Detailed comparison of popular SMS / Voice services for mailings and authorizations
Dozens of mobile startups meet their user from the SMS authorization screen. Today we will try to figure out which service is more convenient, more profitable and safer to use for registration in mobile projects, sending SMS notifications, mailings and various other actions.
We decided to put together a comparative analysis of several SMS providers in one place, or as they are called SMS gates. Among the selected were 3 popular domestic services and 3 overseas. The article does not claim to be the ultimate truth, and some estimates may seem incomplete or superficial, but we decided to share our experience.
For completeness, we decided to evaluate the services in different planes, since all of them still occupy different niches and are aimed, at times, at providing various kinds of services.
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Today we compare:
Easy integration
Let's start with filling services and their capabilities. Since each third-party service connected to the project aims to perform a specific task, we decided to first focus on the possibilities. The first and important point: how convenient is it to work with the service and integrate it into any project. We compared the volume of service documentation and came to the following conclusions:
| Documentation | Detailed | Brief |
|---|---|---|
| Twilio | ✘ | |
| Plivo | ✘ | |
| Nexmo | ✘ | |
| SMSAero | ✘ | |
| SMS.ru | ✘ | |
| SMSC | ✘ |
Western services, as a rule, provide more detailed documentation than their Russian shop colleagues. In some documentation such as, for example, Twilio and Nexmo, there are ready-made implementations in several programming languages. Russian SMSC.ru, which proposes detailed solutions to pressing SMS-problems, does not remain in this regard either.
Technologies and services
The second important aspect is “What can the service actually do?”. For many mobile projects, it is important to have an SDK for integration, faster development of voice services and similar solutions. Some will only use the service for mailings and / or notifications.
| Service | Modules for CMS: | Sdk | Sandbox | Calls | Text to Speech | Sip | Back call | Newsletter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Twilio | ✘ | ✘ | ||||||
| Plivo | ✘ | |||||||
| Nexmo | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | |||||
| SMSAero | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ||
| SMS.ru | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ||
| SMSC | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ |
As can be seen from this table, the Russian market for SMS gates is primarily aimed at sending mass messages and notifying users. While the Western market primarily creates a platform for service use of SMS. Things like the mobile SDK are almost a curiosity in this market.
Text-to-Speech is a rather trendy function for authorization, which consists in a callback from the service when the robot pronounces, for example, an authorization code. A handy thing for people with disabilities, as well as if there are problems with the delivery of SMS. Among the projects that use it are Roamer, Telegram and others. It is rather curious that almost all services have Russian localization of this function, that is, a Russian voice.
Customer support
An important role is played by technical support and its competence, speed of response to the request and prompt resolution of the problem. Startups with the words Bank or Money in the names will have time to face technical support even once, so in this area we are also in a hurry to share the collected data that looks like this:
| Service | Chat | Forum | post office | Skype | Phone |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Twilio | ✘ | ✘ | |||
| Plivo | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ||
| Nexmo | ✘ | ✘ | |||
| SMSAero | |||||
| SMS.ru | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ||
| SMSC |
Subjectively, it can be noted that the service orientation of Western services affects here: the Russian respond much faster and more willingly than their Western competitors. This is due primarily to the fact that the Russian market is more actively built the process of sales of these services. Western services respond mainly to created tickets, while Russian ones can easily be written or via Skype / chat directly on the site.
Economy and money
The tariffs of SMS-gates are different, some have a fixed tariff for any volume and regardless of the delivery operator, some on the contrary - have a complex tariff grid. We decided to build on the highest prices "head on" for 1 message. What is interesting, even some western services, such as Twilio, have different tariffs for each of the Russian operators.
All calculations are given at the rates for mailings with an alphabetic signature:
| Service | Megaphone | Beeline | Mts | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Twilio | 1.02 rub. | 0.41 rub. | 0,34 rub. | 0,34 rub. |
| Plivo | 0.31 rub. | 0.31 rub. | 0.31 rub. | 0.31 rub. |
| Nexmo | 0,68 rub. | 0,68 rub. | 0,68 rub. | 0,68 rub. |
| SMSAero | 0,65 rub. | 0,65 rub. | 0,65 rub. | 0,65 rub. |
| SMS.ru | 0,69 rub. | 0,49 rub. | 0,49 rub. | 0.25 rub. |
| SMSC | 0.70 rub. | 0.70 rub. | 0.70 rub. | 0.40 rub. |
Payment Methods
As for the methods of payment, then of course the western SMS market looks more "White" here. All the presented services did not work with WM, Yandex.Money or any other Russian systems.
| Service | POISON | WM | Cards | Cashless | Paypal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Twilio | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ||
| Plivo | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ||
| Nexmo | ✘ | ✘ | |||
| SMSAero | ✘ | ✘ | |||
| SMS.ru | ✘ | ||||
| SMSC |
We hope the post has been useful for those who are going to do SMS-based authorization in their application or use mailings.
Last life hacking
An interesting layfak is that even projects with a literal signature can be used by several SMS providers at once, which allows significant savings by creating combined usage patterns.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/227305/
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