CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service)

CPaaS is a cloud platform that lets a business add messaging, voice or video into its own systems through an API, instead of building phone and messaging infrastructure from scratch.

It’s the wider category that BSPs and telephony providers both sit inside — “send an SMS”, “place a call”, “receive a WhatsApp message” all become a single API call instead of a relationship with a telecom carrier. Most platforms in this category are built on top of one or more CPaaS providers rather than owning the phone network themselves.

For a business evaluating a vendor, this layer is usually invisible — it matters only when something about call quality, number availability, or delivery reliability traces back to which CPaaS provider sits underneath.

How this layer surfaces as a product feature, on the API and events page.