Blog/Channels
Channels · 14 Feb 2026 · 7 min

Viber or WhatsApp: how to choose for a European shop

The answer is mostly geography, partly pricing, and never both at once. A decision framework, and the mistake of launching on the one your team uses rather than the one your customers do.

Two apps, two different maps of Europe

Both channels do roughly the same thing: template-based business messaging with opt-in, priced per message or conversation, with high open rates and a narrow set of messages worth sending. The difference that matters is not features. It is whether your customers have the app installed.

Shops routinely pick the one their marketing team uses personally, which in much of Europe is the wrong answer.

Start with geography, and check it

Messaging app adoption in Europe is strongly regional. WhatsApp dominates in much of Western and Southern Europe. Viber has historically held a strong position in parts of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, including markets where WhatsApp penetration is comparatively low.

Do not rely on general statistics, including these. Find out for your own customers:

  1. Ask. A one-question survey to a few hundred customers answers this better than any report.
  2. Look at your own country mix from real order data, then check adoption per country rather than as an average.
  3. Run a small test on each to the same audience segment and compare delivery and reply rates before committing.

The differences that actually affect a campaign

Both require opt-in, both require approved templates for anything outside a reply window, and both price marketing higher than utility messages.
  • Template approval exists on both. Plan approval time into the campaign calendar either way.
  • Pricing structure differs in detail and by country on both, and both charge more for marketing than for utility or transactional messages. Price your actual audience per country before choosing.
  • Reply windows. WhatsApp's 24-hour rule is well documented and strict. Viber has its own session and message-type rules. In both cases a customer reply is what unlocks cheaper, freer conversation.
  • Fallback to SMS is available on some Viber routes, which changes the economics if a meaningful share of your audience lacks the app — but it also means you are paying for SMS while thinking you are paying for Viber.
Which one your customers have depends almost entirely on where they are
Which one your customers have depends almost entirely on where they are

Run one, properly, before running two

Two channels means two opt-in flows, two template libraries, two approval cycles, two sets of quality ratings to protect, and a real risk of messaging the same person twice about the same thing.

Pick the one that covers most of your customers, launch it with a narrow set of message types, and only add the second when you have a market where the first genuinely does not reach people. A shop with 80 % of customers in one country almost never needs both.

This is not a formality either platform will let you skip, and EU law agrees. Consent for email is not consent for messaging, and consent for WhatsApp is not consent for Viber.

  • A separate, unticked box per channel, naming the app.
  • A recorded source and timestamp, as for every other channel.
  • An opt-out honoured across every template on that channel, immediately.
  • Do not migrate consent between apps when you switch provider. Ask again.

What is worth sending on either

  1. Order and delivery updates. The reason people accept business messages at all, and the cheapest message category on both.
  2. Back in stock for a product somebody asked about.
  3. Post-purchase care, which generates replies — and replies are what make the channel affordable.
  4. A narrow, high-value win-back, to your best lapsed customers, priced deliberately.

A weekly newsletter belongs on neither. The per-message economics and the approval cycle both say so, and email does it better for a fraction of the cost.

Sources and further reading (4)
  1. WhatsApp Business — Pricing
  2. WhatsApp Business — Messaging policy
  3. Rakuten Viber — Business messages
  4. EDPB — Guidelines 05/2020 on consent

Checked on 23 September 2026. Provider prices, mailbox rules and legal guidance change — verify anything you plan to act on.

One consent record per channel

Campaigns that know which app somebody agreed to

Auralata keeps WhatsApp, Viber, SMS and email consent as separate records with separate sources, so launching a second channel starts from an honest count rather than from the whole list.

Start now See how it works
Consent by channelrecorded separately
Email12,480
SMS1,192
WhatsApp318
Viber: no consent collected yet. Ask before launching.
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