliance measures, combined with the expertise of your SMS API provider, help to ensure that your SMS communications meet relevant regulations and reach your customers without issue.

3. Ensure that the SMS provider delivers to all your geographies and channels

No matter where you and your customers are located, your SMS API provider should guarantee fast, global delivery with a quality-based routing engine that integrates with other features and selects the best delivery route based on historical performance data.

But that’s not all. Look for these other delivery features when assessing an SMS API provider:

• Free incoming SMS. This feature improves ROI and overhead by delivering SMS long codes at no cost to you.
• Intelligent message encoding. Your SMS provider should ensure delivery support for destination networks where Unicode isn’t supported with an intelligent message system that exchanges Unicode characters for similar GSM characters.
• Number pooling. Avoid sending rate delays and carrier flagging by spreading messages across a pool of numbers.
• Conversion API. Look for real-time feedback from your API to inform future campaigns and improve carrier routing.
• Geo permissions. Make sure you can easily control which geographies your messages can reach without having to code.
• Local match. Improve open rates and response rates with auto-selection of a local number based on the destination area code.

As your business grows, it’s important that your SMS messaging campaigns serve every geography your customers live in. By checking for these key delivery features you ensure accurate, cost-effective, and data-informed delivery every time.

4. Make sure your SMS API provider has the reliability you need to succeed

Your SMS provider should give you the peace of mind that comes from knowing your messages will reach your customers and that issues, should they arise, will be quickly resolved. This means extreme reliability (such as guaranteed uptimes of 99.95%) and a team that cares about you.

Make sure that your SMS provider can support you and your business with a

• Tier 1 carrier network. You need to know your messages will get to every one of your customers. By partnering with a Tier 1 carrier network, SMS providers can promise high deliverability.
• Redundant carrier network. Ensure messages reach your customers by choosing a vendor with a redundant carrier network. This means that if messages fail to be delivered, they’re automatically routed to the next best carrier.
• High availability and reliability. Uptimes of at least 99.95% should be guaranteed by a service-level agreement (SLA).

Spend your time reaping the benefits of a killer strategic SMS messaging campaign, not troubleshooting APIs or wondering whether messages made it to customers, by ensuring that your SMS API provider has these reliability features.

5. Look for low, flexible, and transparent pricing

SMS messaging should help you realize ROI, not eat up your budget. Make sure that you’re paying only for the features and data you use.

No matter where you’re looking to reach customers or how large your SMS messaging campaigns are, your SMS API provider should offer transparent pricing plans:

• Pay-as-you-go pricing. Pay only for what you use with usage-based pricing.
• Volume discounts. Your rate should get cheaper as your messaging volume increases.
• Committed-use discounts. Get a discount on your pricing if you switch from a pay-as-you-go model to a committed-use pricing package

6. Look for the ability to customize and integrate SMS provider features

Pricing isn’t the only thing that should be flexible to your needs. Your SMS provider should let you easily and quickly customize, scale, and integrate cutting-edge features that help you stand out from your competition and delight your customers.

• Sticky sender. Maintain a continuous thread of communication with customers when using a number pool by delivering messages from the same number or sender ID each time.
• Low-code development. Customize your code, and deploy quickly through visual, low-friction editors and reusable templates.
• Built-in multitenancy: Segment your customers based on use case, spend capacity, or risk profile to track performance and billing.
• Detailed debug logs. Streamline troubleshooting with informative debug and error logs.
• Extensive documentation. Integrate easily with the tools you use most, thanks to detailed documentation and sample code.
• Server-side software development kits (SDK). Ensure that your team can program in their language of choice, whether it’s Java, Python, Ruby, Node.js, or others.
• Serverless environment. Enjoy all the benefits of custom code without the headache of hosting it yourself.

Your SMS API provider shouldn’t paint you into a corner when it comes to functionality. Flexible features allow you to take what you love and trim the rest to build the best SMS messaging campaigns possible.

7. Make the most of your investment with premium support

Customer support may not rate highly on your wishlist for an SMS provider. But, if (and when) something goes wrong, you’ll be grateful you invested the time to investigate the customer service options available from your chosen vendor. 

Reviewers on G2 can give you good feedback about the customer service of different SMS providers. For instance, Plivo is rated highly for its customer satisfaction and 24/7 premium support. Support teams can give you the right feedback to make sure you’re using all the platform’s features to their full potential. Plivo’s consultative approach to customer success ensures its users get technical guidance and industry expertise, maximizing the ROI of your investment.

8. Look for a vendor that takes compliance seriously

There are strict regulations governing SMS marketing, so it’s important to find an SMS service provider that takes compliance seriously. Look for a trusted service with a deep understanding of consent management and the necessary tools to ensure smooth legal compliance.

As a baseline, your provider should adhere to regional laws and industry standards, like GDPR in Europe and TCPA in the US. Plivo has achieved SOC 2 Type 2 and PCI DSS certification, HIPAA compliance, and ISO 27001:2022 certification. These certifications demonstrate a commitment to data security and compliance with privacy regulations. You should also look for features that streamline opt-in processes, effortless opt-out management, list cleaning tools, and robust data security measures.

