MessageBird (YC S16), Twilio rival from Europe, introduces support for chat apps | Hacker News Reader

MessageBird (YC S16), Twilio rival from Europe, introduces support for chat apps

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54 pointsrobertvis17 comments

Hi HN community, my name is Robert and I'm the founder of MessageBird. MessageBird is an API for sending Text, Voice & Chat messages to your customers globally.

Today we launched our API to connect to different chat platforms: FB Messenger, WeChat, Line and Telegram using one single API. You can play around with it in our dashboard and have some chats with yourself before integrating the API.

We would love feedback from the community on our Chat API and/or Text & Voice API's. Let me know if you have any questions. https://www.messagebird.com/en-us/chat-api

Not trolling, the title says you are a rival to Twilio. What do you feel you offer that they don't, or why should an existing Twilio customer use MessageBird instead?

We are cheaper than Twilio in almost all countries including US. But price is not everything.

In terms of our strenghts (not sure how this relates to Twilio):

We have a direct-to-carrier strategy, most focussed on Europe & Asia. This ensures reliable and fast delivery. If you are a high volume text message customer we have global experience working for some of the most needy and security sensitive companies including banks & governments.

He wasn't kidding .005 vs .0075 USD cents per message and reviving messages is free unlike Twilio. Twilio also charges $1.00 a month for the number itself. I will be giving your service a try in the future sir.

We'd love to help you out with this especially because we are newer to the US - really looking for customer experiences- email me please and we can setup a demo account: robert@messagebird.com

How would you say you compare to Nexmo? Nexmo also tends to be cheaper than Twilio.

FYI, we've built engageSPARK, "MailChimp for SMS & Voice IVR" on top of several global SMS & Voice providers, including Nexmo, Plivo, and Twilio. We'd love to also consider integrating MessageBird if it makes sense.

I don't really like bashing others on why we are better than them. We provide high-quality service on top of being generally cheaper. We are all telco/ tech people so have vast knowledge how this space works and should work. Please email me to try us out, if you are not happy I'll refund you! robert@messagebird.com

>The company has been profitable since its first year

Something to learn from ;-)

Thx :) Climate is different in Europe, you need profitability to survive.

Yeah, you guys being profitable made me very happy. It's good to know that not all companies are just crazy burn for growth machines. Congrats!

Thanks! I'm not persé against burning money for growth, it is just different in Europe than here. We are also Dutch, and you know the saying "going dutch" so maybe a bit cheap haha

For the uninitated: MeesageBird is super cheap compared to twilio.

Not always.

A Virtual Mobile Number for Spain on Twilio costs $1 while on MessageBird it costs $30.

https://www.twilio.com/sms/pricing/es https://www.messagebird.com/en-us/virtual-mobile-number

We will look into this asap!

Thanks !

As a happy customer I get slightly concerned when relatively small, successful companies get (too) ambitious for rapid expansion. Luckily in this case, while MessageBird works very well, the product is not unique and quite easy to substitute may the need arise. I'd rather not see that happen, though. :)

Happy to hear you are happy. We are a very lean company and most of our expansion will be in scaling technology - not people or products. However, if you ever feel the need to leave, can we agree you write me an e-mail first? robert@messagebird.com

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