Plivo vs Vonage (2026)

Flows act in other systems through app action nodes with prebuilt actions for Zendesk, HubSpot and Google Workspace, HTTP request nodes for any API, and call forward nodes.

The wider catalog adds Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Shopify, Stripe, Intercom, Jira, Notion, Airtable, Freshdesk, Slack, Google Calendar, Calendly, ServiceNow, GitHub, Google Sheets, MongoDB, BigQuery and PostgreSQL, along with MCP servers, API based tools and Python code nodes. In a single conversation an agent can look up a booking, check availability, book a slot and text a confirmation.

Apps are authenticated once under Settings and then used across agents, and the team handles that authentication and any field mapping itself before the Vibe Agent can use an app in a draft.

Sourceplivo.com/docs/aiagent/getstarted/overviewread 2026-10-11

A Webhook node calls any outside API mid conversation with any of the five standard HTTP methods, carries authorization in custom headers, sends JSON and XML bodies as well as HTML, plain text or form content built from conversation parameters, and maps fields from the response into parameters the flow uses next.

Success and failure paths branch on status codes or code classes, requests can run asynchronously, and timeouts run from 10 to 25 seconds. Salesforce action nodes get records through SOQL and create or update records on any object the team names, after a connection set up from the API dashboard. An email connector and custom code nodes round out the set, so an agent can update a booking, open a case or check an order while the customer waits.

Sourcestudio.docs.ai.vonage.com/voice/nodes/integrations/webhook.mdread 2026-10-11

Each agent is a flow on a drag and drop canvas. Nodes such as an AI reply, an app action, an HTTP request or a call forward are joined by paths that branch on the customer's input or on system conditions, and variables carry extracted or generated values from step to step. A trigger node starts the flow from a channel or an API call.

The Vibe Agent drafts a flow from a plain English description, first writing a plan that covers the trigger, channel setup, node settings, edge cases and when to close the call, asking clarifying questions and flagging requests it cannot build. By Plivo's own estimate the draft gets a flow about 70 percent of the way, and every generated node is meant to be reviewed by hand. The Playground highlights the active node and the path taken through the flow.

Sourceplivo.com/docs/aiagent/getstarted/overviewread 2026-10-11

Agents run as flows of nodes on a drag and drop canvas, where collect input, condition, webhook, Salesforce, Q&A, routing and set parameter nodes chain into multistep business logic, and inbound and outbound events start different parts of the same agent. The agentic NLU engine adds a hub and branch pattern.

An agentic classification node uses a language model to match the caller to an intent, an agentic capture node gathers that intent's details, and the agent picks its next move, such as asking a question or calling an API, sending the caller back to the hub when the intent changes. That engine is gated, English only and for voice agents, so most flows run on intent based routing designed in advance.

Sourcedeveloper.vonage.com/en/ai-studio/overviewread 2026-10-11

Flows start when a call, a web chat message, an SMS or a WhatsApp message arrives, or when another system sends an authenticated HTTP request with optional input parameters, with basic auth on by default.

One agent can go live on voice through a purchased number, WhatsApp through a business account with template management, web chat and SMS over 10DLC, and conversations run inbound and outbound.

Each number takes one inbound flow while one flow can answer several numbers, outbound calls start from an Initiate call node or an API request, and the flow branches on whether a call was answered, busy, unanswered or rejected.

Sourceplivo.com/docs/aiagent/aistudio/triggerread 2026-10-11

Four agent types cover telephony, WhatsApp, SMS and HTTP for web and app chat, and each agent listens for inbound or outbound events, with more events added later. Outbound voice, WhatsApp and SMS sessions start at one per second by default, with three or five a second on approval, and voice agents can call SIP endpoints. HTTP agents start through an init call and advance with a step call carrying the user's text and parameters, so any web or mobile front end can drive the same agent. Phone numbers bought on the Vonage dashboard link to an agent at publish time.

Sourcestudio.docs.ai.vonage.com/ai-studio/create-a-new-agent.mdread 2026-10-11

A knowledge base combines uploaded files of up to 64MB, including spreadsheets, PDFs, Word documents, text, JSON and XML, whole websites of up to 10,000 URLs with limits on depth and paths, and apps such as Notion, Confluence, Freshdesk, Zendesk and Intercom. Website and app sources refresh automatically as often as weekly, one knowledge base can serve several agents, and the agent runs a semantic search at every response step, passing the most relevant chunks to the model and pulling nothing when nothing matches.

Sourceplivo.com/docs/aiagent/aistudio/agentconfiguration/knowledgebaseread 2026-10-11

Knowledge AI answers from the customer's own content through retrieval over Google Gemini models. Sources come in as PDF, text or HTML files, single web pages or public cloud storage links, are grouped into indexes shared by every agent under the same API key, and are queried through a Q&A node in the flow.

