Order notifications by SMS, Viber and WhatsApp: cost and rules

“Where’s my order?” is the question every e-shop would rather not hear. The answer is already in the system: the order changed status, the tracking number was entered. It just never reached the customer, or it reached an email they never opened.

This article compares the three channels people read straight away on their phone, with prices from the providers’ official pages in October 2026, for Cyprus and Greece. It also draws on the design we did in September for the notifications of our own shop, antoniadis.com.cy, on PrestaShop: what we chose, what we left for later, and where we got stuck.

The short answer

• Per message, WhatsApp and Viber cost less than one euro cent to Cyprus: €0.0064 and €0.0058. An SMS from a local provider costs €0.035 to €0.055.
• But Viber has a monthly minimum: €115 for Cyprus and €175 for Greece, according to Viber’s rate card. For a small e-shop, that decides it.
• SMS is the only channel with no approvals. Viber and WhatsApp require the customer’s opt-in and pre-approved message templates.
• An order update doesn’t need marketing consent, as long as it contains no promotion. Add a discount to the same message and both the rules and the price change.
• Two or three notifications per order are enough: shipped with tracking, ready for pickup, delayed. Email covers the rest.

How often do customers ask “where’s my order”?

In the 100 chatbot conversations we analysed on antoniadis.com.cy, from 23 August to 19 September 2026, 6% were “where’s my order” and another 3% a problem with an order or payment. The data is aggregated and anonymised, from a single shop.

6% isn’t a big share. But it is the one category that shouldn’t exist at all: in every one of those questions, the shop already knew the answer. And it only counts people who opened the chat. Anyone who phoned or emailed doesn’t show up here. Among the order problems was the most expensive message an e-shop can receive: a customer writing that they had waited too long and would buy elsewhere.

An AI chatbot answers “where is it” when the customer asks. A notification answers before they ask.

What does one message cost on each channel?

Channel	To Cyprus	To Greece	How it’s charged
WhatsApp, order message (utility)	€0.0064	€0.0175	Per delivered message
WhatsApp, marketing message	€0.05	€0.0712	Per delivered message
Viber, transactional	€0.0058	€0.0112	Per delivered message, minimum €115 (CY) or €175 (GR) a month
Viber, promotional	€0.0086	€0.0245	As above
SMS, local provider	€0.035–0.055	€0.034–0.042	Per SMS, with volume tiers
SMS, international API platform	$0.0864	$0.0657	Per SMS segment

WhatsApp prices come from Meta’s rate card in euros, effective 1 October 2026. Greece sits in the “Rest of Central & Eastern Europe” group. Cyprus isn’t listed by name, so it falls into “Other”, which the same page defines as the group for every country not on the list. Viber prices come from Viber’s Business Messages rate card, which carries no date. For SMS we took samples: a Cypriot and a Greek provider with public price lists, and an international platform’s pricing pages for Cyprus and Greece. The Greek provider quotes prices excluding VAT; the other pages don’t mention VAT.

Three traps the table doesn’t show:

Greek fits 70 characters. An SMS holds 160 characters in the basic GSM-7 set. A single character outside it switches the whole message to an encoding that holds 70, or 67 per segment once it splits, as one provider’s documentation explains. Lowercase Greek is outside GSM-7. With a tracking number and a link, a Greek message easily takes two SMS and is charged twice.

Viber charges the international rate across borders. The domestic rate only applies when the sender is based in the recipient’s country. A Cypriot e-shop messaging a customer in Greece pays €0.0245, not €0.0112.

WhatsApp charges order messages inside the 24-hour window again. From 1 October 2026, utility templates are charged even when the customer has messaged you in the last 24 hours. The 1,000 free messages a month only cover free-form replies to a customer who wrote to you, not notifications. Many guides still say otherwise. So did our own notes from September.

An example: 300 orders a month

A hypothetical shop in Cyprus, with customers in Cyprus and two notifications per order, sends 600 messages a month. The volume is an example, not our data; the prices are from the table.

Channel	Calculation	Monthly cost
SMS, local provider	600 × €0.055	€33, up to €66 if each message takes two SMS
Viber, transactional	600 × €0.0058 = €3.48	€115, because of the minimum
WhatsApp, utility	600 × €0.0064	€3.84, plus the cost of the connection

For customers in Greece, the same calculation gives €25.20 excluding VAT for SMS, €175 for Viber and €10.50 for WhatsApp. Meta’s rate card only charges for messages. But someone has to set up and maintain the connection, and the partners who take that on usually charge their own monthly fee.

When we designed the notifications for antoniadis.com.cy, we set a ceiling of €50 a month, with most customers in Cyprus. Viber’s per-message price was the lowest; the minimum was the problem. We decided to start with SMS and add Viber and WhatsApp later, in the same code.

What does each provider let you send?

