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Amazon SNS vs Twilio: What are the differences?

Amazon SNS and Twilio are two popular communication platforms. Let's explore the key differences between them.

  1. Integration with Other AWS Services: Amazon SNS is tightly integrated with other AWS services, allowing seamless communication between various components of a cloud infrastructure, such as EC2 instances, Lambda functions, and more. On the other hand, Twilio offers integration with a wide range of services beyond the AWS ecosystem, making it more versatile to connect with different systems.

  2. Protocols and Message Types: Amazon SNS supports multiple protocols and message types, including SMS, email, Amazon SQS, and HTTP/HTTPS. This flexibility enables developers to choose the most suitable method for their specific use cases. In contrast, Twilio primarily focuses on SMS and voice messages, providing more extensive features and customization options for these types of communications.

  3. Pricing Structure: Both Amazon SNS and Twilio offer pay-as-you-go pricing models, but there are differences in their cost structures. Amazon SNS pricing depends on the number of messages sent, subject to varying rates for different regions and destinations. In contrast, Twilio's pricing is more granular, charging per message, call minute, and additional features, making it more suitable for applications with specific cost optimization requirements.

  4. Global Reach: Twilio has a larger global reach compared to Amazon SNS, with coverage in over 180 countries. This widespread availability allows businesses to connect with customers worldwide effortlessly. While Amazon SNS provides global support, it may have limitations in certain regions, impacting the reachability for specific use cases.

  5. Platform Usage: Amazon SNS primarily serves as a messaging platform within the broader range of AWS services. It is often chosen by businesses already using AWS, benefiting from its seamless integration with other cloud services. Twilio, on the other hand, is more commonly used as a standalone communication platform, catering to companies seeking a dedicated and versatile messaging service.

  6. Additional Features: Twilio offers a broader range of features beyond basic messaging, including voice recordings, conference calling, and interactive voice response (IVR) systems. These additional functionalities make Twilio a preferred choice for applications that require advanced telephony capabilities. While Amazon SNS offers some additional features, it primarily focuses on messaging functionalities without extensive voice-related features.

In summary, Amazon SNS is a fully managed messaging service for application-to-application communication, offering flexible message delivery options and scalability. Twilio, on the other hand, is a cloud communications platform that provides APIs for building voice, SMS, and messaging applications, offering extensive features for real-time communication needs.

Advice on Amazon SNS and Twilio
Needs advice
on
MessageBirdMessageBird
and
TwilioTwilio

Hey! We need an omnichannel inbox that's housed within Salesforce Sales Cloud that makes it super easy for our reps to respond to inbound communication (needs: clean inbox, provides historical context, etc.). We're a high-volume call center, and we get a ton of incoming SMS and email every day. We'd love a solution that lets us view all of that in one place — ideally Salesforce, as that's where our reps work, and we want to avoid needing them to switch between windows. Thanks!

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Replies (2)
Recommends

if the inbound SMS are sales rep specific you could potentially have twilio fwd that msg to a google voice phone number which will in turn put an email in their inbox (so they're looking at 1 inbox instead of multiple places) Just an idea. Probably way off in left field compared to what you're thinking and I also invision. I'm not all familiar with MessageBird nor am I at all familiar w/ your data flow / business process. Would be happy to help brainstorm anytime! 10+ years experience on the sfdc platform

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Ryan Hitchler
CEO & Co-founder at Centro · | 1 upvotes · 105.7K views
Recommends
on
TwilioTwilio
at

Check out Centro. We built this to solve this exact problem! We used tools like Twilio but wrapped it up in a application that runs on Slack.

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Dainis Duļbinskis
Marketing project manager at Colortime · | 2 upvotes · 112.5K views
Needs advice
on
PlivoPlivo
and
TwilioTwilio

Hello! We need to integrate an SMS gateway into our app for user phone verification. As we are just starting, we are searching for the most affordable/best price/performance option for SMS gateway to verify client phone numbers with the code, maybe you can suggest something between those two or maybe something else. We are planning to do business in Europe

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Replies (4)
Recommends
on
NexmoNexmo

Twilio is the leader. Strong API, excellent documentation and reliable service. I suggest Nexmo since their API has smaller learning curve, offering better prices and also reliable solution. Also Nexmo offers more call per sec. 3 vs 2 and 2, out of the box. Good luck

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Recommends
on
TwilioTwilio
at

Twilio documentation is very good and as a platform it just works. It's robust and reliable. We road-tested plivo and it wasn't anywhere near in terms of docs or support. In fact their support was terrible at replying to us. 48 hours to answer basic questions.