How to find the SMS API provider that’s right for your business and your customers

You want to make sure that when it comes time to reach out to customers with SMS, development and integration are easy and messages reliably get where they need to go.

If you’re looking to add a backup vendor for failover situations, or if you’ve grown your business to new geographies that your current provider can’t reach, consider what your primary SMS API provider does well and where you need to supplement.

If you’re looking for a new primary SMS provider, it helps to develop a visual representation of how each company stacks up. That’s why we created our downloadable SMS API provider evaluation checklist [PDF]. Use this document to compare SMS provider offerings.

You want to give your customers the best experience. To do that, you need an SMS provider with the highest-quality support, features, and infrastructure, without breaking your budget. Plivo is the best Twilio alternative. With globally distributed PoPs, latency-free connectivity, high deliverability, and optimized routing, we’ve supported companies in every industry. Our SMS API and global delivery network have helped businesses such as GoDaddy, Deckers Brands, and Wix make a lasting impact, backed by free, 24/7 technical support and ease of integration and scaling — all with a 35% cost savings compared to Twilio. Sign up for a free trial today.

We live in an era where customer choice is top of mind. B2C (business to consumer) companies have to address consumers’ expectations to choose exactly what they want, when they want. Similarly, B2B (business to business) companies need to adapt to the personalization trend and allow customers to choose specific products and services that fit specific price, performance, and geography considerations.

We see an unbundling trend in the communications industry, on both the B2C and B2B fronts. Consumers want to unbundle internet service from TV and phone service, leveraging a traditional telco like AT&T for phone (if they still have a landline), an internet service provider like Comcast for internet, and a streaming TV service like Netflix, Hulu, or Sling for programming.

Similarly, businesses are looking to unbundle their communications services. Business VoIP technology is particularly ripe for unbundling as more organizations transition to IP-based solutions and more service providers enter the market.

Understanding the VoIP infrastructure landscape

The VoIP landscape includes a mix of hardware and software components that provide products and services such as VoIP-enabled telephones, IP PBXs for transmitting and routing calls to VoIP-enabled phones, and SIP trunks to connect IP PBXs to phone networks. Some VoIP vendors package these components together for an all-in-one solution. For example, some vendors package proprietary telephone hardware with IP services, often for a premium. For some businesses that are new to VoIP or have limited resources, this type of turnkey, multipronged solution may be beneficial. For other companies, unbundled VoIP solutions offer greater flexibility and control over pricing, but could come at the cost of functionality.

As businesses consider unbundled VoIP services, they should understand the layers of the VoIP infrastructure, the market players at each layer, and the pros and cons of unbundling.

The layers of VoIP infrastructure

VoIP may involve several kinds of technology, such as:

• Hardware phones: For companies that want to use physical phones with their VoIP service, a number of companies, such as Grandstream, Polycom, and Yealink, offer VoIP-enabled phones. While these are hardware phones, they include built-in software that allows them to work with VoIP and offers features such as caller ID and conferencing.
• Software/soft phones: In contrast to hardware phones, some organizations leverage software-based virtual phones that let users make calls through their computers. Soft phones can provide more flexibility than investing in hardware phones. They’re often bundled into a VoIP package by companies such 8x8 Inc., RingCentral, and Vonage.
• IP PBXs: VoIP users can leverage software-based private branch exchanges (PBX), known as IP PBXs, to transmit and route voice and data communications to VoIP-enabled phones. Providers such as 3CX, Asterisk, and FreePBX offer solutions that interface with other components of the VoIP infrastructure.
• SIP trunks: SIP trunks connect a IP PBX to the internet so you can make calls. Providers like Plivo, Twilio, and Voxbone offer SIP trunking solutions.

A savvy company could buy VoIP-enabled hardware phones to put on-premises, pair the phones with an open source IP PBX system, and plug in a SIP trunking service for a best-of-breed unbundled solution.

The bottom line is that a broad array of service providers address the VoIP landscape. No company owns a majority share of the market, so it’s worth shopping around to get the best mix to suit your needs.

UCaaS isn’t the be-all, end-all

Another alternative is unified communications as a service. UCaaS providers offer a cloud-based package of communication tools, typically with a white-labeled SIP trunking solution bundled as part of the service. While UCaaS can be advantageous for businesses looking to quickly transition from having a separate landline phone system, video conferencing system, and SMS system to one all-inclusive system, it generally lacks the level of customization offered by other options. Rather than being able to pick the specific technologies they need at the right price and right level of service, UCaaS customers may end up with a solution that falls short in certain areas or includes components they don’t need.

Moreover, there seems to be a dizzying array of UCaaS companies, with widely varied descriptions of UCaaS and terminology about optimal solution packages. First-time buyers (and even those pretty well-versed in the market) can be confused by the similar-sounding descriptions. Buyers should look past the nomenclature and assess the specific features and services offered by a UCaaS provider and compare them to unbundled options.