Criterion	SMS	Viber	WhatsApp
Opt-in required by the provider	No, only the law applies	Yes, for every message, transactional included	Yes, naming the business
Approved template	No	Yes, for transactional messages from July 2026	Yes, for every message you initiate
Account	Sender name, no pre-registration in Cyprus and Greece	Verified Business Account, only through a partner	Meta Business account, directly or through a partner

Viber. Viber’s guidelines for its partners require opt-in before any message, and proof that you obtained it. The consent must say that messages will arrive via Viber and from which business. The account can only be opened through an authorised partner. From July 2026, according to partner documentation, transactional messages go out only with an approved template, and anything sent without one may be billed as promotional.

One practical obstacle we hit: the partner asked whether this was a new registration or a transfer of an existing account. Transfers only happen at the start of each quarter, with 30 days’ notice. On 3 September, the first available date was 1 January 2027. Ask your partner which process applies to you before you fill in the form.

WhatsApp. Anything the business initiates goes out only as an approved template. Free-form text is allowed only within 24 hours of the customer’s last message. The opt-in must name the business. And Meta categorises as marketing any template with mixed content. Since April 2025 it does so automatically, so a “shipped, and here’s 10% off” is billed at the marketing rate, almost eight times higher in Cyprus.

SMS. None of the above. For Cyprus and Greece, an international provider states that the sender name needs no pre-registration (Cyprus, Greece). It’s the channel you can set up the same day.

Which stages deserve a notification, and which annoy?

PrestaShop already sends an email for every order status where you’ve enabled it. A message to the phone is for the moments when the customer is waiting for something or has to do something.

Stage	Message to the phone?	Why
Order placed	No, email is enough	The customer has just seen the confirmation on screen
Payment accepted	No	It usually coincides with the order
Processing	No	Nothing changes for the customer
Shipped, with tracking number	Yes	It is the answer to “where is it”
Ready for pickup in store	Yes	The customer has to come in; without a message, they wait or call
Delayed or out of stock	Yes	They hear it from you, before they start asking
Awaiting bank transfer	Maybe, one reminder	Only if the order sits unpaid for days
Delivered	No	The customer already knows

Every extra message costs twice: once on the rate card and once in the customer’s patience. On Viber, the same Viber guidelines note that users can block a business. After that, not even the message that matters gets through.

What needs consent and what doesn’t

What follows is not legal advice. It’s the distinction worth keeping in mind when you talk to your lawyer.

• Order updates. The GDPR allows processing that is necessary for the performance of a contract, in Article 6(1)(b). “Shipped, here is your tracking number” belongs here.
• Promotion. The ePrivacy Directive, in Article 13, requires prior consent for direct marketing messages, and SMS is explicitly included. There is an exception for existing customers and similar products, with a way to object in every message. The Greek Data Protection Authority notes that the exception also covers mobile numbers and Viber and WhatsApp accounts. For Cyprus, see the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection page on direct marketing.
• The mixed message. “Your order has shipped. Use code X for 10% off your next one” is no longer just an update. The legal basis changes, and on WhatsApp and Viber so do the category and the price.
• The provider has its own rules. Viber and WhatsApp require opt-in even for order messages, regardless of the law. A checkbox at checkout, along the lines of “I want order updates on Viber”, covers the provider, as long as you record who ticked it and when.

Two questions for your lawyer: does your privacy policy mention the provider that sends the messages? And how long do you keep the sending history?

How do you set it up in PrestaShop?

It’s the other side of the new-order alert from our automations article: there the message goes to you, here it goes to the customer. When we searched in September, we found modules for WhatsApp only or SMS only, and none for Viber. So we designed our own. The points that matter, whichever module you choose:

1. A “Ready for pickup” status doesn’t exist by default. You create it in the order settings, under “Statuses”, as the PrestaShop guide describes.
2. The status change and the tracking number are two separate events. A status change goes through the actionOrderStatusPostUpdate hook. The tracking number is entered separately and triggers actionAdminOrdersTrackingNumberUpdate. If “shipped” goes out with the status change, it often goes out without a number. Ask any module you’re considering which of the two it uses.
3. One template per status, with variables: order reference, courier, tracking number. On Viber and WhatsApp they’re approved in advance, so you write them once and get them right.
4. An opt-in checkbox at checkout from day one, even if you start with SMS only. When Viber or WhatsApp is added, you’ll already have the consents.
5. A sending log: what was sent, when, whether it was delivered and what it cost. It’s your proof of opt-in and the only way to check the provider’s invoice.
6. One channel at a time, in the same code. The module talks to each provider through a shared layer, so Viber or WhatsApp can be added later without rewriting the core.

We build modules like this, adapted to the Greek and Cypriot market, under PrestaShop Modules.

Where to start

• Count for one week. How many calls, emails and messages were “where’s my order”? That’s the cost you want to cut.
• Check where your customers are. Cyprus, Greece or both changes the price of Viber and WhatsApp.
• Compare with Viber’s minimum. If your SMS notifications cost less than €115 a month, roughly 2,000 single SMS in Cyprus at the table’s price, Viber doesn’t pay off yet.
• Write the two or three messages before anything else. If the Greek text doesn’t fit in 70 characters, you already know you’ll be paying for two SMS.

If you’d like to look at it together for your own PrestaShop shop, get in touch.