Unified Communications
Messaging and Voice APIs
Messaging and voice APIs let your business systems send texts, place calls and send faxes by themselves, from a business phone number. The industry name is CPaaS, communications platform as a service. An API is simply the way one piece of software asks another to do something.
- 5 companies on the shelf
- Coverage
Buyer's checklist
Eight questions that decide this purchase
Think these through before you buy. Answer what you can and your quote comes back faster. Skip what you cannot, and we will work through it with you.
- 01
Do you want raw APIs for your developers, or texting and calling already built into a tool you use?
- 02
How much engineering time can you commit to building it and keeping it running?
- 03
Which channels do you need, such as text, picture messages, voice, fax or WhatsApp, and in which countries?
- 04
Which numbers will you use: local, toll-free or a short code? Will an existing number be text-enabled or moved?
- 05
Which system must it connect to: your customer database, your ticketing platform, Teams, Webex or Zoom?
- 06
Must conversations be captured and kept, for how long, and does that include staff using their own phones?
- 07
Do you need proof that a message was delivered, and a searchable history?
- 08
Should the same provider also carry your voice traffic?
88x8
No company matches every box you checked
That usually means the combination is rare, not impossible. Clear a filter, or add the service and we will go find who can do it.
Capabilities come from published supplier material. We confirm them for your addresses before anything is quoted.
More on what it is
There are two kinds of message. Person-to-person is an employee texting a customer. Application-to-person is a system doing it: an appointment reminder, a delivery notice, a code to sign in. Both go out from a local or toll-free number that the provider assigns or that you already own.
You can buy this in two forms. A standalone platform gives your developers the raw building blocks, and they write the rest. The other form arrives already built into something you use. Texting can be switched on inside Microsoft Teams, Webex or Zoom, where an incoming text appears as a message in a channel and the reply goes back out as a text. It can sit inside your ticketing or customer system, where staff send templated texts and an incoming text opens a ticket automatically. How much engineering time you have decides which form suits you.
Two details surprise people. Texting can often be turned on for a number you already have, without moving that number away from your current voice carrier. And business texting involves registering your numbers and how you will use them with the carriers, so ask each provider how long that takes.
Regulated organizations have a further need. Government agencies and financial firms must be able to produce a complete, time-stamped record of business conversations, including those on WhatsApp and text. Capture platforms do that in one of two ways: a governed hub that every approved channel runs through, or a mode where staff keep using the apps they know while the platform records the business conversations. Be wary of any tool that captures by cloning a device or imitating an app's private workings. Those break when the app updates and often break the app's own rules.
Who needs it
- Your customers would sooner text than call, and your main business number cannot send or receive texts.
- Your IT service desk or HR team works in a ticketing system and wants tickets opened and updated by text.
- You schedule people, such as recruits, field technicians or appointments, and text is how they answer.
- You are a government agency or a financial firm that must capture and keep business messages.
- You handle documents that still travel by fax, in healthcare, law or real estate, and want software to send them. See Hosted Fax.
If your staff text a few customers from their own phones and no rule requires a record, you do not need a platform. You need one when software must send the messages, when volume grows, or when someone can demand the record.
Signs you need it
- Staff switch between a chat app and a separate texting tool to reach the same customer.
- A system cannot send a status update by itself, so a person types it.
- A records officer cannot produce a complete set of business text conversations when asked.
- Customers already reach you on WhatsApp or text, and your official systems capture none of it.
- Staff at the counter rely on a phone call or a sign in the window to learn a customer has arrived.
How IT Raven helps
Add Messaging and Voice APIs to your quote list and tell us what you want to send, from which system and in which countries. A person takes that to the messaging providers in our 500+ partner network and sorts them on what disqualifies: the channels and countries they cover, whether they connect to the system you use, and the record-keeping rules you fall under.
We raise number porting and carrier registration at the start, because both take time and both are easy to forget. If the real need is a texting channel for a customer service team, we will point you to Contact Center, where it often comes included.
We stay on one thread through setup, registration and the first live traffic, and the same team is here when you add a channel or a country.
How buying works
The store is the easy part. Staying on the account is the job.
Anyone can show you logos. The reason to buy here is what happens on install night, and on the ticket you open nine months later.
- 01
Build your quote list
Add services and companies as you shop. No form stands between you and the shelf.
- 02
We bring back real options
A person shops the bench against your addresses, then walks you through what fits and what does not.
- 03
We handle the order and install
Paperwork, site survey, install dates, cutover night. You get one thread, not five vendors.
- 04
We stay on your account
Same team for moves, adds, tickets and the next renewal. That is the part everyone else drops.