Unbundle your network

While UCaaS providers address a set of communications needs, it is possible for a business to plug a VoIP feature like SIP trunking from one provider into a UCaaS solution from another provider.

This growing trend, known as bring your own carrier (BYOC), allows businesses to use a VoIP provider’s platform to develop custom messaging and voice applications, for example, but also bring their own carriers for voice service and phone numbers. The benefits can be numerous.

Unbundling benefit #1 — cost savings

Some UCaaS vendors package VoIP solutions and charge a monthly subscription fee on a per-user basis. But not every business needs every feature within a VoIP provider’s package. Unbundling enables businesses to negotiate a lower rate by picking and choosing only the elements they use. Or, businesses might prefer a pay-as-you-go model to gain flexibility for scaling call volume up or down in certain regions or during different times of the year.

Unbundling benefit #2 — global reach

Another benefit of unbundling is global communications coverage. Not all carriers are equal when it comes to global reach and quality, so a business with multiple regional operations may seek a carrier that has points of presence (PoP) in the areas of the world where they do business to help ensure consistent call quality. By contrast, if your business is only in North America, you need not pay a premium for a carrier with PoPs on six continents.

Unbundling benefit #3 — redundancy

SIP trunking providers often work with multiple carriers and have redundant infrastructure so that if one area has an outage, calls can be routed through other infrastructure that’s still running. Unbundling allows organizations to choose SIP trunking providers that have a level of redundancy they’re comfortable with, rather than being locked into whatever a bundled solution offers.

Unbundling benefit #4 — call quality

Similar to the benefit of redundancy, businesses that unbundle can choose SIP trunking providers that work only with high-quality, Tier 1 carriers. Doing so helps ensure consistent calls connections and clear communications.

Some carriers offer least-cost routing (LCR), which means calls may be routed to whatever network provides the lowest rate for a particular time and location, regardless of connection quality. A focus on LCR often leads to less-than-ideal call quality and issues such as high jitter, one-way audio, dropped calls, high latency (connection delay), and lack of support for DTMF or CLI.

Unbundling benefit #5 — feature customization

In addition to cost savings and improved reach, unbundling can enable businesses to better customize their VoIP infrastructure with the technology , customer service, and compliance features that meet their business needs.

For example, a business that’s concerned about compliance can use a carrier that offers built-in features such as call recording or call logging for maintaining call records. Another business may want to use a carrier that has guaranteed DMFI support and CLI retention, and promised uptime.

Unbundling benefit #6 — VoIP hardware/software customization

Unbundling can also give businesses the ability to customize their hardware and software setups. Some VoIP providers offer all-in-one deals that include phones and other hardware, but businesses often want to bring their own hard or soft phones to save money or address unique business needs. For example, some businesses may prefer equipment that’s suited for conference calls, while others may prefer feature-rich desk phones.

Communicate with VoIP providers to understand your unbundling options

By taking advantage of unbundling, businesses can reduce costs and increase customization. Still, some businesses will benefit more from an all-in-one package, so it’s important to not assume that one approach is inherently better than the other.

Depending on your current telecom infrastructure, your in-house resources, and your business goals, you may be able to customize a package that fits your needs, or you may be able to negotiate an all-in-one deal that helps you come out ahead. Some UCaaS providers may be willing to unbundle certain services or reduce pricing by leaving off a few features that you don’t need.

As in the consumer telecom business, the power of choice in VoIP is increasingly shifting to buyers, and providers increasingly realize that they need to open up in order to thrive. If unbundling helps your business save money or gain control, take advantage of this opportunity to customize your VoIP infrastructure.

Originally published in slightly different form on GetVoIP.

COVID-19 has pushed companies to work remotely, forcing them to ask themselves, How do we stay connected when we have to work apart?

One answer is to get the help of SIP trunking. A SIP trunk is like a virtual phone line, enabling you to connect voice calls over the internet to anyone with a phone, anywhere in the world.

As employers change their remote work policies to rely on video conferencing and VoIP-enabled calling, they need to make sure their SIP trunking partner provides the best call quality possible, since call quality is a big factor in whether remote workers can successfully work with their peers and clients throughout the world.

A quality SIP trunking provider helps you offer your customers inbound and outbound landline or mobile calling options no matter where they’re working. Your provider should do this by acting as your liaison to public telecommunications services and allowing you to do two key things:

• Provision global dial-in phone numbers — Call participants should be able to join a conference by dialing a phone number specific to their region, no matter where the other members of the call are located.
• Support dial out to any PSTN number — Call participants should be able to dial any public switched telephone network (PSTN) number and add the recipient of that call to a conference.

In the coming months, employees and companies will rely more and more on remote workers to get things done. Make sure that your company is ready to meet the demand and exceed expectations with the help of a SIP trunking provider that offers high call quality at a reasonable cost.