Replacing a source in an index updates live agents without republishing them, and an index tester shows which source produced an answer. Each master account includes a 100MB knowledge base, files run up to 10MB for PDF and 5MB for HTML or text, and tables and text inside images are not indexed.

Sourcestudio.docs.ai.vonage.com/ai-studio/knowledge-ai.mdread 2026-10-11

Variables hold names, emails, IDs and other values the agent extracts while a flow runs. They are set on the AI conversation node's Extract Variables tab and passed to later steps, and each reply draws on the path the conversation has taken so far. Plivo says context carries over when one customer moves from one channel to another, though where that context is kept, for how long, and whether it reaches a separate conversation days later is left open.

Sourceplivo.com/docs/aiagent/getstarted/overviewread 2026-10-11

User parameters carry what an agent collects from one conversation to the next. Values are saved automatically against the caller's phone number, reused across sessions and across voice, WhatsApp and SMS, and shared by every agent under the same API key, so a collect input node can skip a question already answered. Only the last value for each parameter is kept, and HTTP agents are not covered. Vonage gives no retention period for these values and no way to erase one caller's stored history. Agentic nodes carry their own memory settings inside a single call.

Sourcestudio.docs.ai.vonage.com/ai-studio/users.mdread 2026-10-11

Conversations hand over to human specialists assigned by agent, team or custom rules and routed by skills or queues, with business hours, holidays, agent status, SLAs, retries and workload managed from one dashboard, and calls transfer to a person by number forwarding or authenticated SIP transfer. Transfer to a human is included in the agent price. No step lets a person approve an action or a reply before the agent sends it.

Sourceplivo.com/docs/aiagent/getstarted/overviewread 2026-10-11

Live agent routing hands WhatsApp, SMS and web chat conversations to people, with WebSocket connections for HTTP agents, and voice agents route calls onward. Agentic nodes ship with built in safety guardrails and detect frustration from repeated failures, escalating on their own, and a global intent such as talk to an agent can be set up. Edits stay in an editor version until someone publishes, and earlier versions can be restored. Nothing lets a person approve an action or a reply before the agent sends it.

Sourcestudio.docs.ai.vonage.com/ai-studio/agentic-nlu-ai-engine.mdread 2026-10-11

Plivo holds a SOC 2 certification of unstated type, audited each year by an independent firm, is certified compliant with PCI DSS Level 1, has completed a CSA STAR Level 1 self assessment, takes part in the EU and US Data Privacy Framework, and signs a HIPAA business associate agreement on Enterprise.

Each user signs in with unique credentials, a passphrase and a phone verification code sent by SMS or voice call, data is encrypted with TLS 1.2 or higher in transit and 256 bit AES at rest, and backups are encrypted and stored redundantly. Single sign on comes with the Enterprise plan, and Plivo says nothing of roles or permissions inside the studio.

Sourceplivo.com/securityread 2026-10-11

AI Studio holds ISO 27001 and HIPAA compliance, with SOC 2 Type II pending alongside PCI DSS compliance and a CSA listing, while Vonage's core SMS and voice APIs already hold ISO 27001 and a SOC 2 Type II report. Account owners invite team members to the API dashboard and assign each one permissions by checkbox, changing them later from a manage column, and sources and agents are scoped to API keys and sub accounts. Vonage's listings for AI Studio vary between its certification table and its product section, and they say nothing of single sign on for the dashboard.

Sourcedeveloper.vonage.com/en/getting-started/concepts/regulatory-certificationsread 2026-10-11

Six reporting dashboards cover conversations, customer metrics, agent and AI performance, availability and operations. In the Playground, analysis mode shows each node's execution with the prompt used, the tool response, response time and model metrics, and every session carries a run ID for tracing it in the logs. Outside the Playground, node by node detail on live conversations and a log of who changed an agent go unmentioned.

Sourceplivo.com/docs/aiagent/aistudio/playgroundread 2026-10-11

The call log shows every session with its transcript, the parameters collected underneath it and a flow path marking each node as success, warning or error, plus an overall status such as completed, no answer or failed. A tags report counts sessions by tag, and the Vonage Contact Center dashboard tracks resolved, escalated and abandoned sessions.

An audit log records each change to an agent, its type such as an edit, a publication or a deletion, the time and the user who made it. Transcripts are kept for 90 days and telephony recordings for 30, and an Insights API exposes transcripts and recordings to other systems.

Sourcestudio.docs.ai.vonage.com/ai-studio/reports.mdread 2026-10-11

Plivo advertises data residency in the US, the EU and Asia Pacific, while its platform runs on Amazon Web Services compute and storage spread worldwide. Which region an account lands in, and whether the customer chooses it, is not spelled out. The studio runs as a hosted service only, with no private cloud or on premises edition.

