5 Non-Negotiables When Choosing a Voice or SMS Provider for Your SaaS Company

Michael Tindall

Cloud spending is on the rise as a result of 2020’s global shift to remote work environments. SaaS, in particular, is gaining popularity. Gartner predicts that in 2022, the SaaS industry will generate nearly $141 billion.

This is great news for SaaS companies, but rapid growth creates its own challenges – and your existing voice/SMS provider may not have the ability to help you scale. When choosing a voice and SMS provider that will support your SaaS company’s growth, there are five key factors to look for:k

1. Ease of Implementation

Bringing on a new voice/SMS provider shouldn’t create more complications than it fixes. If you’re already using Twilio, you shouldn’t have to ditch it – the right provider will augment your existing platform. Implementation should be as simple and straightforward as adding a few lines of code in a way that won’t change functionality at all.

2. Cost Effectiveness

SaaS companies need to be able to meet greater demand without breaking the bank. Choose a voice/SMS provider that won’t charge astronomical rates to get the volume you need to grow. A good provider will be cost-competitive and scale at lower price points.

Least cost routing (LCR) is a cost-effective means to find the best path for outbound phone calls based on the lowest available cost for the route between the caller and the destination. LCR is something to look for when choosing a voice provider – you’ll be able to scale with small code changes and minimal cost.

3. Ease of Scalability

In 2020, 93% of CXOs were adopting or planning to adopt SaaS. If your SaaS company is already on a growth trajectory because of this, you’ve likely encountered the scaling roadblock if you’re relying on Twilio on its own. If it seems impossible to get enough calls per second with your existing carrier, you need a provider that can help you handle continual increases in volume.

4. Visibility and Control

Outages can happen, even with a reliable provider. You may have had the experience where you’ve filed a ticket and then sat waiting, as you had zero control beyond that and no visibility into what the carrier is doing to remediate the problem.

Transparency is key when choosing a voice provider. Look for a provider with visibility into call tracing so you can actually trace an entire SIP call from origination to the point where the outage happened. Through route blocking and route control, your provider should be able to redirect calls to carriers that are working – without extra costs.

5. Redundancy

Call tracing, route blocking, and route control are predicated on more than one carrier being available in the first place. When choosing a voice provider, look for a truly redundant solution with multiple carriers and multiple transition points. This will help you avoid outages that happen when there’s a single point of failure.

Meet Today’s SaaS Demands With Support With the Right Provider

Choosing a voice/SMS provider that helps your SaaS company scale cost-effectively is essential as demand for SaaS grows. With 40+ carriers, Commio offers a reliable, redundant solution that can be easily implemented with just a few lines of code. If you need a provider that gives you the five factors your SaaS company needs to succeed in 2021 and beyond, get in touch with Commio today.

Date posted: October 6, 2021

Topic: Inbound Voice   Messaging   Outbound Voice   SaaS   Software as a Service (SaaS)   UCaaS  

Tags: Cloud Communications   MMS   Origination   SMS   Termination   Twilio   VoIP  

Michael Tindall

Michael Tindall leads Commio's product development and engineering teams. While attending Clemson University, Michael co-founded Tsoft Solutions, purchased by ClearSky Networks. Next he built and ran support for US Networks. Michael then worked for Bandwidth till he was approached by Aaron Leon to build a cloud-based routing system. The rest is history. Michael is a “40 under 40” winner, and one of only 18 OpenSIPS Certified professionals worldwide. When not coding the future of telecom, you’ll find him enjoying movies, cars, entertaining, and exercising.

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