When to look for a new SIP trunking provider

Today’s video conferencing market gets increasingly competitive every day. Teams are more dispersed than ever, and organizations are looking for a product that allows them to easily and affordably connect with their employees and clients.

If your current SIP trunking service doesn’t match up to the quality of the rest of your product, it’s time for a switch.

There are three main reasons video conferencing service companies decide to switch SIP trunking providers:

• They want better call quality. The switch to a new SIP trunking provider who uses quality-based routing (QBR) instead of least-cost routing (LCR) gives companies and their customers better call quality than a company’s existing provider. It’s easy to fall for the low price point of carriers who offer LCR, but that cost savings can come at the expense of call quality, customer support, reliable coverage, and other key features.
• They plan to support inbound and outbound calling in new areas. A global SIP trunking provider extends inbound and outbound calling services to nearly anywhere in the world.
• They need more support than their existing provider offers. A new SIP trunking provider gives companies the technical and strategic support they need to provide excellent service to customers.

You need top-notch support, sound quality, geographic coverage, and flexibility. The right SIP trunking provider will work with you to ensure you — and your customers — have the connections you need to succeed.

What makes an ideal SIP trunking provider

Make sure your SIP trunking provider offers exactly what you need and doesn’t make you pay for what you don’t. Consider eight key factors:

1. Call quality

Customers care most about the quality of their calls. Your SIP trunking provider should provide access to local numbers via Tier 1 carrier networks. Your provider’s connections should also use the G.711 codec to support the landline-like quality customers demand.

To ensure the highest possible call quality, Plivo’s Zentrunk SIP trunking service terminates calls through one-hop local carriers for a low post-dial delay (PDD) to minimize the time between when customers dial conference numbers and when they’re connected. We use intelligent QBR to ensure no calls are dropped and audio isn’t delayed.

2. Global reach

Look for a SIP trunking provider that has connections with carriers in the regions where you operate. Though you may only require narrow geographic coverage now, partnering with a provider that offers restricted coverage will make it more difficult to scale as your business expands.

Your SIP trunking provider should have at least three carrier connections in major areas and support local, national, and toll-free numbers. Zentrunk offers outbound call service to nearly every country in the world, and inbound call service with phone numbers in more than 70 countries and counting.

Additionally, we offer points of presence (PoP) in seven locations across five continents to ensure low latency. When you partner with Zentrunk, your service also includes caller line identity (CLI, a.k.a. caller ID) support to customize the appearance of incoming calls.

3. Service reliability

Even the most robust carrier networks fail at times, so your provider must have multiple carrier connections and redundant infrastructure.

To ensure high availability, Zentrunk serves video conferencing providers by working with at least three local carriers in all major regions to offer SIP trunking services and 99.95% uptime.

4. Flexible pricing

Pay-as-you-go pricing and low upfront setup costs allow you to change phone numbers, adjust services, and add volume and IP access control lists without inflating costs.

Zentrunk’s outbound calling starts at $.0065 per minute and inbound calling at $.0025 per minute. Additionally, quality SIP trunking providers like Zentrunk offer volume discounts that make it quick and cost-effective to scale.

5. Interoperability

Adding SIP trunking shouldn’t take an army of engineers and hours of troubleshooting.

Ensure your provider’s services work with your existing VoIP infrastructure. Companies that partner with Zentrunk enjoy interoperability with standard soft switches and IP PBXs, so you can seamlessly and immediately integrate PSTN connectivity without having to do a costly, time-consuming infrastructure overhaul.

6. Instant provisioning

The needs of your company will evolve over time, and you need a SIP trunking provider that can grow and change with you. Instant provisioning of phone numbers ensures unlimited global scalability and the fastest setup possible.

With Zentrunk, you can immediately scale to more than 70 countries by instantly provisioning direct inward dialing (DID) phone numbers from our inventory of more than 5 million numbers.

7. Responsive support

Your SIP trunking integration should be simple to implement and maintain. But in the event something does go wrong, you need to have adequate support from your provider.

Zentrunk offers customers 24/7 customer support to make integration easy, even if you’re layering our SIP trunking solution onto your existing PBX system. We’re there to answer your questions, support your business objectives, and ensure you get the most out of our services.

8. Infrastructure security

Your SIP trunking technology upgrade should make your IT landscape and customer service offerings more sophisticated, not more complex. You should be able to easily segment and manage traffic using separate trunks with unique SIP domains.

As a global, modern SIP trunking provider, Zentrunk offers a robust set of features, including:

• Encrypted trunks with Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP).
• Fraud protection and alerts to automatically detect and notify you of fraudulent activity.
• A self-service portal to enable quick access and management of analytics, logs, and SIP trunks.
• IP authentication so you can securely access your SIP trunks using IP or credentials.
• Separated trunks to allow you to easily segment and manage each trunk with a unique SIP domain.

You’ve built your reputation on offering quality video conferencing services. Make sure your new SIP trunking provider measures up to your — and your customers’ — standards.

