Sinch vs Vonage (2026)

Action blocks connect a bot to outside systems in three ways. An API step sends requests to any HTTPS endpoint with any of the five standard HTTP methods, authenticates with basic auth or a bearer token, passes session variables in the query or body, and can route the conversation to the next block named in the response. Code actions run JavaScript that calls external services and writes the results back to the session.

Native app steps create, find and update Zendesk tickets and users, create Salesforce contacts, accounts and cases or run SOQL queries, and connect Freshdesk, Topdesk, Gmail and Intercom. In a banking bot, an API step can post a money transfer's amount, destination and account type to the customer's back end in the middle of a conversation.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/integrateandcode/custom-back-end-integrations/configure-your-api-integrationread 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

Bots run as flows on a visual canvas, where each block sends a message, collects input, checks a condition or runs an action, and go to connections move the conversation between blocks and flows.

Condition blocks branch on variables, an API response can name the next block, events start a flow when a variable changes or the user goes quiet, and delay and pause steps hold the conversation. Flows can be reused across a bot and published one at a time. The intent engine picks the flow and the designer sets every step inside it, so the sequence is fixed when the bot is built. Running two bots in one conversation takes the web widget or a custom proxy over the webhook channel.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/navigation/bot-builder/flowsread 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

Conversations arrive through the Sinch Conversation API on WhatsApp, RCS, SMS, MMS, Messenger, Instagram, Viber, Telegram and LINE, through the Web V2 widget, through a webhook channel for any custom front end, and through phone lines for voicebots.

Inside a conversation, events start a flow when a variable changes, when the user stays silent for anywhere from 1 to 1,440 minutes, or when a WhatsApp Flow is completed.

Outside systems can also push into a live conversation through the REST API, sending messages, setting session data or triggering a specific block for a given user, so a back end event can move a conversation forward.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/channels/all-channelsread 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

Knowledge base AI keeps a store of the customer's content and generates short answers from it. Content goes in as PDF files, CSV question and answer files, single web pages or entire domains, and tags limit which content a given flow searches.

Each answer comes back with the retrieved passages, the source file or URL and the specific page it came from, so a bot can offer a link to the source. When nothing matches, a no findings path sends the user to another block instead of inventing an answer, and a non generative mode replies only with the exact answers in a CSV file. The feature is free up to 50 questions a month, with higher volumes through sales.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/navigation/knowledge-base-airead 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

Each user's session holds what the bot has learned about them, including variables it collected, API results and the last intent, and one session can span several conversations. Sessions expire after 30 days without activity by default, a period Enterprise customers can change per bot and separately for the draft and live versions.

Through the REST API a team can read a session, write to it, delete it for one conversation or delete all data for one user. Bots use saved variables to recognize returning users and reuse earlier answers, such as a traveler's usual route. Persistence depends on the channel, and the web widget keeps variables for one visit unless users are identified. Variables marked sensitive stay out of conversation history.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/bot-answers/sessionread 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

A Send to offload provider step hands a conversation to a person in Sinch Contact Pro, Genesys Cloud, Salesforce Service Cloud, Zendesk Chat, Help Scout or any platform behind an offloading webhook, with the transcript and collected variables passed along. The bot keeps answering until an agent accepts, then pauses until the agent sends the user back.

Designers choose where handover happens, typically on request, after repeated not understood turns or after two unsatisfactory knowledge base answers. Generative features can be switched off per bot, and a split between draft and live versions keeps unpublished changes away from customers. No step lets a person approve an action or a reply before the bot sends it.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/integrateandcode/human-offloading-live-chatread 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

Sign in runs through Sinch ID, and SAML 2.0 single sign on with Azure Active Directory, Okta, OneLogin or Ping Identity comes with the Enterprise pack. Admins see every bot and manage the team, members see open bots plus the restricted bots they are granted, and each restricted bot gives a member one of five permissions, Edit, Read only, NLP only, Bot Builder or Copywriter.

Legacy password accounts lock after 10 failed sign ins. Chatlayer is ISO 27001 certified, and across its products Sinch holds ISO 27001:2022 and a SOC 2 Type II report, with PCI and HIPAA compliance covering specific products. Security reports and 343 answered questionnaire items sit in the Sinch Trust Center behind an access request.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/support/access-controlread 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

Conversation history keeps a turn by turn transcript of every conversation with the intents triggered along the way, voice recordings where recording is on, and tags and filters by user, channel, campaign and date.

