Communication APIs are a great way to increase efficiency and accuracy in your operations. But, not all communication APIs are created equal.
Choosing the right communication API vendor requires a review of their features, pricing, and what communication APIs they offer, from email APIs and calendar APIs to messaging and text APIs.
This article will review exactly what you need to consider when determining which communication API provider is best for your business.
Communications APIs enable businesses to embed email, calendar, voice, and other communication features as part of their applications or product. They act as a bridge between the software or website of your business and the communication channels that you use to reach out to customers.
The increasing demand for real-time, seamless communication experiences across multiple channels drives the market for communication APIs. The rise of remote work, the growth of e-commerce, and the continuing reliance on mobile devices are just a few examples of why app users are hungry for these streamlined experiences.
Businesses use communication APIs to create new products and services that improve their users’ workflows. The trend towards faster deployment cycles has led companies to embrace the quick stand-up of features through communication API platforms.
Growing competition in the communication API space means providers are continuing to offer advanced features at great price points. It’s not just about “keeping up” — it’s about staying ahead of the curve and providing customers with something they won’t find elsewhere.
Major players in this market include Nylas, Twilio, Nexmo, Plivo, and MessageBird, among others. Additionally, many established tech companies, such as Amazon and Google, have also entered the market with their own communication API offerings.
Most vendors provide a selection of these communication APIs:
Experience Nylas’ full-service communication API platform with an email API, calendar API, contact API, and a front-end scheduler.
Communication API vendors with varied customization options allow developers to tailor features to meet your customers’ needs. Whether sending personalized messages through mail merge or adding round-robin scheduling capabilities, robust communication APIs offer flexibility and unique features.
You’ll want the scope of your API vendor to match the features you want to provide your customers. A broad software scope allows you to access several different forms of communication that are integral to customer interaction and engagement.
For example, Nylas offers a video conferencing feature within its calendar API that allows users to automatically generate video conferencing links by integrating with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams accounts. The highly interactive nature of this tool is designed to help both developers and end-users save time.
Important security features include encryption of communication data, secure authentication mechanisms, and protection against common threats such as hacking, eavesdropping, and data theft.
Enhanced cybersecurity helps prevent unauthorized access and data breaches, which can be costly and damaging to a business’s reputation. CPaaS can reduce the risk of security incidents, so your users know their data is secure, and your business can focus on core operations and growth.
The best communication API vendors allow businesses to effortlessly increase or decrease their communication infrastructure without a significant interruption to business operations. This is ideal for rapidly growing companies that can enhance their communication capabilities without incurring expenses on hardware, software, or extra staff.
The best communication API vendors provide a comprehensive analysis of user interactions across various devices. Data analysis helps businesses identify patterns and trends in customer engagement so they can improve user experience.
This is especially true when using first-party data, which Communication APIs can gather directly from customers, prospects, and users following their interactions with the brand’s properties. First-party data allows businesses to prioritize personalization, privacy, security, and accuracy in a way that third-party data can’t so they win customer loyalty and retention.
It takes significant development and management resources to create, deploy, and maintain a reliable and well-integrated system. Development cycles can take several weeks, months, and even years to complete — especially if a business is in technical debt from previous launches. This delay of new products and features can reduce a business’s competitive edge and impact customer engagement and retention.
Communication API vendors offer pre-built solutions that empower businesses to deploy new communication services faster and easier than building in-house. Companies can stand up critical features that improve the customer experience — and save their developers thousands of hours.
The right communication API vendor saves developers from spending countless weeks, months, or even years, building and maintaining backend infrastructure. Instead, they can focus on quickly releasing revenue-generating features that engage the end user.
This not only helps free up developer time but can also lead to increased user engagement and loyalty.
With no need to dedicate staff or other resources to feature building and ongoing maintenance, pre-built communication software solutions free up development resources.
Organizations no longer need to invest time and resources into sourcing and employing the right personnel — improving resource availability for the entire organization.
Utilizing a communication API helps your company build stronger relationships with your customers. Custom branding, automated reminders, two-way conversations, content personalization, and automatic response surveys help ensure each customer interaction is personalized.
Higher engagement can reduce customer churn and offer additional upsell opportunities.
Nylas enables developers and organizations to effortlessly create exceptional communication experiences through comprehensive email, calendar, and contact APIs. By establishing a unified connection with top service providers, Nylas offers a single source of integration that opens the door to powerful insights.
The Nylas Email API quickly and easily connects to all major email service providers, such as Google and Microsoft Outlook, enabling a wider reach for your app. This efficient bi-directional system boasts a reliable 99.6% deliverability rate, ensuring user engagement will not be affected by delays or frustrations.
Our Calendar API streamlines scheduling by connecting your app to major calendar providers. It offers a single point of integration and the ability to tailor workflows to meet your users’ needs. The Nylas Scheduler also promotes scheduling efficiency for businesses by offering pre-built front-end widgets and real-time scheduling features.
The Nylas Contact API optimizes business operations by providing access to contacts across all of the Nylas tools. You can stand up bi-directional syncs, and full create, read, update, delete (CRUD) capabilities to help maximize user engagement, launch features faster, and save developer resources.
Nylas’ communication APIs improve retention by helping companies launch integrations and features months or even years ahead of the competition. Organizations save thousands of hours that would have been spent on developing and maintaining their own software — so they can focus on advancing their app’s roadmap.
Building communication integrations in-house can be time-consuming and divert attention from important tasks. When your developers focus on front-end features instead of back-end infrastructure, you can see more engagement, reduced churn, and higher adoption rates.
Nylas provides more than just a way to save development time. We offer top-notch solutions that bring all of your communication data together in one place, making it easy to access the communication API that best fits your needs.
Unlock seamless productivity with the Nylas all-in-one API platform.
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Erin is a content marketing professional at Nylas, where she creates digital assets that connect the organization to individuals. Before Nylas, she spent eight years working in public relations specializing in corporate communications strategy, B2B/B2C writing and editing, executive thought leadership, and other storytelling. In her free time, she enjoys volleyball, karaoke, and baking.
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