How Zentrunk helps you support customers when they need you

With Zentrunk, you have access to more than 1,600 carrier networks across the world and connectivity in more than 150 countries. Plus, our SLA-guaranteed uptimes of 99.95% help you avoid costly service issues.

If you’re looking to quickly add capabilities to your video conferencing services without causing a surge in costs, sign up for free and start testing Zentrunk or connect with an expert for a free consultation.

You can now send and receive MMS messages in the United States and Canada on all MMS-enabled Plivo long code phone numbers. With Plivo MMS, businesses now have a new channel to use to communicate with their customers, and the ability to create engaging visual experiences with pictures, audio, and video.

Our early MMS customers are using the new feature in several ways:

• Marketing campaigns: To improve open rates for marketing campaigns using rich media such as pictures and videos.
• Last-mile logistics: To identify personal information and shipping details using pictures and videos shared during delivery.
• Collecting account information: To collect account-related information such as pictures and receipts using MMS.

Sending and receiving MMS messages

Sending and receiving MMS messages is like sending and receiving regular text messages on the Plivo platform. You can make a POST request to the message resource URL or an API request to specify the image link in the Media URL parameter.

For more information, check out our API reference documentation.

Our MMS API includes many powerful features:

• Multiple sender types
  Send and receive MMS using any number type (long code, toll-free, short code) across the US and Canada.
• Variety of formats
  Support for pictures (JPEGs and GIFs), emojis, audio (MP3), and video (MP4) files.
• Built-in multimedia storage
  Plivo provides built-in multimedia storage for both inbound and outbound MMS messaging so you can access and reuse media.
• Intelligent picture resizing (coming soon)
  The MMS API intelligently resizes images to meet carrier guidelines and to ensure delivery across different carrier networks.
• Automatic MMS converter (coming soon)
  Automatic conversion of multimedia messages into SMS messages when sending messages to MMS-incompatible phone numbers to ensure better deliverability.

With our server SDKs and ready-to-use code samples, it’s simple to incorporate sending MMS message in your applications.

MMS is available for the US and Canada on long code phone numbers, and US short codes and toll-free numbers are both on the roadmap. Pay-as-you-go pricing for the US starts at $0.016 to send and $0.008 to receive, with volume discounts on committed spend as you scale your usage.

From our product design to our documentation, everything we do is designed to help you simplify your business communications, including the way you get set up, how rapidly you deploy, and how you manage day-to-day operations. That driving force applies to the Plivo console as well.

That’s why we’re launching an update to the Plivo console that includes changes to both the information architecture and UI. With this update:

• All product applications appear in a left navigation menu
• All components such as endpoints, call logs, alerts, and geo permissions nest within the left menu
• Links to documentation and support pages and billing and account information is consolidated at the bottom of the panel

In addition, we’ve standardized the interface across our products, creating a unified system that gives users a more comfortable workspace that’s faster and easier to navigate.

• Streamlined navigation panel: We’ve moved the navigation to a collapsible side-panel format. This new layout makes it easy to move between product workspaces and creates more room for working on your applications.

• More intuitive billing and account sections: The new format cleans up the billing and account sections and creates two separate areas: one for all things related to finance, including payments and invoices, and one for all things related to account security, such as users, subaccounts, team, and user credentials.

• Optimized view of application configuration: Now you can see at a glance all the details of your application configuration — phone numbers, all associated URLs for both voice and SMS, and SIP endpoints — without having to click through multiple layers to verify or modify the application configuration.
• URLs for quick editing: We’ve taken a couple of steps out of item editing. Instead of going to an entity list (Applications, Endpoints, Phone Numbers) and scrolling through a list of items, now you can navigate directly to an entity URL and edit.
• Easier UI for configuring phone numbers: We’ve eliminated multiple steps so that you can see the phone number configuration in the same panel where you see Your Numbers, and you can modify or attach a number to an application from the same screen.

• Simpler phone number identity documentation: Some countries require address and identity documentation before you can use a specific phone number. We’ve added two new features in the console that simplify the documentation process. First, we’ll tell you upfront about whether the documentation is required. Second, when you buy the number, you’ll have the option to attach the documentation.
• Product overview featuring analytics: We’re updating the analytics dashboard to give every product an overview page that will present a snapshot of product-specific analytics.

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback about these changes.

Plivo makes it simple for businesses to send SMS text messages.  With a couple of lines of code, your application is ready to start sending messages to more than 190 countries. On average, our customers send out their first text message within 15 minutes of signing up.

The complexities of SMS messaging may surface once you start sending a high volume of messages. At that point you may face challenges such as managing country-specific restrictions, per-source-number SMS limits, and daily SMS volumes. You may have to write additional software logic to manage such complexities to ensure high SMS delivery rates.

To help our customers improve SMS delivery and go live faster for high-scale messaging use cases, we’re releasing Powerpack for SMS, a bundle of features that makes message communication at scale more effective and reliable. Powerpack ensures that your SMS messages get delivered at whatever scale you’re sending them, to any country.

