Detailed comparison of popular SMS / Voice services for mailing and authorization

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 more reliable to use for registering in mobile projects, sending SMS notifications, newsletters and various other actions.

We decided to collect in one place a comparative analysis of several SMS providers or as they are also called SMS gates. Among the selected were 3 popular domestic services and 3 foreign. The article does not claim to be the ultimate truth, and some estimates may seem incomplete or superficial, but we decided to share the experience.

To complete the picture, we decided to evaluate the services in various planes, since all of them nevertheless occupy different niches and are aimed, at times, at providing various kinds of services.

Today we compare:

1. twilio.com
2. plivo.com
3. nexmo.com
4. smsaero.ru
5. sms.ru
6. smsc.ru

Ease of integration

Let's start with the filling services and their capabilities. Since each third-party service connected to the project aims to perform a specific task, we decided to focus on the capabilities first. The first and important point: how convenient it is to work with the service and integrate it into any project. We compared the volume of documentation of services 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 colleagues in the shop. In some documentation, such as, for example, Twilio and Nexmo, there are ready-made implementations in several programming languages. Russian SMSC.ru, which offers comprehensive solutions to pressing SMS problems, does not remain in this regard either.

Technology and Services

The second important aspect is “What can a service actually do?” For many mobile projects, having an SDK for integration, faster development of voice services and similar solutions is important. Some will use the service only for newsletters 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 you can see from this table, the Russian market of SMS gates is aimed primarily at mass mailing of messages and user notifications. Whereas the western market primarily creates platforms for the service use of SMS. Things like the mobile SDK are almost a gimmick in this market.

Text-to-Speech is a rather trendy function for authorization, which consists in a callback from the service when the robot speaks, for example, an authorization code. A convenient thing for people with disabilities, as well as if there are problems with the delivery of SMS. Among the projects using it are Roamer, Telegram and others. It is quite 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, the speed of response to a request and the speed of troubleshooting. Startups with the words Bank or Money in the names will have time to encounter technical support more than once, so in this area we are also in a hurry to share the collected data, which looks like this:

Service	Chat	Forum	post office	Skype	Telephone
Twilio				✘	✘
Plivo	✘			✘	✘
Nexmo	✘			✘
SMSAero
SMS.ru	✘	✘		✘
SMSC

Subjectively, it can be noted that the service orientation of Western services affects here: Russian react much faster and more willingly than their western competitors. This is primarily due to the fact that the process of selling these services is more actively built on the Russian market. Western services respond mainly to created tickets, while Russian services can be easily written or skype / chat directly on the site.

Economics and money

The tariff networks 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. Interestingly, even some Western services, such as Twilio, have different tariffs for each of the Russian operators.

All calculations are shown at the rates for mailing with a letter signature:

Service	Megaphone	Beeline	MTS	Other
Twilio	$ 1.02	RUR 0.41	0.34 rub.	0.34 rub.
Plivo	0.31 rubles	0.31 rubles	0.31 rubles	0.31 rubles
Nexmo	0.68 rubles	0.68 rubles	0.68 rubles	0.68 rubles
SMSAero	0.65 rub	0.65 rub	0.65 rub	0.65 rub
SMS.ru	0.69 rubles	0.49 rubles	0.49 rubles	0.25 rub
SMSC	0.70 rubles	0.70 rubles	0.70 rubles	0.40 rubles

Payment Methods

As for payment methods, it goes without saying that the Western SMS market looks more “White” here. All the services presented 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 turned out to be useful for those who are going to do SMS authorization in their application or use the newsletters.

Last hack

An interesting life-threat lies in the fact that even projects with an alphanumeric signature can use several SMS providers at once, which allows significant savings by creating combined usage patterns.