Magic Quadrant for Communications Platform as a Service

Communications Platform as a Service Vendor Product Comparisons 2023

Key features and pros and cons of top Communications Platform as a Service products:

Infobip - Leader

Pros:

Infobip owns a private network backbone with 43 data centers, enabling delivery and latency guarantees. It has more than 9,700 global connections of which 800 are direct operator connections.
Infobip's solution-oriented GTM leverages its own and partners' professional services, which allows it to bring CPaaS to customers daunted by more developer-focused initiatives.
Customer references cited Infobip's global reach and scaling capacity as strengths, along with its flexibility, reputation, and responsive service and support. Its mobile identity and fraud prevention services are also rated strong by customers.

Cons:

Infobip's pricing is not always transparent and perceived by customers as relatively higher than other vendors. This is attributed to high levels of customization and capabilities, and can be adjusted based on customers' expectations and needs.
Infobip's brand awareness in North America is low despite acquiring Peerless Network and OpenMarket. Infobip's partner network in North America is immature.
Limited developer awareness in North America; a customer reference cited its developer documentation to be "average."

Sinch - Leader

Pros:

The breadth of Sinch's CPaaS offering, including more advanced features such as video and email, is rivaled by only a few other vendors.
Its geographic spread, both in terms of revenue and local presence in the markets it serves, bodes well for its ability to serve large and global enterprises' full needs.
Its healthy balance between direct and indirect revenue indicates a strong ability to serve both customers using a developer self-serve model and more solution-oriented clients.

Cons:

Sinch's recent financial results reveal high debt levels which could restrict business agility.
Sinch delivered fewer new capabilities recently than comparably sized market leaders, as the current focus is on acquisition integrations.
Customers referenced give it low marks compared to other vendors on its propensity to listen to, and incorporate, constructive feedback.

Twilio - Leader

Pros:

Twilio offers an expansive CPaaS platform in terms of breadth and depth of functionality. This includes programmable communications channels spanning basic and advanced messaging, voice, video, email, security and fraud management, CDP and contact center.
Twilio delivers a rich developer ecosystem and support, including APIs, SDKs, documentation, training programs, code samples, tutorials, developer events, blogs and a developer evangelism team.
The company provides a strong operational experience in terms of customer onboarding, quality and security certifications, global customer support, platform scalability, and low message latency.

Cons:

After a significant headcount reduction in the last year and a structural reorganization, some customers referenced a slowdown in responses to customer support requests.
Twilio has above-average turnover in its executive ranks, which appears to have slowed down the pace of innovation the company offered in earlier years.
Prospects of Twilio Flex contact center would prefer better guidance, best practices and more templates in order to get started quicker.

Vonage - Leader

Pros:

Vonage is strong on its verticalization of products and services in retail, healthcare, education, online events, social, gaming, e-commerce, financial services and insurance.
Vonage emphasizes innovation, exemplified via its AI Studio, e-commerce, multichannel conversations, combined with Ericsson's 5G network APIs.
Vonage has attentive customer care with a reputation for being responsive to market needs. For instance, after hearing customers' fraud concerns, Vonage built tools for enhanced authentication, fraud monitoring and prevention.

Cons:

While Vonage does provide integrations with several CRM, CCaaS and ERP solutions, it lags behind some of its peers vis-a-vis the number of integrations, especially with CCaaS systems.
Vonage's legacy has been as a co-creator, and while it has increased its focus on developer self-serve, Vonage should further expand efforts to attract more developers and accelerate product-led growth (PLG).
Some customers in non-English-speaking markets have reported that the information about Vonage's products and services available to them in non-English languages needs improvement.

Alibaba Group - Visionary

Pros:

Strong brand and deep presence in China and Southeast Asia (SEA), where it conducts the vast majority of its business with significant regional support, ISP partnerships and local capabilities.
Robust developer community terms of APIs, SDKs, documentation, training and events.
Expansive set of CPaaS capabilities, including advanced capabilities in video, payments, IoT, AI, WhatsApp and security. These are being well-adopted within its customer base.

