How did MessageBird Unlock $3 Billion in Value?

Founded in 2011 in Amsterdam, MessageBird, a Dutch cloud messaging platform, has made significant strides in the market with its recent funding and business developments. How did they do it?

MessageBird, a Dutch cloud messaging platform, has made significant strides in the market with its recent funding and business developments. Founded in 2011 in Amsterdam, MessageBird has evolved significantly from its initial setup. 

The company has developed a range of communication APIs that enable businesses to connect with customers directly and quickly across various devices and channels, including SMS, chat, and voice. Its approach to facilitating direct and speedy communication between businesses and customers has been a key factor in its growth.

MessageBird's global presence has expanded with offices in nine countries, and it boasts a strong customer base of 15,000 global clients, including well-known brands like Uber, Lufthansa, Domino's, and Levi's. 

 However rigid legacy carriers using outdated protocols struggled to offer the omnichannel capabilities demanded in the mobile-first era. 

Sensing this unmet need, MessageBird launched in 2011 as a cloud communications platform integrating messaging, voice, and video built for the age of apps and AI.

With cutting-edge omnichannel technology, MessageBird gained strong initial traction. However, the company noticed smaller online merchants and digital native verticals were hesitant to commit to expensive monthly contracts designed for enterprises. 

The turning point was the launch of their usage plan in 2019, pioneering a prepaid billing model allowing pay-as-you-go consumption. This disruptive approach appealed to the value consciousness of eCommerce brands while offering enterprise-grade global scale.

This billing democratized access to sophisticated cloud communications infrastructure for early-stage online merchants. It enabled eCommerce customers to easily automate conversations across platforms and scale dynamically with usage. Not just that, it also enabled businesses to grow with Messagebird. 

MessageBird realized that usage-based billing also aligned perfectly with enterprise priorities. Large customers wanted cloud communication capabilities but without predictable volumes required long-term commitments. Organizations could flexibly scale communication volumes on-demand whether responding to urgent customer issues, new product launches, or seasonal traffic spikes. Usage pricing gave enterprises an onramp to next-gen cloud contact centers without disrupting existing IT budgets focused on business continuity. The ability to only pay for what they use provided financial guardrails to incrementally shift communication workloads to the MessageBird platform. 

As businesses saw increased efficiencies and cost savings from consolidating on MessageBird, they eagerly expanded usage further accelerating adoption inside large enterprises.

For digital retailers experiencing rapid growth, these plans prevented surprise overage fees while increasing loyalty. Customers could align seasonal traffic spikes like Black Friday promotions to communication budgets.

Today, MessageBird powers products that facilitate billions of customer interactions for over 15,000 customers globally.

The market validated the success of their billing transformation with the 2021 Series C funding round valuing MessageBird over $3 billion. The prepaid plans were instrumental in cementing domination in the rapidly growing eCommerce CPaaS vertical. 

This shows how MessageBird by making billing and pricing changes and matching them to modern eComm needs, carved a path to lead CPaaS market growth into the era of digital business.

This Month's Must-Watch Before Everyone Else Does!

1. Yellow.ai's Pricing & Monetization Journey: Listen to Gulshan Dhanani, Chief of Staff at Yellow.ai talk about moving to a usage-based pricing model for their conversational AI company! 

Put Your Reading Glasses On: 

1. Top 5 Must-have Features Your CPaaS Billing Tool Needs in 2024: Confused on what to look for in your billing tool? Don’t worry! We’ve got you covered! This is the most important checklist you need to narrow down on your billing provider. 

2. AI Billing Platform: Read about this  AI copywriting company that implemented usage-based billing for their unique requirements! 

What’s brewing with the product?

💰The all-new wallet management: Now businesses using Togai can create and manage wallets for their customers. Companies can record payments received from customers through different modes like cards, cash, and cheques and automatically balance the wallet amount with the pending invoices.

📜It’s raining Invoice Customizations: Companies can personalize their invoices by adding logos and also deciding the items to be shown in the invoice (for example, skip 0$ line items from invoices). Not just that, you can also group your line items in your invoice instead of having pages of items spill over! It’s not over yet, you can also configure your invoice sequence numbers to comply with government regulations. 

💸 Create Account Alias: Let’s explain it with an example if you’re a CPaaS provider and want to associate phone numbers to customer 1 for the first month and customer 2 for the second month - it has become very easy with Togai! Using the account alias expiry feature, you can charge customer 1 and 2 for their usage during their respective usage periods.  

🔌 New Integrations Coming Your Way: We have SMTP integrations for sending emails, attaching invoices, notifications, and other updates. Not just that, we now have a native integration with Slack to provide customer updates!