Choosing the Right Path in the Wake of Twilio's Video Exit

We're offering up to 2 free months to any customer switching from Twilio video to Agora. Schedule some time to chat with our team to get the full details.

Twilio recently announced the end of life for its Programmable Video product. This leaves current users to make the major decision of where to migrate for real-time video. Transitioning RTC vendors can be easy, difficult, or somewhere in between. But one thing is for sure—you don’t want to be forced into making a vendor switch due to reasons outside of your control. While Twilio has suggested that users migrate to Zoom’s Video SDK, there are some key questions that users should consider before deciding on a migration path.

How important are video performance and stability?

When it comes to video communication, the ability to deliver a high-quality and consistent end-user experience is critical. Our in-depth testing shows that Agora’s Video SDK consistently outperforms Zoom’s Video SDK in common scenarios. Agora’s performance advantages become most pronounced in any setting involving challenging conditions like limited bandwidth, jitter, and packet loss.

Agora has a significant advantage under these conditions because our video SDK runs on Agora’s global SD-RTN (Software Defined Real Time Network™), which uses AI to intelligently route traffic for optimal performance, even when network conditions are challenging and end users are using lower-end mobile devices.

Do you need flexibility and customization?

Zoom’s SDK may meet the minimum bar for some use cases, but the SDK's large footprint (~75MB) and lack of flexibility limits its use for customized video experiences. Agora’s Video SDK provides the combination of ease of use with deep customization options, providing developers with the flexibility to build their vision in less time.

Agora offers easy-to-add functionality, including Analytics, Video Content Moderation, real-time transcription, and AI Noise Suppression, 3D Spatial Audio. Adding in Agora’s Chat and Signaling products allow developers to further customize the real-time experience for users with full featured messaging and real-time synchronization.

Agora’s Video SDK also offers the widest range of platform support for developers, with SDKs and detailed documentation for Android, Electron, Flutter, iOS, macOS, ReactJS (Beta), React Native, Web, Unity, Unreal Engine, and Windows.

Is live streaming part of your strategy?

In addition to Video Calling, Agora’s Video SDK also powers Interactive Live Streaming and Broadcast streaming, allowing customers to use the same SDK for all real-time video needs from video calls to very large scale live streaming events.

When Twilio shut down its live streaming service it directed those customers to Mux for live streaming. Now directing Programmable Video customers to Zoom means that anyone who was previously using both Twilio products will now need to use two different products from two different companies or migrate yet again.

What is Zoom’s business focus?

Zoom focuses on enterprise video conferencing software, with an ever increasing portfolio of products from contact center solutions to all-in-one collaboration software. While Zoom’s size may appear to be an asset, the challenge arises in asking “what is their focus?” With such a strong SaaS business, developers and video APIs are not Zoom’s focus and never will be.

Twilio is also a company with a wide array of products. While Twilio does focus on developers, they were never focused on video, leading to the sunsetting of all video products for not being profitable enough.

Agora’s focus has always been on Video APIs for developers, and always will be. Every other product we offer exists to allow developers to enhance the core video and voice experience for end users.

What other factors should be considered?

Of course there is a long list of other video RTC vendors beyond Zoom and Agora. While the large vendors with wide product portfolios outside of video are reducing their focus on real-time video to cut costs, a majority of the smaller, privately held RTC vendors in the video space are burning through funding.

After receiving high valuations and investments based usage during the pandemic, smaller RTC video vendors have seen both usage and valuations drop over the last two years. With no additional VC funding on the horizon, these vendors are struggling to find revenue. This is a recipe for vendors to be forced to shut down or sell their businesses to other parties. Neither scenario is desirable for customers looking to migrate.

On the flip side, Agora has strong cash reserves and is an established leader in the RTC video space.  Agora is firmly dedicated to continued innovation in the RTC video space in the long term. That’s why Agora is trusted by a wide range of customers from independent developers to industry leaders like HTC, Talkspace, Unity, HP, and many more.

Agora’s detailed developer documentation makes migration easy. Check out our Twilio migration page to get step-by-step migration guides.

We're also offering up to 2 free months to customers switching from Twilio video to Agora. Schedule some time to chat with our team to get the full details. We are here to help.

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