Cons:

Light presence in Europe and North America, where political headwinds constrain the adoption of Alibaba Cloud.
The vendor lacks a holistic go-to-market (GTM) strategy as evidenced from its complicated website, with various services scattered across multiple places. Likewise, support across the individual services is variable.
Alibaba Cloud is just starting to build out an API marketplace to the major CRM, contact center and ERP systems in comparison to other CPaaS vendors.

Bandwidth - Challenger

Pros:

Bandwidth is strong across the voice ecosystem. This includes network resiliency, emergency services, number management and regulatory expertise.
Customer references on Bandwidth are positive in terms of price, self-service capabilities, dashboards and knowledgeable support staff when human engagement is required.
Bandwidth's expansion to directly servicing Global 2000 businesses, which have similar needs to its cloud vendor customers, is well-aligned to its current business model.

Cons:

Bandwidth does not offer a broad suite of CPaaS services and solutions, and is therefore not a good fit for many nonvoice use cases. Rather, it goes deep on the CPaaS voice side.
The strongest offerings focus on North American-based organizations. Not all capabilities have been fully embedded into the Voxbone acquisition, which covers Europe and APAC (though Bandwidth cites this is in development).
Bandwidth has limited global brand recognition at the enterprise level. It is mainly known by the major cloud providers as a way to connect with their customers.

Cisco - Visionary

Pros:

Webex Connect has a good visual builder, viewed favorably by its customer base, for defining business use cases like campaign marketing, customer conversations and e-commerce.
The solution offers a rich set of APIs across a broad base of cloud applications, spanning contact centers, CRM and campaign marketing. This enables customers to get up and running quickly.
The offering supports a wide variety of channels, spanning voice, video, email and messaging apps (including Tier 1 messaging aggregation). In addition, it has experience enabling customers' success across all these channels as well.

Cons:

Webex Connect is a relatively new brand in the CPaaS domain (a capability that has been available from IMImobile for years); therefore, it has limited brand recognition within the developer and vendor communities due to the name change.
Cisco's Webex Connect branding and website is not clear; it gets lost among other Cisco Webex products, particularly Webex Contact Center.
The GTM strategy is still maturing relationships with systems integrators (SIs) and value-added resellers (VARs). This currently results in fewer prepackaged vertical use cases.

LINK Mobility Group - Niche Player

Pros:

LINK Mobility supports several buying models, including developer and solution-oriented motions, with each producing enough revenue to show that customers are successful with it.
In addition to its own visual builder, LINK Mobility supports both Azure Logic Apps and Power Automate.
Customers have cited LINK Mobility as being enthusiastic listeners and that it addresses their needs. LINK Mobility is one of only a few vendors in this Magic Quadrant with fax capability.

Cons:

LINK Mobility's omnichannel conversational platform and marketing platform have not yet been merged postacquisition of Xenioo and MarketingPlatform, leading to overlapping client experiences.
Lack of vertical-specific templates may cause clients to take more development time to bring LINK Mobility-based applications to fruition compared to other vendors.
Its platform has only a few new capabilities added in the last year because it is focusing on integrating its acquisitions. Customers seeking vendors whose offerings will advance with their needs should examine LINK Mobility's roadmap.

MessageBird - Visionary

Pros:

MessageBird offers a well-organized website for developers in terms of APIs, SDKs, documentation, breadth of services and transparent pricing.
The company provides a broad swath of basic and advanced CPaaS services, complemented by the SparkPost email acquisition in the U.S.
Strategic acquisitions in email (SparkPost), video (24sessions), AI (Hull) and Pusher have enabled MessageBird to expand both its tech suite as well as its geographic footprint.

Cons:

MessageBird has low brand recognition in North America and Gartner was only able to get one customer reference as part of our analysis.
The marketplace of prebuilt third-party applications, such as contact center, CRM and marketing, is limited compared to some peers, but it is growing.
MessageBird is still maturing its relationships with SIs and VARs, which can play a critical role in accelerating revenue growth.

Mitto - Niche Player

Pros:

Large enterprises, multinational corporations (MNCs), tech vendors and service providers who require volume with global demand for SMS, 2FA and voice are attracted to Mitto's value proposition.
Mitto differentiates through its constantly monitored, AI-enabled network which prioritizes routes for real-time reliability, enabling support of a different class of service (CoS) and prices according to CoS.
Mitto has dedicated sales, support and customer success teams in the regions it serves, notably in the U.S. and EMEA (along with self-serve). Customers rate Mitto high for proof of concept (POC), negotiations and pricing.

