Chatbot commercial model - legacy

Rakuten Viber is pleased to introduce its new notification based pricing model, that will be applied, starting September 1st, 2022, to all active chatbots on Rakuten Viber:

• Chatbot owners can create and publish a chatbot on Rakuten Viber for free;
• Chatbot subscribers can engage in conversation or interact with your chatbot at any time without cost — all the messages exchanged as part of a session are free;
• To engage in a conversation with their subscribers, a chatbot owner can send chatbot-initiated messages. Chatbot owners will be charged a cost-per-message beyond 10,000 chatbot-initiated messages sent every calendar month.

Messages exchanged in a chatbot fall into two categories:

• Chatbot session message: message exchanged between the chatbot and its subscribers during a conversational session.
• Chatbot-initiated message: message sent by the chatbot owner to its subscriber to engage in a conversation with them.

A session is a 24-hour time window activated by the chatbot subscriber when sending a first message inside a chatbot. A session is activated by the chatbot subscriber when replying to a chatbot-initiated message.

As part of a session, the chatbot subscriber and the chatbot can interact and exchange an unlimited number of messages for free.

After 24 hours, the session terminates automatically. The next session will be activated once the chatbot subscriber sends a new message.

A message sent by a chatbot to its subscriber is categorized as a chatbot-initiated message when there is no active session between the chatbot and its subscriber.

To initiate a conversation with its subscribers, a chatbot can send a full range of message types and formats: text, pictures, videos, files, carousels, stickers, call-to-action buttons, location, contact cards.

By default, chatbots will be able to send up to 10,000 chatbot-initiated messages for free every calendar month*. Once this limit has been reached, Rakuten Viber will block new chatbot-initiated messages from being sent until the following month.

To send more chatbot-initiated messages beyond the monthly limit, chatbot owners must agree to Rakuten Viber's Chatbot Commercial Terms.

*A calendar month is measured according to UTC (GMT+0) timezone.

If you want to send more than the 10,000* chatbot-initiated messages allocated monthly for free, you will need to agree to Rakuten Viber's Chatbot Commercial Terms. In addition, all messages above the limit will be charged at a cost-per-delivered message rate. The rate is based on the country code of the phone number with which the chatbot subscriber registered to Rakuten Viber and varies by country and region.

Please note that the welcome message type is not counted as a chatbot-initiated message and remains free of charge.

*Rakuten Viber's internal stats shall be the final stats for measurement and billing.

We explain in detail how our Chatbot Commercial Terms are applied, with cases and examples from various industries, here.

To explore our chatbot-initiated messages rates, please refer to our detailed rate card here.

Please contact us by submitting this form to receive an offer for the services which will best suit your needs.

To help you better understand the Rakuten Viber Chatbot and our new commercial terms, we answered some commonly asked questions here.

Please contact us in case you have any questions by submitting this form.