Customer Story
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Textline Seamlessly Switches from Twilio to SignalWire
When their SMS provider became the bottleneck, Textline migrated from Twilio to SignalWire in about a day—with no dip in application functionality and support that answers on the spot instead of in a week.
Abbi Minessale
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Textline switched from Twilio to SignalWire to improve reliability and get faster, more knowledgeable support for its SMS platform. The migration took about a day, with no dip in application functionality.
"Switching to SignalWire [from Twilio] was really fast. It took us maybe a day to get a proof of concept working. We were able to get up and running really quickly."
Mark Lilien
Co-founder and CTO, Textline
Overview
Textline offers a SaaS application to businesses that want to communicate back and forth with their customers via text messaging. Their goal is to help businesses communicate the way their customers want to — increasing engagement without stretching resources.
Textline had difficulties with their previous provider, Twilio, and was disappointed with the lack of knowledge and response time from their support team. Textline switched to SignalWire and was able to make that switch quickly and seamlessly, with no dip in their application's functionality. Textline uses SignalWire to provide phone numbers and SMS functionality to their customers, and they are thrilled with how easy it was to switch their application over, as well as with the technical expertise of the SignalWire success team.
About Textline
Textline connects businesses with textable phone numbers so they can easily communicate back and forth with customers. More than a thousand companies of all sizes use Textline to connect directly with customers using a channel that is convenient and personal. They provide texting services for customer service, sales, logistics, operations, and more.
"The level of knowledge and support that SignalWire offers is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition."
Mark Lilien
Co-founder and CTO, Textline
The Challenge
Textline aims to make communication between businesses and their customers a more efficient and rewarding experience. Their goal is to make interacting with a brand as easy as communicating with a friend or family member.
Textline's previous providers made building and maintaining this software difficult, because of a lack of industry knowledge and a lack of transparency around their products. If Textline ran into any problems with their SMS application, they were unable to get a swift response or a helpful answer — which in turn left their customers waiting.
Textline began looking for a new SMS API provider that would provide more consistency for its customers.
The Solution
Textline now uses SignalWire SMS for most of its customers who need text-enabled phone numbers for their business. The switch from their previous provider to SignalWire was quick and seamless, with no dip in their application's functionality.
Textline is able to rely on the SignalWire customer success team to quickly solve any hiccups they might face, so their customers never have to worry about the reliability of their text messaging.
Textline's customers are able to text back and forth with their own customers, as opposed to simple one-way communication like appointment reminders. Textline's customers see a much higher engagement rate and can handle a higher volume of communication with fewer people, because staff can handle multiple text conversations at once.
Results
Quick deployment | Higher engagement | Better support |
|---|---|---|
Switching providers was simple, quick, and seamless — with no change in their application's functionality. | Cell 1Customers see a much higher engagement rate even with a higher volume of communication, as staff can handle multiple text conversations at once.2 | When Textline experiences issues or has questions, they're able to get them addressed promptly by SignalWire's support team. |
"Previous providers had a lack of industry knowledge and a lack of transparency… the speed of support with Twilio — the amount of time it takes to get an answer — it takes sometimes over a week to get a response. SignalWire support members know what they're talking about and I can get an answer right there."
Mark Lilien,
Co-founder and CTO, Textline
How hard is it to switch from Twilio to SignalWire?
Textline, a business-texting platform whose entire product runs on SMS, had a proof of concept working on SignalWire in about a day and completed the switch with no dip in application functionality. SignalWire's APIs use compatible patterns, which keeps migration work small for most SMS applications.
Why did Textline leave Twilio?
In Textline's experience, support responses sometimes took over a week, and limited transparency made problems hard to resolve, leaving its own customers waiting. The team switched to SignalWire for faster answers and deeper telecom expertise.
Does switching SMS providers disrupt existing customers?
LIt didn't for Textline. The migration to SignalWire preserved full application functionality, and its business customers kept texting without interruption.
What does Textline use SignalWire for?
SignalWire provides the text-enabled phone numbers and two-way SMS behind Textline's platform, which over a thousand businesses use for customer service, sales, logistics, and operations.
How does SignalWire support compare to other SMS providers?
Textline's CTO describes SignalWire's knowledge and support as leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, with answers available on the spot rather than after a week. SignalWire's team comes from the group that built FreeSWITCH, the open-source telecom engine behind much of the industry.
Can SignalWire handle SMS for a platform business?
Yes. Textline runs its entire business-texting platform on SignalWire-powered numbers and messaging, serving more than a thousand business customers, a demanding use case where a reliability failure would be visible immediately.
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