Viber Business Integration: Notifications, Chatbot & API

A customer isn't receiving order status notifications — conversions drop, support is overwhelmed with inquiries. Every missed status erodes loyalty: according to our analysis, up to 30% of buyers leave after two late notifications. We solve this by integrating Viber Business with your site. We set up transactional messages, a chatbot, and a Viber button in 2-5 days. We guarantee stable operation and savings of up to 70% on your SMS budget. Viber Business Messages allows sending up to 10,000 messages per day for free (according to the official Viber documentation). In the CIS, Viber is the second most popular messenger, with an open rate exceeding 80%. Switching to Viber notifications gives a quick boost in customer retention.

What does Viber Business integration with a website give you?

• Transactional notifications — order statuses, payment confirmations, access codes. Users in CIS read Viber more often than email.
• Reduced support load — the chatbot answers typical questions like "Where is my order?" and "Delivery status?" — up to 60% of inquiries are automated.
• Viber button on the site — one click to start a chat, increasing lead conversion by 15-25%.

How does Viber Business integration with a website work?

Viber Business Messages is the official channel for notifications and marketing. Unlike a free bot, a Business Account can initiate a dialog (with user consent). We use the REST API or connect via aggregators (SMSC, Infobip, MessageBird) — a unified interface for Viber, WhatsApp, SMS. The choice depends on your audience size and geography.

Which Viber account type to choose?

For mass mailing or status notifications, you need a Business Account. If you're just testing, a bot will do.

How to connect Viber Business to a website: step-by-step plan

1. Register a Business Account on the Viber portal and obtain a token.
2. Set up a webhook to receive events.
3. Develop a message sending module via the REST API.
4. Integrate with your CRM or shopping cart for automatic notification sending.
5. Test all scenarios (success, errors, unsubscribes).
6. Deploy to production and monitor.

Sending via Viber REST API

$authToken = env('VIBER_BOT_TOKEN');

// Send a text message
$response = Http::withHeaders([
    'X-Viber-Auth-Token' => $authToken
])->post('https://chatapi.viber.com/pa/send_message', [
    'receiver' => $viberUserId,  // unique Viber ID user
    'type'     => 'text',
    'text'     => "Ваш заказ #{$orderId} передан в доставку.",
    'sender'   => ['name' => 'Мой Магазин']
]);

Message with a button

Http::withHeaders(['X-Viber-Auth-Token' => $authToken])
    ->post('https://chatapi.viber.com/pa/send_message', [
        'receiver' => $viberUserId,
        'type'     => 'rich_media',
        'rich_media' => [
            'Type'             => 'rich_media',
            'ButtonsGroupRows' => 2,
            'Buttons'          => [
                [
                    'Columns'    => 6,
                    'Rows'       => 1,
                    'Text'       => 'Отследить заказ',
                    'ActionType' => 'open-url',
                    'ActionBody' => "https://track.example.ru/order/{$orderId}"
                ]
            ]
        ]
    ]);

Webhook and incoming message handling

// Register webhook
Http::withHeaders(['X-Viber-Auth-Token' => $authToken])
    ->post('https://chatapi.viber.com/pa/set_webhook', [
        'url'         => 'https://yoursite.ru/webhooks/viber',
        'event_types' => ['delivered', 'seen', 'failed', 'subscribed', 'unsubscribed', 'conversation_started', 'message']
    ]);

// Handler
Route::post('/webhooks/viber', function (Request $request) {
    $event = $request->json()->all();
    $type  = $event['event'];

    if ($type === 'message') {
        $userId = $event['sender']['id'];
        $text   = $event['message']['text'];
        dispatch(new ProcessViberMessageJob($userId, $text));
    }

    if ($type === 'subscribed') {
        // User subscribed to bot
        ViberUser::updateOrCreate(['viber_id' => $event['user']['id']], [...]]);
    }

    return response()->json(['status' => 0]);  // 0 = OK for Viber
});

Getting the Viber user ID

The Viber ID comes in the events conversation_started (first dialog) or subscribed. You need to store the user_id → viber_id mapping in the database.

Sending via aggregators (SMSC)

To send Viber messages without your own bot, you can use SMSC.ru — it supports Viber Business Messages via a unified API.

Integration stages

What's included in the work

• Preparation and verification of Viber Business Account
• Webhook setup and event handling (message, subscribed, failed)
• Integration with your CRM / shopping cart (Laravel, WordPress, custom)
• Implementation of message templates (text, buttons, media)
• Chatbot based on Viber Chatbot API (optional)
• Testing: functional, load, fault tolerance
• Documentation: API description, operator manual
• Support for 30 days after delivery

Comparison with alternatives: Viber Business Messages is 3-4 times cheaper than SMS in the CIS. Open rates are 80-90% versus 10-15% for email.

Assess your project — write to us, and we'll offer a turnkey solution. Integration takes 2 to 5 days. With over 5 years of experience with the Viber API, we guarantee stable operation without surprises. Contact us for a consultation on your project. Get a proposal with an individual estimate and timeline.

Email Campaign Integration: Why Does It Often Break?

We’ve observed that a trigger email sent 10 minutes after registration converts 4–5 times better than the same email sent after 24 hours. This isn’t a marketing myth—it’s mechanics: while the user is still warm, while they remember the context. But most integrations with email services are built like this: form submits → synchronous HTTP request to API → if the API is slow, the user waits 3 seconds → the email either goes out or doesn’t, nobody knows. In one project, we saw a 30% drop in conversion simply because the email service responded with 504 and Laravel’s queue driver wasn’t configured. Lost emails often hit customers silently – no log, no alert, just a missing order confirmation.

