On December 1st, 2023, Zipwhip will permanently shut down it’s business texting service.
A surprising outcome just a year after Twilio acquired the Seattle startup for $850 million. At the time of acquisition, Zipwhip had more than 30,000 organizations that they provided text messaging services for. The acquisition of Zipwhip by Twilio was a major one and ranks amongst some of the largest in Seattle’s tech startup history.
Zipwhip was originally founded in 2007, soon became known as the company that brought you the Textspresso a decade ago in 2012. Initially Zipwhip aimed to be a household name amidst the texting industry, however things did not go as planned.
Zipwhip managed to generate $34 Million in Q2 for Twilio, accounting for roughly 3.6% of the company’s total revenue.
Despite earnings, Twilio’s stock has fallen significantly amidst the stock markets downward trend this year.
As Zipwhip begins the transition towards shutting down it’s services, Zipwhip employees have been brought over to Twilio.
This transition to onboard Zipwhip employees comes just after Twilio announced they would be laying off 11% of it’s workforce in September of this year.
Of the remaining staff of Zipwhip are cofounder and current CEO John Lauer and James Lapic the current Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Both men’s Linkedin profile’s continue to show their positions with Zipwhip.
Twilio which now operates out of the Bay Area in California, was originally founded in Seattle in 2008. Jeff Lawson who had previously worked at Amazon Web Services as one of their first product managers, is the founder of Twilio.
Twilio specializes in business communications software and offers its own Text Service’s. Twilio will continue to operate all of it’s current SMS products, which for existing Zipwhip customer’s should make an easy transition over to Twilio, right?
Not quite.
What does this mean for current Zipwhip customers?
Zipwhip customers were given a deadline of April 30 of this year to make final adjustments to their existing contracts and subscriptions for its services.
The following guidance has been provided by Zipwhip in it’s ‘Software End of Life Resource Guide’:
“Does Zipwhip Twilio have a similar business texting service to which we can migrate? Will you migrate us automatically or put us in touch with a Twilio sales representative?”
“No. Twilio does not have a similar service to Twilio Zipwhip that is “out-of-the-box” ready so there is no migration path after the Zipwhip services shut down.”
With no direct migration from Zipwhip to Twilio, existing customer’s have been directed to some of the othe big names in the SMS business industry. Twilio however has refused to answers questions related to which provider is best for Zipwhip cusomers current businesses.
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