Marg Plivo

Best-in-class pricing, as far as I've seen.

Simple API and good documentation.

Most of the features that I'd like to have.

Extremely poor customer service. I ordered a phone number and needed to send them documentation that proved that I operate at the address I provided. Since I can't think of what kind of documentation they wanted me to send, I sent a customer support request to clarify. I have yet to receive a reply, and it's been over a month (I sent two follow-ups, one of them via a different channel, but still no reply. I'm abandoning them for Nexmo.

Some missing features, ex: you can send outgoing DTMF in calls but you can't receive DTMF input.

Could have TTS features, which I was pleasantly surprised that Nexmo has.

I needed to send SMS (mainly for verifying phone numbers and make outbound calls (also mainly for verifying phone numbers. Got SMS working quite easily, but have given up outbound calls for the reasons mentioned above.

At low volume, they might be more attentive to you when compared to twilio. US,canada pricing is low.

Everything else. When you are not a customer, your sales queries will get resolved really fast, but when you become a customer, you will not get reply. This happens because once you have integrated your system with plivo, the changes that you will move to twillo is low and the plivo guys very well understand this.

To start with there a lot of countries where the number pricing of plivo is higher than twillo. The mobile SDK of plivo is not very good. You will spend months with your developer trying to solve the bugs, ultimately to find out the issue is with plivo. To add to it, sometimes to numbers don't work. As we run telephony system, we sell the number to our customer, it will not work, and then we have to replace it. It reflects really bad to our customers who dont understand the fault is from plivo.

The casualty of the company is to the point that different pricing is shown in when you download the pricing excel, the website has a different price and the developer application has a different price for a few countries.

Take it if you have low volume and your business is price sensitive to telephony.

We run a telephony system. The pricing is low for US /Canada which works out to be for our advantage.

Nothing, we never registered on their website.

Ask us 1500$ without any valid reason (they said spam and we never pay for their service!

Ask us 1500$ without any valid reason (they said spam and we never pay for their service!

clean(ish web interface , easy to find your way in it - competition has sometime nightmarish web UIs

price for sms and for dids seems lower than competition (but this benefit is out-weight by the fact that you have to pay for second call leg ; and the information that you have to pay for that is pretty well hidden in the website.

They will shamelessly share your personal information with authorities for cases when your end-user breaches any laws. Is one of your customers doing god knows what and police are inquiring about end-user info? Plivo will share your own personal info to authorities. You will not be able to travel without fearing being detained for something one of your customers might have done and for which Plivo has provided authorities with your own personal details, rather than asking you who is the end user for service x or y or z. This is unforgivable.

Next , they will charge you "carrier fees" (and these will be thousand of dollars for things that were done by your customers. I get it, I could pass the charges over to your customers for whatever they did, be it telemarketing/calling DNC numbers or whatever else. Just understand that Plivo will NOT provide any documents to show that the carrier charges are valid charges. They will blatantly refuse to provide any supporting documents. Its like they made up the charge, found a justification for it (piggybacking on a 3rd party complaint and since they don't have any documents to support the legality of such charge, they will blatantly refuse to provide any such documents. "Take it or leave it. If you don't pay it, we will suspend your account. Oh , you want to dispute the charge? No way. We will suspend your account" . Sounds like extortion to me.

Next, let's talk about day to day operations:

Why do we have to pay for second call leg, even if second call leg is SIP and even if it doesnt cost Plivo anything to terminate a call via SIP . Competition doesn't charge that . API was created to closely mimic what your competition does, which is a bit backwards. Plivo could have innovated but they chose to copy. There's no API function to get list of countries (same mistake as the competition - so you have to download list of countries periodically. Then there are not too many options for filtering. Then there are countries where documents are required. Which Plivo doesn't indicate before an API purchase. So you will purchase a phone number for country XYZ only to find out that that specific country requires the end-user to be located within same geographic area as the number is. There's no way to get a refund for those numbers , even if you do not formally "activate" them - well, unless you write them an email. Come on guys, really? You created an API for the purposes of allowing your customers to automate their tasks but then you are forcing them to cross-check the information manually before each purchase, just to make sure that the country does'nt have any registration requirements? Couldn't you have added this information in an API call?

Then there's the endless maintenance notifications. Today SMS for X Y and Z networks is down, yesterday it was origination from country ABC, two days ago it was SMS for network Vodafone, and so on. It makes it looks as Plivo is not very stable and that things have to be constantly tweaked and repaired - hence the endless and countless maintenance windows that put various services down. I do appreciate the notices and the fact that you are letting customers know about your various downtimes, but I feel like you are having too many issues.

Support - doesn't seem to be located within US and sometimes you will have to explain the same thing several times before it is understood by support. (this goes for API integration mostly.

Management - we had a phone conversation with management regarding these issues. It's been months since then, and none of the problems we reported (which are described in this review were solved.

Do not use them. They will share your personal info with authorities over complaints received on your customer's activities - rather than inquiring with you about who is the real end-user behind a phone number.

The only benefits I currently see are the benefits my lawyer could see, should I ever be detained for something one of my customers has done but for which Plivo has just shared my own personal info, instead of asking for end-user details.

Business problems - sometimes I am creating business problems with Plivo, instead of solving them. (see my comments about registration requirements ; have to go back to customer, refund, provide numbers from different carrier that doesn't require end-user registration - and sometimes these requirements are not even mandated by the law for the countries where Plivo is asking for that info ; see for example Norway where Plivo is asking for end-user info/proof of address, but where this is not a requirement mandated by Norway telecom regulator or authorities.

Plivo works. You can use phone numbers and program them just as they say. It's not the best service on the market, comparing to the competition, it has some problems, but it could be acceptable for you.

This company is completely untrustworthy. After months of running contract I've suddenly received a notice of termination: within 48 hours notice. There was no reason given. "Your account has been flagged" is not a reason. No explanation. No warning.

The funny thing is that I have not been even using the account for last few months, yet I have violated some unspecified terms of service. I don't know which ones specifically.

Such behavior makes this company completely untrustworthy. Nobody can move entire communication system elsewhere in 48 hours.

Are you willing to do business with someone who just cancels your contract for no reason whenever he feels like without a warning, with no word of explanation?

Do yourself a favor and avoid any company that shows that level of arrogance and irresponsibility. No matter the size. It's just not worth to risk being a hostage of people like that.

Don't use it. Product is OK, but the company's policy towards clients is unacceptable. You take a huge risk using their services.

I've build a communication system for live broadcasts, so people can call the show via regular phone numbers.