The end of CPaaS: A closer look at our pricing strategy

We are putting an end to inflated prices and price manipulation; one low price for every customer.

In the last couple of days, there has been a lot of noise around our price drops. Many wonder how it’s possible and what we are looking to achieve. In this post, we hope to give you the first few answers.

Here is the summary: the CPaaS market has moved on. SMS has commoditized, and margins are inevitably going to 0. This is market dynamics pur sang and it is what is right for the consumer.

Meanwhile, a new opportunity is on the rise higher up in the value chain. Businesses are creating all sorts of great experiences that improve the lives of consumers and create possibilities to monetize.

But the telecom market has gotten too comfortable.

On one side, they have been able to charge unnecessarily high fees because pricing is complex and it is difficult for buyers to monitor prices across all countries and carriers.

On the other side, some parts of the market have ventured into outright unethical practices by creating small-scale monopolies and manipulating prices.

We truly believe that the CPaaS business model is coming to an end and are looking to spearhead the change.

It is inevitable and in the interest of the consumer. So why fight it?

Our long-term strategy

A key pillar of our new Bird CRM strategy is to offer the lowest possible pricing globally, leveraging the deep integrations we have with our carrier partners across SMS. If we reduce costs, our customers can reinvest funds to accelerate their growth. And if they grow, we grow.

For that reason, we are slashing prices 65% in Sweden and 40% in the Netherlands. Here's the straightforward math: with Bird CRM, you pay just $0.02 per SMS, compared to Sinch's $0.057. This means significant savings with Bird CRM, irrespective of your current rates.

So, what does that look like?

Consider this: a local Swedish customer familiar with the market might already be paying less than $0.057 per SMS, while others are paying significantly more. With Bird, discounts are for everyone. All customers will find Bird CRM more cost-effective.

And then there are the artificial firewall markups. What many people don’t know is that Sinch and others are involved in the firewall business, supposedly safeguarding carriers from fraud. What they are really doing is controlling access with the ability to significantly increase pricing. How this works is that when you give a carrier a firewall, you can restrict access to the network, forcing other carriers and competitors to go exclusively through the firewall provider. This gives them a small-scale monopoly.

As a result, the vendor can control network pricing and choose to influence it. In practice, that means that this translates to sudden, unexpected price increases. This is what happened to us recently when we got “Sinched”, and prices increased to $0.37 for Pakistan Jazz (see screenshot below).

This brings me back to my initial point. While there has been a lot of noise around our change in direction, we believe the future we describe is inevitable. SMS has been commoditized, value has moved up the chain, and too many businesses are profiting from unethical business practices.

This market has been through many inflection points and this is us saying, it is about to happen again. So we invite Sinch and all the others to adapt to the new market dynamics and join us in doing what is best for the customers.

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You can find me on X @robertdvis or IG @robertvis.