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What’s the difference between promotional and transactional messages?

BulkGate distinguishes two sending routes and applies them the same way across every channel — SMS, Viber, RCS, WhatsApp and Voice. The difference is not in the technology but in what the message is about. And you do not pick the route with a switch — it follows from where you send the message.

Transactional message

An informational message that follows an action of the recipient or an event that directly concerns them: an order confirmation, a change of its status, a verification code, a notice that a subscription is about to expire.

Example: Dear customer, the status of your order has changed to “Payment accepted”. Have a nice day! YourGuitars

Everything you send the following way goes through the transactional route:

with the Send message button in the portal (SMS, Viber, RCS, WhatsApp, Voice),
from an e-shop plugin as a Customer SMS or an Admin SMS (plugins support SMS and Viber),
through the OTP API as a one-time code,
through the transactional API endpoints.

Caution

It is strictly prohibited to exploit the transactional route for marketing. It may only be used to inform the recipient about something they asked for or that directly concerns them.

Promotional message

A bulk message that advertises products, services or events. It carries sales and marketing information and goes out to a list of recipients who have expressed interest in it.

Example: YourGuitars: Hi Mark, get a 30% discount on all our electric guitars. Valid until 08/01. See here: https://example.com/sale

The promotional route covers:

a campaign created in the portal (SMS, Viber, RCS, WhatsApp),
sending through the promotional API endpoints.

Important

You may only send a promotional message to a recipient who has given you consent to receive commercial communications. Once they withdraw that consent, they must not get any more promotional messages — add them to the opt-out.

Note

Voice is the only channel you will not find in a campaign — voice messages go through the transactional route only.

How the two routes differ

	Transactional	Promotional
Where you create it	Send message, e-shop plugins, API	Campaign, API
Available channels	SMS, Viber, RCS, WhatsApp, Voice	SMS, Viber, RCS, WhatsApp
Blacklist	stops the message	stops the message
Opt-out	does not stop the message	stops the message
Duplicate protection	watches for the same message repeated to the same number	watches for duplicate recipients in the list
Results overview	message history	the campaign's own overview

What both routes have in common: the message must have a non-empty text and a verified sender, otherwise it is not sent.

How the two lists differ in reach, where to find them in the portal and how a number gets onto them is described in Blacklist and opt-out.

Viber billing

Viber is the only channel where the split between transactional and promotional content shows up directly in the price list. There are five items and they differ in price:

Price list item	When it applies
Transactional	A message sent through a registered Viber template
Promotional	A message from a campaign and any plain text without a template
OTP template	A one-time verification code
Session	A 24-hour conversation started by the recipient; billed as a whole rather than per message
International	The recipient is in a country other than the sender's domestic country

Important

Plain text without a template is billed on Viber at the promotional rate, even when its content is a notification. This applies to Send message, to a campaign and to the transactional API endpoints alike. You only get the cheaper transactional rate when you send the message through a registered Viber template.

Which content each type may carry and how templates are registered is described on the Viber Business message types page.

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