How Powerpack helps

Powerpack provides several features that help high-volume messaging customers.

Number pools for easy scaling

With Powerpack, you construct a pool of source numbers optimal for your daily volume and peak send rate. Your messages are automatically distributed across this source number pool. All you have to do is specify the Powerpack’s unique identifier in the Send SMS API request.

You can add more numbers to your Powerpack number pool in seconds, right from your Plivo console. This lets you scale infinitely without having to make any code changes.

Sticky sender for a consistent experience

To ensure that your end users always receive messages from the same source number, Powerpack establishes a sticky mapping between the recipient’s number and the source number used from the Powerpack for the first text message to that recipient. This stickiness enables two-way conversations by keeping the conversation thread on the recipient’s handset intact.

Smart queuing for carrier compliance

Powerpack maintains an internal rate-limiting queue for every source number in the pool and sends messages to downstream carriers at a rate that’s compliant with industry-defined best practices. Source number-specific rate-limiting queues, in conjunction with Powerpack’s message distribution logic, ensure you meet your overall volume and throughput requirements while staying compliant with per-number limits.

Local connect for higher open rates

Powerpack prioritizes source numbers in the pool that are from the same geographic region as the destination number. The highest priority is given to numbers of the same area code, followed by those in the same state, then country.

For example, when sending an SMS to a San Francisco number that starts with area code 415, Powerpack will use a number in the pool that begins with +1-415. If no +1-415 numbers are found in the pool, Powerpack will use an available California state number to send the message.

The Powerpack management UI in the console allows you to provision number pools and all the other features with a few clicks.

Getting started with Powerpack

Getting started with Powerpack is easy. Log in to the Plivo console and click to Messaging > Powerpack. Follow the instructions on the console to create a new Powerpack.

To send messages with your newly created Powerpack, invoke Plivo’s Send SMS API with the powerpack_uuid request parameter set to the Powerpack’s UUID.

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import plivo

client = plivo.RestClient('<auth_id>','<auth_token>')
message_created = client.messages.create(
    powerpack_uuid='<powerpack_uuid>',
    dst='<destination_number>',
    text='Test Message'
)

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require 'rubygems'	
require 'plivo'	

include Plivo	

client = RestClient.new("<auth_id>","<auth_token>")
response = client.messages.create(	
  nil,	
  [destination_number],	
  'Test Message',	
  powerpack_uuid: '<powerpack_uuid>'	
)	
puts response

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let plivo = require('plivo');
let client = new plivo.Client('<auth_id>','<auth_token>');

client.messages.create({
  powerpackUUID:"<powerpack_uuid>",
  dst:'<destination_number>',
  text: 'Test Message',
},).then(function (message_created) {
  console.log(message_created)
})

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require 'vendor/autoload.php';	
use Plivo\RestClient;	

$client = new RestClient('<auth_id>', '<auth_token>');	
$message_created = $client->messages->create(
    [  
            "powerpack_uuid" => "<powerpack_uuid>",
            "dst" => "<destination_number>",
            "text"  =>"Hello, this is a sample text",
            "url"=>"https://<yourdomain>.com/sms_status/",
    ]
);
print_r($message_created);

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package com.plivo.api;

import com.plivo.api.models.message.Message;
import com.plivo.api.exceptions.PlivoRestException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Collections;

class Example {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, PlivoRestException {
    Plivo.init("<auth_id>", "<auth_token>");
    Message.creator("<powerpack_uuid>","<destination_number>"), "Test Message").create();
  }
}

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package main

import (
	"fmt"

	"github.com/plivo/plivo-go/v7"
)

func main() {
	client, err := plivo.NewClient("<auth_id>", "<auth_token>", &plivo.ClientOptions{})
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Print("Error", err.Error())
		return
	}
	client.Messages.Create(plivo.MessageCreateParams{
		PowerpackUUID: "<powerpack_uuid>",
		Dst:           "<destination_number>",
		Text:          "Test Message",
	})
}

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using System;	
using System.Collections.Generic;	
using Plivo;	

internal class Program	
{	
    public static void Main(string[] args)	
    {	
        var api = new PlivoApi("<auth_id>","<auth_token>");	
        var response = api.Message.Create(	
            powerpack_uuid:"<powerpack_uuid>",	
            dst:new List<String>{"<destination_number>"},	
            text:"Test Message"	
        );	
        Console.WriteLine(response);	
    }	
}	

Your message will be sent via one of the phone numbers in the Powerpack number pool.

For more information, visit our Powerpack documentation.

Pricing

Powerpack is enabled on your account at no extra cost. You pay only for actual text messages sent and received.

Upcoming enhancements

We’re actively working on additional Powerpack features. Some of the enhancements planned for the coming months include:

Alphanumeric sender IDs: Many countries allow using brand names and keywords as sender IDs. Soon, customers will have the option to configure Powerpack to use alphanumeric sender IDs for SMS messages to these countries.

