Integrated communication features are vital for a web or mobile application. Software development companies have to deal with all the complications resulting from programming language incompatibilities, diversity of protocols on top of all the specialized servers, and software needed to integrate these features into their applications. At the same time, it should be as simple as using a cell phone or a home internet connection for the end-users of the applications.
Twilio came into the market a few years back and offloaded this burden from the developers. With simplest text messages to complex communications, Twilio enables businesses to keep an impactful engagement with users worldwide.
This article will introduce you to Twilio and go through five different ways developers can use Twilio to make your lives easier.
What is Twilio?
Twilio is a customer engagement functionality provider used by developers worldwide to build unique communication features and capabilities like voice, text, chat, video, and email into their applications.
Twilio helps the developers to achieve this task by converting the real-world events into virtual signals that software can handle and provides APIs and SDKs to access these events. Developers can use the same languages and protocols they already use in their applications and respond to the events in other channels (voice, text, etc.) using the Twilio Markup Language (TwiML).
Now you must be wondering what exactly Twilio does to connect the world of telephony to our applications and why developers should use Twilio.
Let’s find out in the next section.
5 Ways How Developers Can Use Twilio
As communicating with the telephony network requires the ability to target the communication to a particular device, Twilio has a phone number inventory which has phone numbers that provide a virtual presence on the physical telephony network. Developers can search Twilio’s phone number inventory, select a number that fits their use cases (by region, country, the alpha-numeric meaning behind the number) and configure this to quickly and cheaply integrate communication features into their applications.
There are five different ways developers can use this Twilio phone number and other Twilio products.
1. Twilio MessagingX
Twilio MessagingX
Source: Twilio MessagingX
Twilio MessagingX enables applications to easily communicate with end-users over their preferred channel by providing APIs such as Programmable messaging API, Conversations API, and Verify API to send and receive SMS, MMS, OTT messages (WhatsApp and Messenger) at scale.
Here are some of the use cases of Twilio MessagingX.
Send notifications, mass alerts, and business messages: With the help of the Programmable messaging API, which is a REST API, the developers can send and receive SMS and MMS messages, track the delivery of sent messages, schedule SMS messages to send at a later time, and retrieve and modify message history. On top of that, with the help of Twilio short-codes ( 5 or 6-digit mobile numbers), developers can send time-sensitive alerts and send messages in bulk.
Build conversations that can span multiple channels: Using the Conversations API, developers can integrate functionality to start a conversation with SMS and seamlessly continue it over another channel such as Chat or WhatsApp. The API can also create conversations with multiple parties and set up webhooks to monitor and intercept the conversations.
Validate Users: With the help of the Verify API, developers can integrate user validation via TOTP, Push, SMS, voice, or email.
2. Programmable Voice