Cons:

Mitto's visibility is low as identified with Gartner's market momentum index (MMI), where investment in resources for marketing have remained flat.
Mitto has been slow to respond to changing demands for advanced features, like CDPs or contact centers. This is also evidenced by customers citing that Mitto should add support for the latest technology.
Mitto's operations in several hard-to-reach/emerging countries have revealed that SMS delivery rates need improvement, as cited in the customer reference survey.

Route Mobile - Niche Player

Pros:

CXPaaS supports a wide range of advanced use cases like brand loyalty, customer acquisition, engagement and care via AI, bots, campaign management, CDP, omnichannel workflows and analytics.
Strong capabilities in the Indian subcontinent, and one of the few CPaaS vendors supporting African countries and LATAM (following the acquisitions of Masivian and M.R Messaging FZC). It typically has direct sales/support to meet custom-made needs with business processes for large customers.
Its TruSense digital identity suite provides phone number scoring and verification. It maintains data residency jurisdictions and adheres to regulatory compliance, where data processing agreements are with each customer and partner.

Cons:

Limited support in North America and Europe. Route Mobile's support tends to be horizontal across its capability rather than any vertical-specific support.
Customers referenced cite a need for more updates and new innovative products, which would include more dedicated technical resources.
Its payment capabilities are more restricted than others and it doesn't yet offer flash calling, Fast Identity Online (FIDO) or biometrics.

Tanla Platforms - Visionary

Pros:

Tanla's Wisely ATP (AI/machine learning [ML]-based anti-phishing), Trubloq (blockchain-based spam control) and Wisely Communicate (blockchain-based platform to address data security and privacy needs) deliver an elevated customer experience for digital interactions.
Tanla provides extensive support for advanced messaging channels, including RCS, WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, LINE and Twitter DM, combined with conversational message templates for verticalized use cases.
Tanla has a strong focus on innovation, exemplified through its use of AI-ML technologies for spam monitoring, firewall and conversational customer experience, along with innovative payment features.

Cons:

Tanla's geographic distribution of revenue, direct support and operations is largely in APAC (mainly India and Southeast Asia). Around a third of its sales come from the Middle East (where it is expanding), Europe and North America (which it serves via partners).
A limited few referenced customers reported that they would like Tanla to improve delivery rates for SMS.
Tanla has a dedicated in-house professional services team, but needs to scale its breadth and depth of SI and professional service partners to provide more choice and flexibility to its enterprise customers.

Tencent Cloud - Challenger

Pros:

Tencent Cloud's platform can scale to support applications in gaming, e-commerce and education to serve millions of customers.
Strong real-time capabilities in video streaming, audio, WebRTC, noise reduction and codecs. Common use cases include enterprise meetings, education, gaming and social media.
Tencent Cloud is good at offering its own solutions as well as providing a platform for other vendors to build their solutions. Example solutions include CDP, contact center, telemedicine, and e-commerce.

Cons:

Tencent Cloud's business is skewed to China and selected Asian markets. Politics limits the ability to succeed in Europe and North America.
Customers referenced cite that Tencent Cloud tech support does not always respond and resolve service issues in a timely manner.
Tencent Cloud lacks a robust marketplace with prebuilt integrations to the major cloud application providers in CRM, contact center, ERP and electronic health records (EHRs).

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2023?

A: Infobip, Sinch, Twilio, Vonage

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

A: Leaders are in the strongest position to influence the market's direction. They demonstrate a market-defining vision of how CPaaS can be deployed on various use cases. Leaders have the Ability to Execute against that vision through the capabilities of their organization, business model and platform. They have demonstrated business results in the form of references and growth. They excel in their combination of market understanding, innovation, platform features and overall viability. Leaders are often the vendors that other providers measure themselves against. They are suitable vendors for most organizations to evaluate, but should not be the only vendors evaluated.

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

A: https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/magic-quadrants-research

Report:

Top Vendor Products for Communications Platform as a Service in 2023

Communications Platform as a Service Vendor Product Comparisons 2023

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2023?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

Reference