Sourceplivo.comread 2026-10-11

Each agent is created in either the US or Europe, and the choice carries through to its API host, with separate US and EU studio endpoints, so a team can keep European conversations on European infrastructure agent by agent. Knowledge AI indexes sit under the same API key as the agents that query them. AI Studio runs as a hosted service only, with no private cloud or on premises edition.

Sourcestudio.docs.ai.vonage.com/ai-studio/create-a-new-agent.mdread 2026-10-11

The studio offers templates alongside plain English building, and Plivo's use cases cover lead capture, customer support, appointment booking, tech support, surveys and multichannel engagement. The Vibe Agent drafts a complete flow from a description, a fast start the team then shapes, as in Plivo's own example of sending a WhatsApp alert whenever a new Zendesk ticket arrives. Plivo sells no named agents a customer simply switches on.

Sourceplivo.com/ai-agentsread 2026-10-11

New agents can start from ready made templates, each a working agent for one job. They cover taking a message after hours, updating a customer's details, a post call survey, FAQs, package tracking, caller identification and verification, general customer service, hotel bookings and appointment management. A team picks one when creating the agent and adjusts the flow afterward, adding its own webhook calls, Salesforce steps or Knowledge AI answers where the template stops.

Sourcestudio.docs.ai.vonage.com/ai-studio/templates.mdread 2026-10-11

Each AI conversation node carries its own model setting, so the builder picks the LLM step by step, with GPT-4.1 as one option and Plivo advising teams to try several models to balance answer quality against latency. The studio's models come from the GPT and Llama families, with voices from Cartesia and ElevenLabs. In the Playground, analysis mode reports metrics for each model run. Developers on Plivo's code path pick their own speech to text, LLM and text to speech providers, such as Deepgram Nova 3 and Cartesia Sonic 2.

Sourcedocs.plivo.com/docs/aiagent/aistudio/nodereference/aiconversationread 2026-10-11

Knowledge AI runs on Google Gemini models picked by Vonage, and the agentic NLU engine uses language models it does not name. The older Generative AI node let a team connect its own OpenAI key and organization for GPT 3.5 replies, and Vonage is phasing that node out in favor of Knowledge AI. Intent recognition runs on Vonage's own traditional or hybrid NLU engines.

Sourcestudio.docs.ai.vonage.com/voice/nodes/integrations/generative-ai/migrating-from-the-genai-node-to-knowledge-ai.mdread 2026-10-11

Any flow can expose an API trigger that outside systems call over HTTP with basic auth and input parameters, starting the agent programmatically, so a CRM or scheduler can have an agent place an outbound call or send a message. Around the studio sit Plivo's voice and messaging APIs, SDKs and a CLI, and audio streaming and SIP trunking interfaces for agents built on other frameworks.

Sourceplivo.com/docs/aiagent/aistudio/triggerread 2026-10-11

HTTP agents expose a finished agent as an API. An init call with the account API key and agent ID opens a session and returns a session token, and step calls send the user's input and parameters and return the agent's messages and session status, on regional US and EU hosts. An Insights API returns conversation data under its own authentication, and Vonage's Voice, Messages, SMS and Verify APIs, SDKs and dashboard sit around the studio.

Sourcestudio.docs.ai.vonage.com/http/working-with-http-agents.mdread 2026-10-11

The Playground runs a flow before launch from a simulated inbound hello, with the trigger variables entered by hand. Transcript mode plays the conversation close to the live channel, and analysis mode shows each node's prompt, tool response and timing along with model metrics such as response time and accuracy. Test runs in the Playground are not billed. Simulation testing is included in the agent price, though Plivo does not say what it adds beyond the Playground or whether test cases can be saved and run again.

Sourceplivo.com/docs/aiagent/aistudio/playgroundread 2026-10-11

The tester runs a live conversation by chat or by an outbound call to the builder's phone, with parameter values set in advance to steer the flow, a no input option, a jump from any message to its node on the canvas and a flag on each webhook call showing whether it succeeded, with the raw conversation JSON for failures. Knowledge AI indexes can be tested on their own, showing which source answered. These are hands on checks. Saved test cases, pass or fail results and runs across many conversations at once are not part of the product.

Sourcestudio.docs.ai.vonage.com/ai-studio/chatbot-tester.mdread 2026-10-11

Agents act through app actions, HTTP requests, Python code nodes and call forwarding, and the knowledge base crawls websites when content is synced. No hosted browser, remote desktop or screen control is part of the studio, so a system without an API is out of reach unless the team writes code to call it.

Sourceplivo.com/docs/aiagent/getstarted/overviewread 2026-10-11

Agents reach other systems through webhook, Salesforce, email and custom code nodes, and Knowledge AI reads a single web page when it is added as a source. No hosted browser, remote desktop or screen control is part of AI Studio.

Sourcedeveloper.vonage.com/en/ai-studio/overviewread 2026-10-11