Press Release

New research reveals enterprise customers are unhappy with Twilio pricing

95% of telcos believe they could reclaim lost enterprise CPaaS revenue if they offered a dramatically similar product

Totogi, the leading provider of telco SaaS monetization software, today revealed that telco enterprise customers are unhappy with Twilio’s price and would be willing to turn to an alternative if it was easy to switch to and effectively priced. This is according to the company’s recently completed survey of 150 telecommunication executives, directors and managers from the United States and the United Kingdom, called Uncovering Lost CPaaS Revenue in the Telecoms Sector.

Programmatic messaging services, such as application-to-person (A2P) messaging, is an area where telcos previously dominated market share as recently as 2013. However, over the last decade it has decreased dramatically due to new entrants coming into the market such as over the top, third party vendors — like Twilio.

All respondents in the survey reported having a CPaaS offering, with 77% stating it being in the form of a proprietary product and the remainder reporting that they offer a third-party product from another vendor, such as Twilio. Over the last decade, 72% believe they have lost as much as 20% of total enterprise revenue to other vendors. Most believe (79%) they have lost enterprise customers to vendors such as Twilio because their own offering was too expensive and difficult to procure. A third of respondents (33%) believe that their own internal organizations’ lack of software capability is the biggest obstacle to competing effectively with vendors like Twilio.

A large majority (91%) report the number one complaint they hear from their enterprise customers about Twilio is the expensive price. Over half (58%) believe a large portion of customers (over 20%) would swap from Twilio if their organization offered an easy-to-use, drop-in replacement of Twilio that was frictionless for enterprise customers and priced competitively. Nearly two-thirds (61%) of respondents believe that having a similar product to Twilio would allow them to better compete in the marketplace and finally, almost all (95%) believe they could recapture lost enterprise CPaaS revenue if they had an offering that was dramatically similar to Twilio.

“Twilio has been able to swipe messaging enterprise revenue from telcos because it provided an easy-to-use developer experience and easy purchasing process when compared to operator’s offerings,” said Danielle Royston, acting CEO of Totogi. “However, telcos are waking up to the fact that they need to own the platform that’s critical to their future. At Totogi, we think there is a huge opportunity in the market for a solution that helps telcos flip a Twilio codebase to their network in order to help them to regain the strategic position with enterprise IT departments and build out the developer community they need for network APIs. With a 100% compatible Twilio replacement, telcos can seize the opportunity to reclaim enterprise revenue and drive business growth.”

Totogi will attend TM Forum’s DTW23 in Copenhagen, September 19 – 21. Visit Totogi at Stand 219, Hall C2 or schedule a one-on-one meeting with the Totogi team here.

About Totogi

Totogi’s world-class, innovative monetization platform is used by CSPs to generate revenue with services such as charging as a service, AI-generated plan design, programmatic messaging services, and more. Born natively on the public cloud, telcos of all sizes can easily integrate new services to craft superior subscriber experiences to create new monetization pathways. Totogi offers usage-based pricing – a model that is catalyzing innovation in the telecom industry. Totogi is an Amazon Partner and is available to buy in the AWS Marketplace. Learn more at Totogi.com.