Powerpack management APIs: We’re working on APIs to create new Powerpacks and manage number pools programmatically.

Content optimization features: We’re also working on features to better manage the content of your text messages based on country-specific support for characters sets and message length.

Not yet using Plivo? Getting started takes just five minutes. Sign up today.

Voice call quality may be impacted by many factors, and troubleshooting voice call issues requires technical expertise. It can be a time-consuming task, given that voice calls from an API platform often involve multiple call legs and precise orchestration of the call flow with the help of REST APIs, XML, and API callbacks.

Plivo’s new Call Insights service provides detailed statistics, actionable insights, and powerful analytics for voice calls from the Plivo Voice API platform.

Call Debug UI

In this release, we’re introducing a new Call Debug UI with a host of features to help you troubleshoot call setup and call quality issues.

Call state change timeline: The UI displays call initiation time, ring time, answer time, and end time information for every call, along with other basic details such as call type (VoIP or carrier), direction, and billing info.

Suspected issues and Plivo quality score: The panel shows a list of call quality issues suspected on the call, identified based on audio quality statistics collected for calls. Each call is also assigned a rating from zero (the worst) to five (the best) based on an analysis of audio quality metrics such as packet loss, jitter, and latency.

Call relationships: Conversational use cases often involve two or more parties bridged together with a distinct call leg connecting each party to the call. This section lists all of the call legs that were ever connected with a given call, so you can visualize the overall call flow and isolate the source of call quality issues on calls involving multiple parties.

Call hangup cause and hangup source: Why a call hung up and who hung it up are important clues in debugging call issues. Our descriptions of call hangup reasons and hangup sources help you understand why a call was terminated.

Call origination and termination details: We display comprehensive information about the complete routing path taken by Client SDK and carriers calls.

Client SDK calls now include the geographic location of the endpoint and rich metadata about the device used to place the call.

Information about carrier calls includes the media server location of Plivo’s infrastructure and the partner carrier, along with location and end operator details based on the from and to numbers.

Audio quality stats: We measure audio quality via several metrics — network jitter, packet loss, audio level, and network latency (round trip time). High jitter on an audio stream can lead to distorted audio on the receiving end, and high network round trip time (RTT) can result in delayed audio reception. Audio quality stats, per stream and for every call leg, are helpful in isolating the root cause of audio quality issues.

The information from Call Insights makes troubleshooting call issues easier and faster — and to make debugging issues using this data easier still, we’ve created a troubleshooting guide for common call issues as part of our documentation.

Proactive alerts on Plivo client SDKs

Plivo client SDKs for web browsers, iOS, and Android can now monitor call quality and network conditions in real time and send alerts when quality is low. The SDKs emit events for an array of network conditions that might result in a subpar experience on an ongoing call. By altering the application experience based on these events, you can turn a bad situation around for end users.

Call Insights is in public beta. While in beta, Call Insights is available to all Plivo customers at no extra cost. After general availability, premium features will available at a modest cost.

If you’ve made or received a phone call using a mobile app, such as WhatsApp, you’ve used Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). A mobile application enabled with VoIP lets you make and receive calls using mobile data instead of the device’s cellular network.

However, VoIP apps have to maintain a persistent connection with a server to receive incoming calls, which means constant communication between the app and the server in the background to keep the connection alive even when the app isn’t in use. Maintaining a persistent connection consumes battery power — but if you kill the app, it loses its connection to the server and cannot receive incoming calls.

Push notification is the solution

Using push notifications is a better way to handle incoming calls on your mobile app. With push notifications, smartphone users can receive an incoming call even when their phone is locked or an app isn’t running in the background.

Plivo mobile SDKs are built to provide a great VoIP experience in your mobile apps, and VoIP push support comes “out of the box.” Your voice-enabled app simply registers with Plivo to receive incoming calls and Plivo manages the rest.

Benefits of push notifications

Push notifications offer several benefits:

• An app can wake up when VoIP push occurs, saving battery power.
• VoIP push goes straight to the app for processing, improving efficiency.
• VoIP push is considered a high-priority notification and delivered to an app without delay.
• An app launches automatically when it receives a VoIP push, removing the requirement to keep the app running in the background.

Push notifications with Plivo mobile SDKs

The Plivo mobile SDKs for Android and iOS come integrated with push notifications. They use Apple Push Notification service (APNs) for iOS and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for Android to send notifications to an app.

Apple and Google issue push credentials for iOS and Android apps to receive incoming call alerts when push notifications are enabled on the app. Managing multiple push credentials becomes tricky when you’re building apps on different platforms. You’re likely to use unique push credentials for apps in different stages of development — alpha, beta, or general release. If you’re managing several apps with push notifications enabled, you need to generate credentials for each app.

You can manage push credentials on the Voice > Mobile Push Credentials screen of the Plivo console so that Plivo can deliver incoming calls to mobile apps.

To learn more about Plivo mobile SDKs and see how you can incorporate voice calling into your mobile apps, check out our SDK documentation for Android and iOS or get in touch with our team.

