Twilio Authy Review 2023

Twilio Authy is designed to help organizations optimize their cybersecurity without adding any unnecessary complications to the sign-in process.

Individuals, small businesses, and enterprise-level clients can rely on Authy to secure their accounts through 2FA.

Authentication is available through the mobile and desktop apps as well as short message service (SMS), email, and phone calls.

Authy is free for up to 100 authentications per month. Beyond that, you can pay as you go or work out volume pricing if you’re a large client with more than 10,000 monthly authentications.

Security & Encryption

Authy is fully compliant with the SOC-2 standard, which makes it a reliable option for any business. It also offers multiple authentication methods that give users control over their own security.

For example, if you’re worried about codes being intercepted over email or SMS, you can send a push notification to your phone. Authy even supports offline passwords, which are impossible to intercept unless someone gains access to your device.

You can secure your Authy account further by navigating to security settings in the mobile app. Authy supports four-digit protection PINs plus biometric identification. If you enable the “Protect Entire App” setting, Authy asks for your PIN or biometrics every time you open the app.

App Compatibility

Twilio Authy is compatible with both desktop and mobile, plus the Apple Watch. With three different ways to authenticate login attempts, you can approve access on your phone through SMS, email, phone, or a mobile app. You can even generate time-based one-time passwords while your device is offline.

While the mobile app is only available for iOS and Android smartphones, there’s a desktop app for Linux, macOS, and Windows 32 bit and 64 bit. You could also authenticate yourself through a computer if you send yourself the code via email. However, it’s worth noting that this approach may be less secure than generating a code within the Authy mobile or desktop app.

One of the main questions people have about Authy is whether it leads to more compatibility issues than Google Authenticator. Authy can be used on any platform that accepts Google Authenticator, so you don’t have anything to worry about.

Ease of Setup & Use

After you download Authy on your smartphone, the mobile app asks for your phone number to verify the device as an authenticator. Remember to use the same phone number across all your devices so that you can always access your accounts.

From there, you can authenticate your device by receiving a phone call or SMS, or by using another device that’s already connected to your main phone number. Once you’ve set up your account, you can add new accounts to Authy by scanning the quick response (QR) code or entering the key manually.

It’s hard to imagine a better option than Authy when it comes to ease of use. Customer reviews indicate that Android users seem to experience more technical issues than those on iOS. We tested Authy on an iPhone, so you may have a different experience with the Android app.

Password Sharing

Authy is a 2FA service rather than a password manager, so it won’t store any of your passwords. You only use Authy to approve login attempts for other sites, so you need to download a separate password manager if you need help remembering your login credentials.

With that in mind, there’s no way to share your passwords or any other information through Authy. Check out our list of the best password managers if that’s what you’re looking for. You could still use Authy to authenticate the recipient’s login attempts after they get the username and password.

Pricing & Customer Support

Twilio Authy Plans & Pricing

Twilio Authy is free for small-scale use. As long as you have 100 or fewer authentications per month, you can use the application for free for as long as you want.

Beyond that, Authy switches to pay-as-you-go pricing, with a charge of nine cents for each authentication. Pay-as-you-go pricing allows customers to avoid making any commitments, but it may also come with higher prices than a comparable Enterprise plan.

Enterprise subscriptions are intended for larger clients that need more than 10,000 authentications per month. Pricing is determined on a case-by-case basis, so you may be able to negotiate a lower rate. Meanwhile, Enterprise users are locked into a monthly commitment.

With that in mind, Authy makes 2FA about as easy as it could possibly be. While some users may run into unexpected issues, we didn’t have any trouble getting a new account up and running within a few minutes.

Twilio Authy Customer Support

The Twilio Authy Help Center offers detailed information about various aspects of the service. You can go there to find out how to create an account, how to transfer your account between devices, how to resolve common technical issues, and more.

If you don’t find the answer you’re looking for, you also have the option to contact the support team. Authy offers both live chat and support tickets, but the live chat only connects to an automated chatbot — you’ll need to submit a ticket and wait for a response if you want to hear from a real human.

Authy gives subscribers a few different options when it comes to authentication.

The first and most straightforward choice is a simple push notification. Whenever someone on your team tries to access one of their accounts, they’ll be able to approve the attempt through a notification on their designated device. First, they’ll receive a notification, then they’ll be required to type in their password to approve the access attempt. This way, there is still two-factors involved.

Second, users can configure “time-based one-time passwords,” which supplement a regular password login without requiring subscribers to receive a code through conventional channels like SMS, email, or phone. The main advantage of time-based one-time passwords is that they’re tied to the device itself, so they can still be used even when the device is offline.

Finally, anyone who doesn’t want to install the Authy app can still leverage 2FA via SMS, email, or a phone call. These authentications essentially work like any other text or email-based code that you use to access an account.

User reviews are the best way to see how audiences feel about a platform, and Twilio Authy has a strong average of 4.7 out of 5 on iOS. The average is significantly lower on Android, but it’s still a solid score at 4.2 out of 5.

Twilio Authy has about 22,000 ratings on the Apple App Store and 45,000 on Google Play, so there’s a large enough sample to say that users are generally happy with its performance. Negative reviewers have many different complaints including bugs, user experience issues, and trouble accessing their accounts on multiple devices.

Authy has received even better feedback from its business and organizational clients. Most of the criticisms from these users involve minor issues with the interface, but some reviewers also wanted more transparency about Authy’s underlying functionality. Many also feel that the process of adding Authy to new devices is too complicated.