Exotel
Cloud telephony and contact-centre platform with voice, SMS and WhatsApp APIs, focused on India.
Updated · AppBreakup editorial · Web
Is Exotel free?
No, it's a paid product
1 alternative with a free optionSwitch from Exotel to
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- Alternatives ranked
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About Exotel
Exotel is a Bengaluru-founded cloud telephony company that helped bring voice APIs to Indian businesses in 2011. Companies use it to give sales and support teams virtual numbers, IVR menus, call routing, call recording and number masking, and to send SMS and WhatsApp messages from the same account. On top of that sits an omnichannel contact-centre product, conversation analytics that score every call, and AI voice and chat agents that answer routine queries before passing customers to people. It also offers voice streaming for teams building their own AI voice bots. Exotel serves startups and enterprises in India, the Gulf, Africa and South-East Asia, and is often compared with Knowlarity, Ozonetel and Twilio. It is paid and sales-led: plans for the contact centre, business phone system and APIs are quoted rather than listed with self-serve prices, though a trial is available. Everything is cloud-hosted, with a web dashboard and APIs.
Best for: Indian and Gulf businesses running phone-heavy sales or support teams.
Pros and cons
What works
- Voice, IVR, SMS and WhatsApp from one provider
- Contact centre and call analytics built on the same platform
- Long track record with Indian telecom rules and carriers
- 150+ ready-made integrations
Why people leave
- No self-serve price list; plans are quoted by sales
- Coverage is centred on India, the Gulf and nearby regions
- More contact-centre product than a lightweight developer API
Exotel vs Twilio, Plivo and MSG91
From each app's listing and the prices verified on its own site. A dash means we haven't verified it yet.
Top Exotel alternatives
See all 6- 1
Twilio68.8Self-serve global voice and SMS APIs with pay-as-you-go pricing and wide coverage.
- 2
Plivo64.8Simpler, lower-cost voice and SMS APIs with public per-minute and per-message rates.
- 3
MSG9161.8Cheaper Indian option if most of your traffic is SMS, OTP and WhatsApp rather than calls.
- 4
Gupshup57.5Better fit when WhatsApp and RCS messaging matter more than voice calling.
- 5
Vonage57.2Global voice, messaging and video APIs plus a cloud contact-centre product.
Why people left Exotel
In reviewers' own words, from reviews of the apps they moved to. These are their opinions, not ours.
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Reviews
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Exotel: common questions
What is Exotel?
Exotel: Cloud telephony and contact-centre platform with voice, SMS and WhatsApp APIs, focused on India. Best for indian and Gulf businesses running phone-heavy sales or support teams. Available for Web.
Is Exotel free?
No, Exotel is a paid product.
Is Exotel open source?
No, Exotel is not open source.
What platforms does Exotel run on?
Exotel is available for Web.
What are the best alternatives to Exotel?
The highest-ranked Exotel alternatives right now are Twilio, Plivo and MSG91. See the full ranked list for pricing, platforms and verified facts.
Exotel vs Twilio: what's the difference?
Both Exotel and Twilio are paid products. Both run on Web.