The Pros, Cons and Features of CPaaS
The demand for CPaaS solutions is increasing at a rate of 40% every year. As consumers’ reliance on their mobile devices increases, marketers are learning that it’s critical to include a communications approach and solution that allows them to connect with customers wherever they are. By 2025, there will be over 75 billion connected devices as more enterprises leverage CPaaS to create more robust business models with IoT.
The coronavirus pandemic has been a significant driver of CPaaS market expansion. In 2020, many traditional businesses awoke to the fact that establishing a mobile connection with customers was no longer something they could defer. Large global firms were suddenly confronted with the difficulty of drastically altering their customer interaction model, which involved more than simply a mobile app and support phone number.
CPaaS solutions offered a method to adapt quickly while still providing high-quality services without disrupting their operations. Today, there’s every indication that this market will continue its steady growth well into the near future.
But What Is CPaaS?
So, what does CPaaS mean and what does it stand for? CPaaS stands for “communications platform as a service.” CPaaS providers like Signalmash, Twilio and Plivo offer features such as messaging, enterprise chat, text notifications, and voice call automation to their customers. These companies provide a communications API. This means if your company has a software and needs texting and voice capabilities, you simply use an API and those features can be incorporated. Simply, you don’t need to build your own communications platform and infrastructure. You rely on the CPaaS to do that for you. This saves you a lot of time and money.
CPaaS is also referred to as ‘messaging as a service.’ It is deployed on cloud servers and is accessed by app developers through an API (typically REST). Businesses leverage it to build more complex communication solutions that involve multiple channels like messaging, voice, and video conferencing.
CPaaS providers also offer more intelligent communication tools like message bots, chatbots, 2-factor authentication, SMS marketing campaigns, automotive telematics, machine traffic monitoring, smart home services, etc. The API can easily be integrated into a SaaS, generally by developers with programming expertise.
The Building Blocks
CPaaS is based on three fundamental building blocks:
- It provides a stable, scalable, agile, and multi-channel environment for businesses to enhance customer engagement across the digital space.
- It enables you to focus on your business and be flexible with your technology stack. CPaaS allows you to use any programming language or framework that supports an API (REST or otherwise).
- It provides ready-made integrations for common services like push notifications, data storage, user management, etc. This allows developers to concentrate on feature development rather than spending time managing backend infrastructure. It also reduces the cost of maintenance and allows developers to build in a scalable way.
What CPaaS Does for Businesses
It has become a vital tool in the arsenal of every business that wants its software or workflow to interact with end-users via different digital channels. It offers the foundation to create all types of functionality from productivity tools to interactive, integrated experiences like smart assistants and customer support bots.
CPaaS solutions allow you to add one or more features within minutes using an universal programming language (API), which makes it easy to connect an app with the existing infrastructure. This is perfect for enterprises that want their transition into product development platforms as painless as possible.
The Advantages of CPaaS
The notable advantages include:
— Customers use an API to quickly integrate communications like SMS and programmatic voice into their own app.
— CPaaS providers offer easy access to backend infrastructure, allowing developers to create communications for their customers on different digital channels.
— CPaaS enables developers to incorporate voice and texting capabilities into their existing apps without building back-end infrastructure. This is especially useful for small businesses that cannot afford to hire programmers and large companies to build communications functionality into their app.
— CPaaS provides built-in user management tools so users can easily see statistics and track the performance of the platform’s features.
Who Are the Top CPaaS Providers?
Some of the best CPaaS providers include Signalmash, Twilio, Vonage, Plivo, MessageBird, and Bandwidth. These vendors provide CPaaS solutions for all types of businesses from small to large enterprises.
Signalmash
Signalmash may be a relatively new entrant into the CPaaS space, but its platform is fast becoming one of the most preferred cloud communications services. The team has extensive experience in the telecommunications industry and long-standing relationships with carriers in the space. This allows Signalmash to provide extremely stable, flexible and excelled services at a lower price than competitors. Signalmash did not have to start bottom-up in the cloud, making them an instant leader in the field.
The Signalmash platform includes an API for configuring and customizing all elements of communications from SMS and MMS to programmatic voice. The platform is both simple to use and extremely functional, making it the go-to CPaaS platform for users with limited technical expertise.
Twilio
Twilio is another popular provider. They provide a full set of services that can be used for building both one-to-one and one-to-many communications apps. The platform’s flexibility lies in its ability to support multiple protocols including MMS, SMS, RCS, Voice & Video Calling, and IP Messaging. Although their services are feature-rich, they are less flexible in providing customized services and their costs are the highest in the marketplace.
Plivo
Plivo is a platform that provides developers with all the tools they need to create customizable communications solutions. The company focuses on providing and API for SMS and Voice in approximately 200 countries. There’s also MMS possibilities available.
Bandwidth
Another well-known company in the space, Bandwidth offers communications services across multiple domains including cloud telephony, SMS API, elastic SIP trunking, and voice calling among others. The platform’s ease of use makes it very popular among tech enthusiasts who may not have much prior experience in this domain. It allows companies to integrate flexible voice messaging into their apps.
Conclusion
By integrating texting and calling features into your existing app through a CPaaS platform, your business can increase engagement among customers and provide personalized communications experiences via multiple messaging channels. A communications platform provides an effective and efficient way for your company to communicate with your audience.
It is a great option if you want to provide additional channels of communications without needing to invest in developing a communications app from scratch. At Signalmash, we offer customizable solutions to meet the needs of any business or project. Unlike our competitors, we don’t compete with our customers. And we offer no-fluff so you pay only for what you need.
Talk to us today and let’s discuss how our CPaaS solutions can improve your business offerings.
Ask us how you can cut your Twilio or CPaaS bill up to 50%!!