If you’re facing lost emails or spam folder issues, order an audit of your current integration – we’ll find bottlenecks within 2 days.

Providers and Their APIs

Unisender — a Russian provider popular in the SMB segment. REST API, simple. Adding a contact: importContacts, sending a transactional email: sendEmail. Important: for transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets), Unisender Go is a separate service with a different API and separate pricing. Mixing bulk and transactional mailings in one stream is bad for domain reputation. Unisender Go handles up to 1000 requests per second.

SendPulse — provides email, SMS, web push, Viber, and Telegram bots through a unified API. Convenient for projects requiring an omnichannel approach. Automation 360 is a visual chain builder; you can trigger automation via API events. The PHP SDK (sendpulse/rest-api-php-sdk) is maintained but updated irregularly – better to use Guzzle directly.

Mailchimp — a choice for international audiences and marketing teams accustomed to the Mailchimp ecosystem. Transactional email via Mandrill (a subsidiary service). Marketing API v3 for list, tag, and campaign management. Webhooks for opens, clicks, unsubscribes, bounces.

SMS. For Russia: SMSCenter, MTS Exolve, Devino Telecom, SMS Aero. Their APIs are similar: a send method with phone, message, sender parameters (sender name must be registered separately with the operator). One nuance: the sender name must be registered through the aggregator with a contract – otherwise SMS won’t be sent on MTS/MegaFon/Beeline networks.

How to Build an Integration That Doesn’t Lose Emails?

Separate Transactional and Marketing Streams

Transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets, delivery status) go through a dedicated sender domain or subdomain tx.example.com. Marketing campaigns go through mail.example.com or news.example.com. If a marketing campaign receives many spam complaints, it should not affect the reputation of the transactional stream. According to SendGrid documentation, transactional messages should be sent through a dedicated IP pool to prevent cross-contamination.

Queue and Retry

Any call to the email API goes through a queue (Laravel Queue, Bull, Celery). If Unisender returns a 503, the job retries after 5 minutes, then 15, then 60. After 5 failed attempts, it goes to a dead letter queue with an alert. The user already received their 200 OK and knows nothing about the issue. This approach reduces bounce rate on projects to 0.5%.

Example Laravel job:

public function handle(): void
{
    try {
        $response = Http::post(config('services.unisender.email_url'), $this->params);
        if ($response->failed()) {
            $this->release(300); // retry after 5 min
        }
    } catch (\Throwable $e) {
        $this->release(300);
    }
}

Templates

We store templates in code (Blade, Twig, React Email), not in the provider’s interface. Reasons: versioning via Git, browser preview without sending, testability. For complex templates with dynamic content — react-email with export to HTML via @react-email/render.

Validation and Consent

Before adding a contact to a list — double opt-in (confirmation email). Store the confirmation timestamp in your own database. Upon unsubscription — synchronously unsubscribe both at the provider and in your database. Ignoring webhook unsubscriptions is a direct path to account suspension at the provider. All processes comply with Федеральный закон № 152-ФЗ «О персональных данных».

Deliverability Monitoring and DKIM Setup

Connect provider webhooks for events: bounce (hard and soft), spam_complaint, unsubscribe. Hard bounce — immediately mark the email as invalid in your database, stop sending. Soft bounce 3 times in a row — same. Metrics: open rate, click rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate — review at least once a week. Our certified engineers configure alerts in Grafana/Prometheus.

DKIM configuration steps:

1. Generate a key pair (e.g., openssl genrsa -out private.key 2048).
2. Publish the public key in DNS as a TXT record for the selector (e.g., mail._domainkey.tx.example.com).
3. Provide the selector to the provider (SendGrid, Mailgun, Unisender).
4. Verify with dig TXT mail._domainkey.tx.example.com.

SPF, DKIM, DMARC must be configured separately for each stream. We use subdomains with different DNS records.

Why Is It Important to Separate Streams?

If you send a marketing campaign from the same domain as transactional emails and receive spam complaints, you risk getting the domain blocked — and users will stop receiving even order confirmations. SPF, DKIM, DMARC (Sender Policy Framework, DomainKeys Identified Mail, Domain‑based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) must be configured separately for each stream. In one project, a marketing blast with 12% spam complaints blocked the transactional domain for 48 hours — we had to re‑authenticate with Google and Yandex.

What Does the Integration Scope Include?

• Audit of current communication streams and domain reputation (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
• Provider and schema selection: transactional vs marketing traffic
• Configuration of SPF, DKIM, DMARC DNS records
• Development of email templates (HTML + dynamic content)
• Backend integration via queues and API
• Webhook setup for deliverability and complaints
• Operations documentation and team training
• Deliverability guarantee and post‑launch support

We deliver production‑ready documentation, access to monitoring dashboards, and a handover session with your engineers. Our certified engineers provide a 30‑day post‑launch health check guarantee.

Timelines and Cost

Cost is calculated individually after audit. We provide turnkey service: from analysis to production monitoring. Contact us for a free engineer consultation — we’ll evaluate your project and give accurate timelines. Over 7 years of experience in email service integration, 50+ projects implemented. Order a free audit of your current integration and receive a report with recommendations and estimated savings.