That's said, were also using sendgrid by twilio and that's not been pleasant . Their email builder appears to be react based but written by a team who don't understand react very well. That's a nightmare as yet

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Recommends
on
TwilioTwilio

Twilio might be not cheapest, but they have awesome documentation (a lot of examples), easy to use API and libraries. I think it's a very good product to start. If the bill will become too heavy, you can shop around for economical options.

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Andrew Voirol
Founder at The Social Diner · | 1 upvotes · 112.1K views
Recommends
on
PlivoPlivo

stackshare doesn't seem to have this in the stack list yet, but in my experience Twillio is attractive. It's good for basics, their acquisition of SendGrid gives them a bit more market share.. They are stronger at marketing to those that benefit them. That said from my understanding SendGrid leases the networks, channels, and lines. While their interface is friendly, their pricing suited for lower volume, you want to look at what they are using via an API, a contract, etc. Is it a more friend UI to a combination of others. What redunancies do to they have, try their support. It's not that Twillio is bad, it's about the volume, the use case, the liabiitlies you might have to your end-users if Twillio isn't the right choice. Another option is Bandwidth. You ask for affordable, Twillio is an option, but front end costs v/s the costs of support you'll need to consider. Bandwidth has more reliability but requires more engineering and more skillset. Another option that is worth considering, not the most affordable, but https://www.zipwhip.com/ have perhaps options that might be higher and the cost is relative. Wight costs, of support costs of integration, cost of scale, costs of a volume..

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Pros of Amazon SNS
Pros of Twilio
  • 12
    Low cost
  • 6
    Supports multi subscribers
  • 148
    Powerful, simple, and well documented api
  • 88
    RESTful API
  • 66
    Clear pricing
  • 61
    Great sms services
  • 58
    Low cost of entry
  • 29
    Global SMS Gateway
  • 14
    Good value
  • 12
    Cloud IVR
  • 11
    Simple
  • 11
    Extremely simple to integrate with rails
  • 6
    Great for startups
  • 5
    SMS
  • 3
    Great developer program
  • 3
    Hassle free
  • 2
    Text me the app pages
  • 1
    New Features constantly rolling out
  • 1
    Many deployment options, from build from scratch to buy
  • 1
    Easy integration
  • 1
    Two factor authentication

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Cons of Amazon SNS
Cons of Twilio
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 4
      Predictable pricing
    • 2
      Expensive

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is Amazon SNS?

    Amazon Simple Notification Service makes it simple and cost-effective to push to mobile devices such as iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire, and internet connected smart devices, as well as pushing to other distributed services. Besides pushing cloud notifications directly to mobile devices, SNS can also deliver notifications by SMS text message or email, to Simple Queue Service (SQS) queues, or to any HTTP endpoint.

    What is Twilio?

    Twilio offers developers a powerful API for phone services to make and receive phone calls, and send and receive text messages. Their product allows programmers to more easily integrate various communication methods into their software and programs.

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    Blog Posts

    Jul 2 2019 at 9:34PM

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    What are some alternatives to Amazon SNS and Twilio?
    Amazon Pinpoint
    Amazon Pinpoint makes it easy to run targeted campaigns to drive user engagement in mobile apps. Amazon Pinpoint helps you understand user behavior, define which users to target, determine which messages to send, schedule the best time to deliver the messages, and then track the results of your campaign.
    Amazon MQ
    Amazon MQ is a managed message broker service for Apache ActiveMQ that makes it easy to set up and operate message brokers in the cloud.
    Google Cloud Messaging
    Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) is a free service that enables developers to send messages between servers and client apps. This includes downstream messages from servers to client apps, and upstream messages from client apps to servers.
    Firebase
    Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
    Amazon SES
    Amazon SES eliminates the complexity and expense of building an in-house email solution or licensing, installing, and operating a third-party email service. The service integrates with other AWS services, making it easy to send emails from applications being hosted on services such as Amazon EC2.
    See all alternatives