User Review-based Analysis & 3 Alternatives

As AI-powered solutions become abundant, many businesses rely on AI data services to acquire the necessary data to fuel their AI projects, such as Large Language Models (LLMs) or natural language processing (NLP) systems. Telus International is one such service that helps businesses with their AI data needs. Our analysis identified some drawbacks of working with Telus International.

This article evaluates Telus International based on customer and worker reviews and offers 3 alternatives, detailing their main features and pricing models. 

Readers interested in Telus International alternatives fall under 2 categories; select yours to see information that is relevant to you:

Table 1. Telus International alternatives comparison (for workers)

Notes

• Workers can use the links in the table to reach the sign-up pages of each alternative.
• The companies are ranked based on the number of reviews.
• * Worker ratings data gathered from Trustpilot since it has mostly worker reviews.
• ** Data gathered from analyzing worker reviews. In some cases, workers reported payment delays.

Table 2. Telus International alternatives comparison (for potential buyers)

Companies	User ratings out of 5 (Avg)*	Number of Reviews*	Mobile Application	ISO 27001 Certification	Code of Conduct
Clickworker	4.1	68	✅	✅	✅
Appen	4.2	54	✅	✅	✅
Amazon Mechanical Turk	4	28	✖	N/A	✖
TELUS International	4.3	10	✖	✖	✖

Notes

• * The data was gathered from B2B review platforms such as G2, Trustradius, and Capterra.
• The comparison is based on publicly available and verifiable data
• The companies are ranked based on the number of reviews.

Telus International overview

Telus International claims to specialize in digital customer experience (CX), AI data solutions, and digital IT solutions for various brands. The company leverages a crowdsourcing model and claims to operate with a network of over 1 million workers. 

Its offerings include:

• Customer experience (CX) solutions: Claims to help businesses manage customer interactions across various channels, such as phone, email, chat, and social media.
• AI data solutions: Claims to offer data collection, generation, and annotation services for AI and ML development.
• Digital IT solutions: Claims to provide digital transformation solutions, including IT lifecycle management, intelligent automation, and data annotation services.

Pros and cons of Telus International (For potential buyers)

Now, let’s discuss the pros and cons of working with Telus International as a potential customer or buyer. The pros and cons are based on the analysis we did from customer reviews from B2B review platforms. 

1. Additional services

Telus offers data annotation along with data collection, so customers do not have to look for a separate solution for their annotation needs.

2. Crowd size

The network size of Telus is relatively larger than that of its competitors, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. However, it is smaller than other competitors such as Clickworker.

Here is a crowd size comparison of all the companies mentioned in this article:

Figure 1. Crowd size comparison of Telus International and its alternatives

Notes for Figure 1:

• In Figure 1, Companies with a crowd size of less than 100K were not included.
• For Figure 1, some vendors were also excluded since their crowd size data was not found on their websites.

3. Data annotation service

Customers are happy regarding its data annotation service but would like more efficiency and speed in the annotation task completion.¹

4. Regarding popular services

We did not find any reviews regarding its data collection service. This indicates that either data collection is not its primary focus or it is not a popular service among its customers.[efn_not]No reviews were found regarding Telus’s data collection services. G2. Accessed: 21/November/2023.[/efn_note]

Detailed alternatives comparison (For potential buyers)

This section provides a detailed comparison of the 3 Telus International alternatives listed in this article.

1. Clickworker

Clickworker is a good alternative to Telus International since it offers various AI services and data solutions through a crowdsourcing platform. The company distributes its projects to its global network of over 4.5 million workers.

Here is a list of Clickworker’s data solutions:

• Datasets collected and generated by humans
• Image & video datasets in different formats and specifications.
• Audio and speech datasets in multiple languages and dialects.
• Text datasets
• Data annotation services
• Research/survey data collection
• Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) services for AI development

Pros and cons of working with Clickworker:

• A customer review regarding Clickworker’s AI services and its ‘reliable’ crowd.²

• A customer review regarding Clickworker’s data annotation services and its prices.³

2. Appen

Appen is another alternative to Telus and a popular name in the AI data service space. Its offerings include:

• Data collection & generation of different data types (image, video, text, audio, speech)
• Data annotation
• Data validation

Pros and cons of working with Appen:

• Despite its popularity, recent news has highlighted that Appen’s performance is in decline as the company loses customers and goes through financial losses.⁴
• A customer review regarding Appen’s customer support, pricing, data quality, and platform.⁵

3. Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)

Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk, is also a popular alternative for Telus International, offering AI services through a marketplace and a crowdsourcing model.

Here is a list of their offerings:

• AI data collection and generation of different data types
• Data annotation and labeling
• Market research & surveys
• Academic research
• Other data services

Pros and cons of working with Amazon Mechanical Turk

• Customers identified that most workers on MTurk’s platform are not fluent English speakers. This can cause issues for clients who require human-generated speech or text data in English.⁶

• A customer found its data collection service to be efficient. However, various customers found the quality of the work done by the workers to be low.⁷.

Learn about Amazon Mechanical Turk alternatives here.

Transparency statement

AIMultiple serves numerous emerging tech companies, including the ones linked in this article.

Further reading

If you need help finding a vendor or have any questions, feel free to contact us:

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External resources

1. Review regarding Telus International’s data annotation service. G2. Accessed: 21/November/2023.
2. Clickworker customer review on reliability and easy-to-use platform. G2. Accessed: 21/November/2023.
3. Customer review regarding Clickworker’s data annotation services. G2. Accessed: 21/November/2023.
4. Hayden Field, (2023). Inside the turmoil at Appen, the former AI darling that’s reeling from executive exits, big losses. CNBC. Accessed: 21/November/2023.
5. Appen’s customer review with positive and negative comments. G2. Accessed: 21/November/2023.
6. A negative review about MTurk workers’ language ability. G2. Accessed: 21/November/2023.
7. Mturk customer review data collection. G2. Accessed: 21/September/2023