In 2023, 50 percent of businesses leveraged a CPaaS platform. By 2028, Gartner expects that to rise to 90 percent.
There are several trends supporting that prediction. For instance, telcos are pumping money into the space, new customer communication channels are emerging, and AI is accelerating enterprise innovation.
On that last point, Gartner also predicted that 80 percent of businesses will be using CPaaS to bring generative AI (GenAI) into their CX strategies by 2028.
Why? Because CPaaS bridges CX platforms with broader enterprise systems and enables workflows to run between them. From there, companies can run GenAI - and now agentic AI - over the top for automation.
As such, brands can innovate fast and lower traditional development costs.
Given all this, it's no surprise that the CPaaS market is surging. But, reports vary as to its current growth trajectory.
The CPaaS Market Size: The Current Growth Trajectory
As Gartner mentioned in its 2024 Magic Quadrant report, demand for CPaaS slowed a little in 2023, but - in 2024 - the space started to heat up once again.
After a wave of out-of-the-box GenAI solutions first hit the market, developers are now becoming more experimental, extending their toolkits, and creating customized experiences with CPaaS.
As this trend accelerates, most market analysts expect the space to surge. Here are some standout predictions of the CPaaS market's value and compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
- Markets & Markets forecasts that the CPaaS market will grow from a value of $12.5 billion in 2022 to $45.3 billion by 2027 (CAGR of approximately 29.4 percent).
- Grand View Research estimates that the CPaaS market to grow from a value of $21.31 billion in 2025 to $86.26 billion by 2030 (CAGR of approximately 28.7 percent).
- Future Market Insights Global and Consulting expects the CPaaS market to grow from a value of $12.3 billion in 2024 to $121 billion by 2034 (CAGR of approximately 25.6 percent)
While these estimates vary, all three analysts agree that the annual growth rate of the CPaaS market will exceed 25 percent over the coming years.
North America is the region that has invested the most in CPaaS so far, thanks to its focus on early-tech adoption and high cloud adoption rates.
Plus, the US is home to many major CPaaS providers, innovators, and research labs, giving it a lot of room for growth.
However, expansion is happening just about everywhere. The Asia-Pacific region is considered one of the top zones for rapid CPaaS adoption as tech-savvy enterprises implement new communication channels and AI.
Elsewhere, in some regions, demand for specific APIs is growing.
For instance, in Europe, companies are embracing CPaaS for highly regulated industries (tapping into security and privacy APIs).
Meanwhile, in Latin America, companies are investing in over-the-top messaging APIs.
Top Trends Driving the CPaaS Market Forward
Most analysts attribute the growth of the CPaaS market to the continued push to digital transformation and increased cloud adoption, as organizations focus more heavily on scalability and agility.
However, there's much more to it, as highlighted in the CX Today article: 7 CPaaS Trends Disrupting the Market.
Here's a sneak peek of some of those helping to drive growth across the CPaaS space.
CPaaS as an AI Enabler
Think of everything a CPaaS platform offers: APIs, communication channels, and workflow creation.
So, with such a solution, brands can connect systems and build workflows across them.
Think of these workflows as an infrastructure. Run agentic AI over the top of it, and it's possible to automate many business processes.
Add communications, and employees - as well as customers - may receive alerts when these processes go wrong.
As businesses act on the new opportunity for workflow automation, CPaaS platforms will thrive.
CPaaS Unifies with CCaaS
Contact centers can benefit from CPaaS solutions in various ways. For instance, they can replicate complex on-premise customizations in the cloud and create proactive customer service workflows.