Messagebird

What is Messagebird?

Messagebird is a CPaaS (communications platform as a service) company that has been providing ways for companies to connect globally since 2011. Instead of providing a complicated platform for businesses to communicate through, Messagebird has modernized the process and made communicating with customers more straightforward. Messagebird offers direct connections with 240 carriers in more than 200 countries, so the platform fits companies looking to expand or ensure stable communications for foreign customers.

Messagebird is a provider that offers versatile in-house communication APIs. They use voice, SMS, and chat channels to help businesses communicate with their customers more efficiently. They also make it easy to integrate your business’s communications with 3rd party programs such as Salesforce, Zendesk, STDLib, Sapier, Amio, and more. 

One feature that stands out compared to other CPaaS providers is their FlowBuilder. This creates a user interface where your team quickly creates an experience for your customers with less API programming and coding. With it, you incorporate channels into your applications that your customers love – even apps like WhatsApp or WeChat are available. This way, when a customer is looking to reach out to your brand, they can communicate on the application that they are most comfortable using.

Implementing this software is done through a graphical UI with a drag and drop interface. Your team also incorporates connections to CRM or marketing automation so that agents have detailed information on each customer that they use to either solve issues or convert. This is done with custom webhooks, so integrating data from other apps in real-time is done easily.

Overview of Messagebird Features & Highlights

Messagebird is a provider that has connected more than 15,000 enterprise clients, but what makes them stand out? Here are a few highlights to consider for your business:

• The base plan is entirely free for startup-level users with less than 50 customers per month.
• All voice traffic is in-house, which makes it more secure and stable.
• A global point of presence (PoP) keeps calls from being delayed and provides stability.
• Calls are jitter-free to give you clearer call quality.
• Custom hold music for inbound callers to listen to while they are waiting.
• FlowBuilder provides a means for teams to quickly build out customer experiences in their apps. 
• Enterprise security features designed to protect data as it’s stored and is being sent are baked into the platform.
• Instant call setup eliminates post dialing delay when contacting customers.
• All technology is developed in-house.
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is addable for call centers receiving inbound calls.

For a CPaaS provider, the number of communications channels makes or breaks success. Here are the critical features of Messagebird:

• Voice Calling: This simply adds a voice channel to the application. With Messagebird, you make, receive, and control calls via the API. 
• Short Message Service (SMS): SMS is another word for texting, and it’s a major consideration for a communications API. With it, you reach customers on their smartphones with text that appears as a notification.
• WhatsApp: Messagebird’s WhatsApp API grants access to all business features in this popular chat communications application. This chat app grants access to over 1.5 billion customers in 180 countries.
• Conversation API: Messagebird calls this their Programmable Conversations feature. This provides a single seamless connection to the world’s most popular communications channels. This automatically connects your business to channels like Messenger, Line, or WeChat.
• Verification: Using Messagebird’s Verify API, your developers add two-factor authentication (2FA) to applications. This verifies each user’s passwords and adds an authentication token that ensures that customer data is verified and secure. 
• Numbers: Numbers are programmatically purchasable for both voice and SMS communications. This allows your business to create local numbers to engage specific populations, create toll-free numbers for a national presence, and use numbers in international markets so that customers reach your brand without being charged international SMS or voice rates. 

Messagebird Pricing & Plans

When it comes to pricing, Messagebird has four different plans that can work for businesses with teams between 10 and 100 people. All of the plans come with the ability to downgrade to a smaller number of team members, which will reduce the cost per month to your business. In addition, there are enterprise plans and pay-as-you-go API pricing available for companies to consider. Messagebird team plans look like this:

API pricing for Messagebird looks like this:

• Local outbound SMS messaging: $0.006/message
• Local inbound SMS messaging: $0.00/message
• SMS phone numbers: $1/month
• Outbound voice calling: $0.006/minute
• Inbound voice calling: $0.0033/minute
• Voice phone numbers: $1.5/month
• Outbound text to speech messages: $0.005/ per message
• Voicemail recordings: free to record and store for 90 days
• Voicemail transcription: $0.0400/transcription
• WhatsApp session messages: $0.005/message
• Template message WhatsApp fee: $0.0085/message
• Template message Messagebird fee: $0.005/message

Editor’s Bottom Line on Messagebird

Messagebird is a provider that benefits organizations looking for a more seamless API development methodology. Critical to their business offering is the Flow Builder – it helps your development staff automate the customer experience process without code, so it’s a potential option for those teams looking to make changes on the fly without going into the backend. 

Additionally, features like masked numbers help employees contact customers without revealing sensitive information. When they reach out via SMS or voice, the customer will see a virtual number that they use to contact your reps. This is done on the same personal phone that your employee uses without the need to expose their personal info.

Messagebird also has strong support. Their response teams are available 24/7 to help developers when they run into issues. Additionally, there’s a dedicated section on their page for documentation that provides details for the integration process. Particularly useful is their Quickstart section that has dedicated sections on SMS, WhatsApp, voice calling, voice messaging, conversations, and numbers. Each section has subsections so that developers have self-service options for solving app issues and completing development. 

Messagebird’s service level agreement (SLA) guarantees service availability for 99.95% of the time. This is considered fairly reliable by industry standards. With this kind of uptime guarantee, Messagebird customers can expect about four-and-a-half hour’s worth of downtime in a single calendar year. 

Overall, the features of Messagebird make it a strong competitor for those looking for an easy-to-use communications API platform. The fact that the company has features that are code-free may be a game changer for those with limited development staff. Also, the free plan makes for a useful solution for smaller businesses that are just beginning to scale.