Execution logs record each app integration run with its input and output payloads, status, account and the block that triggered it, plus failed API and code actions with the request, status code and response, tracking events and voice speech to text failures. An activity log on the Enterprise pack shows who accessed or changed a bot, what they did and when, and every published live version is kept for rollback. A conversation flow view, labeled beta, traces a conversation's path through blocks for debugging.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/navigation/history/execution-logsread 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

Bots run in one of three regions on Google Cloud, each with its own app URL and sign in endpoint, in St. Ghislain, Belgium for the EU, Ashburn, Virginia for the US and Mumbai, India for Asia. Moving bots between regions goes through support, and fixed ingress and egress IP ranges per region let customers allowlist Chatlayer in their own networks.

Sinch's subprocessor register adds Brazil and India as Chatlayer hosting locations, and the Tables API has a South America endpoint, so some data can sit outside the three bot regions. Generative replies through the OpenAI integration send conversation data to OpenAI services in the United States.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/support/saas-regions-and-ip-rangesread 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

New bots can start from templates built by Chatlayer's conversation design team, each a working bot for one job.

The set covers a banking assistant that makes payments, checks balances and card limits and reports lost cards, ecommerce returns, an electric bike shop that books test rides and checkups, shared scooter support, a bilingual gym assistant that books and cancels classes, job applications, lead generation, NPS surveys, restaurant and retail bots, a nearest location finder and a knowledge base AI bot.

Most work as soon as they load, while those using an integration need an account connected first. Smaller templates add a single function, such as feedback collection, to a bot that already exists.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/start-quickly/bot-templatesread 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

An OpenAI action lets a builder pick GPT-3, ChatGPT or GPT-4 for a generated reply, using Chatlayer's own key for the first 100 messages per bot and the customer's OpenAI key after that.

The other generative features, knowledge base AI, the AI intent booster and expression generation, run on unnamed models Chatlayer picks, with OpenAI and Microsoft Azure as Chatlayer's machine learning subprocessors. Intent recognition runs on Chatlayer's own language engine, trained on each customer's expressions.

OpenAI is the only model provider in the integration catalog, and the model list in the OpenAI action still reflects the GPT-3 era.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/integrateandcode/app-integrations/openai-gpt-3-chatgpt-and-gpt-4read 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

A public REST API with an OpenAPI 3.0 specification covers messaging, conversations, bots and NLP.

It sends messages through the webhook channel with asynchronous callbacks, lists conversations and messages, reads and deletes session data, deletes a user's data, executes actions in a live conversation, lists bots and channels, creates webhook channels and returns the NLP result for any expression. Calls authenticate with bearer tokens generated under Settings.

A separate Tables API, with basic authentication and regional base URLs, loads and queries the built in tables that bots read and write, and whole bots export and import as files.

Sourceapi.chatlayer.ai/v1/docsread 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

An NLP dashboard rates each language's intent model from 0 to 100 percent, shows how that rating moved since the last training, and flags intents with too few expressions, misclassified expressions and overlaps between intents.

After launch, the Train tab collects real customer messages with the suggested intent and a confidence score, and the team corrects them and adds them to the model ahead of the next release. An emulator with a debugger shows session data turn by turn, voicebots and a WhatsApp sandbox can be tried before going live, and a bad release rolls back to an earlier live version. Saved test cases that replay flows, actions or knowledge base answers are not part of the product.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/navigation/natural-language-processing-nlp/dashboardread 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

Bots work through API calls, JavaScript code actions and native app integrations, and voicebots handle phone calls with speech recognition and synthesis. Knowledge base AI crawls a page or a whole domain when content is added, which builds the answer store before any conversation takes place. Chatlayer has no hosted browser, remote desktop or screen control, and Sinch's tools for agents built elsewhere work the same way, since the MCP server, Functions and Voice Relay all act through Sinch's own APIs.

Sourcedocs.chatlayer.ai/buildabot/flow-logic/dialog-state/action-bot-dialogread 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