SIP trunking can provide cost savings for telephony customers, but pricing should be only one part of the equation when choosing a telecom provider. Any business looking for a new VoIP solution should also consider factors such as reliability and call clarity.

Buyers should be particularly wary of any provider that promises least-cost routing (LCR) to deliver lower prices. LCR works by being carrier-agnostic. For each call, carriers are ranked from lowest to highest price, and the call is attempted over the lowest-cost network. If the call can’t be completed over the lowest-cost carrier, the call is then attempted over whatever carrier ranks as having the next-lowest cost.

While LCR can make SIP trunking pricing appealing and works for some businesses, some LCR users pay in the form of lower overall call quality, because not all carriers provide the same level of service. It’s important to understand how a SIP service provider balances the two key factors of cost and call quality.

The challenges of using LCR

If a SIP trunking provider uses LCR, its calls may be routed to whatever network provides the lowest rate for a particular time and location, regardless of connection quality. By focusing only on cost, LCR users may experience challenges such as:

1. Audio cut-out: Since SIP trunking providers that use LCR don’t factor in quality, calls might be routed over networks that experience audio cut-outs, known as “jitter,” in which phone calls sound jittery or where words seem to be coming in out of order. SIP trunking providers route calls over the internet and the actual voice sound is transmitted as packets of data, so if a connection is unreliable, some data packets might come in out of order or not at all, which leads to jitter.
2. One-way audio: Similar to jitter, those who are on calls made via LCR can experience one-way audio if voice packets aren’t properly transmitted. When this occurs, it can result in only one party being able to hear the call, while the other party hears nothing and might think that the call dropped or the other person hung up.
3. Dropped calls: Again, by not prioritizing quality, those who are on calls made via LCR can find their calls dropped by unreliable networks.
4. Latency: Have you ever experienced a delay between the time someone on a call says something and the time the other person hears it? It makes having a conversation difficult, and it’s a problem that can occur with LCR when networks don’t transmit data fast enough. With good carrier quality, there should be no delay.  
5. High post-dial delay: LCR providers may try to connect over a network that’s at capacity and have to try again over the next-lowest-cost network. While this happens relatively quickly behind the scenes, you don’t want to waste precious seconds waiting for calls to connect every time, particularly at high-volume call centers.
6. Lack of support for automated operating systems: LCR providers may not be able to connect to a number that uses dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signaling for interactive voice response (IVR), such as an automated operating system at a customer service call center that asks callers to enter information using a Touch-Tone keypad so calls can be routed to the appropriate department. Some LCR systems pick carriers based only on cost, rather than looking into whether the underlying carrier can support DTMF.
7. Lack of Caller ID retention: Calls transmitted using LCR don’t always retain calling line identification (CLI), which means the recipient might get a call from a number that displays as “Unknown.” As we all know, calls from an “unknown” number rarely gets answered. Even if the call displays a number, it may be a random number, not the one that the caller wants to display. That means that if a customer tries to call back based on the number displayed by the LCR carrier, they may not reach the original caller.

Selecting the right carrier

To avoid these pitfalls that accompany LCR, companies should look for SIP trunking providers that have these five attributes:

1. Media and signalling PoPs near where you make calls: Having points of presence (PoP) available close to the regions where you intend to make calls helps ensure that calls connect clearly and quickly, without the latency issues that can plague LCR.
2. Multiple local carrier connections: Similar to the benefits of having strong PoP coverage, having multiple local carrier connections improves routing efficiency because it eliminates latency and call routing.
3. Guaranteed DTMF support: To avoid the problems that can occur with an LCR that can’t connect to automated operating systems that use DTMF, look for a carrier that guarantees DTMF support.  
4. CLI retention: Make sure your carrier provides CLI retention so you can avoid the problems that can stem from not displaying the right phone number.
5. High availability with promised uptime: What good is a carrier if you can’t make calls due to network downtime? Look for a SIP trunking provider that can deliver consistently. Zentrunk, for example, promises 99.95% uptime.

Quality should be the priority

While LCR provides the benefit of cost savings, both SIP trunking pricing and SIP trunking quality need to be considered together, with quality coming first. That’s because “saving money” on ineffective calls often isn’t really saving money at all, due to lost productivity and missed opportunities from unreliable calls.

One benefit of a cloud-based SIP trunking provider like Plivo is that we work with multiple local carriers and can route your calls efficiently. Rather than ranking carriers solely by cost and routing accordingly, our intelligent routing system measures call quality and creates a quality score to reorder the priority of carriers and make calls through the highest-quality carrier available. Using self-learning algorithms, Plivo continuously searches for the best-quality route for calls.

Focusing on highest quality rather than the lowest cost helps ensure that SIP trunking as a whole is worthwhile for your business.

To better understand how to select the right SIP trunking provider beyond looking just at SIP trunking pricing, see our blog post on 10 factors to consider. To learn more about SIP trunking and see how Zentrunk can help with your communications needs, get in touch with our team.