Viber in the Philippines. How businesses can work with the local audience

In Infobip's ranking for the Philippines, Messenger comes first with 95%, followed by Viber at 71%, WhatsApp at 40%, and Telegram at 20%. Of the thirty major markets Infobip covers, this is the only one where Viber has a notable share. For a company that sells tours to Filipinos, handles their support under contract, or ships goods to them, the takeaway is simple - when you reach a local customer by phone number, you do it on Viber.

Below we cover what time to message Manila from Kyiv or Berlin, in which language, how many strangers a new account can message in its first weeks, and how to put ten agency agents into the client's CRM so the database stays with the client.

Key takeaways

• Messenger collects inbound messages from your page and ads, but you can't use it to message someone first using the phone number in a CRM record.

• Manila is on UTC+8 year-round, 5 hours ahead of Kyiv in summer and 6 in winter.

• Five messages to strangers in one day are enough to get a fresh Viber account blocked. Warm it up over weeks, and start collecting inbound chats right away.

• E-chat doesn't limit the number of agents, you're billed for connected numbers.

• The company that owns the customers registers the E-chat account and the SIM card. If the contractor changes, the chats and contacts stay in its CRM.

Messenger, Viber, and Telegram in the Philippine market

Infobip's numbers suggest you should run all messaging through Messenger. But Messenger lives inside Facebook, and customers get there from a company page or an ad. Meanwhile, a travel agency's or store's CRM holds phone numbers from bookings, website inquiries, and trade show forms. A Messenger page answers people who come on their own, but it can't start a conversation with someone from your database.

So the real question is which messenger uses the customer's phone number as the account, and popularity comes second. In the Philippines there is only one such channel with wide reach, and it's Viber.

Two channels for different jobs

Keep your Messenger page for inbound leads from ads. Use Viber for everything that starts with a phone number in the record - booking confirmations, delivery status, a repeat sale six months later, a call the customer missed and asked you to follow up in writing.

E-chat connects phone-based Viber, Telegram, and WhatsApp accounts to CRM systems. Messenger isn't on that list, so set up deals tied to the customer's phone number on Viber from the start.

What Viber reports about business messaging

A Viber for Business press release from February 2025 gives these figures for the Philippines. Mobile devices account for 84% of internet traffic, and 92% of shoppers complete purchases on their phones. The number of small business accounts grew 194% in a year, and user engagement in chats with them rose 74%. In 2024, delivered business messages grew 53%, transactional messages, meaning delivery and purchase confirmations, grew 89%, and conversations between brands and users grew 95%.

These are Viber's own figures about itself, so treat them as a trend rather than an independent measurement. The trend is clear, though - Filipinos are getting used to receiving confirmations from companies on Viber and replying to them.

Why Telegram's numbers vary so much

Infobip puts Telegram at 20% in the Philippines. Exploding Topics, citing GWI and DataReportal, gives 56.3% of internet users over 16. The nearly threefold gap comes down to who was asked and what, and it's also a reminder that reach and business messaging are different things. Having a messenger installed doesn't mean a person expects to hear from a travel agency there.

For sales to a phone database, Viber remains the main channel. Telegram makes sense as a second channel if customers themselves ask you to message them there.

When and in what language to message Manila

A team in Europe or Ukraine and customers in the Philippines barely share working hours, so build that into the schedule before the first message, not after the first complaint about a reply sent in the middle of the night.

Manila hours

The Philippines is on UTC+8 and doesn't observe daylight saving time. It's 5 hours ahead of Kyiv in summer and 6 in winter, 5 hours ahead of Moscow year-round, and ahead of Berlin and Warsaw by 6 hours in summer and 7 in winter. The Manila workday from 9 am to 6 pm falls on 4 am to 1 pm Kyiv time in summer.

That gives you a schedule without night shifts. Send first messages to new contacts in your morning, when it's midday in Manila. The customer's evening, 7 to 10 pm Manila time, falls on your 2 to 5 pm in summer. Customers are back from work by then, so agents should be available during those hours.

Messages that arrive during your night hours can get a CRM auto-reply with the response time in Manila time, for example reply by 2 pm Manila time. Kyiv time means nothing to a Filipino customer.

English, Filipino, and a mix of the two

There are two official languages, English and Filipino. In chats, customers often mix them, and Filipinos call this mix Taglish. English is enough for an agent, but it helps to know a dozen common words. Salamat means thank you, sige means okay or deal, po and opo are polite particles, and opo also means yes.

Write templates in plain English with short sentences and no stiff phrases like kindly be informed. A first message to a trade show contact might look like this - Good afternoon! You asked about the El Nido tour at our booth on Saturday. Should we send dates and prices here in Viber?

It has one detail that helps the person remember the conversation and one question that's easy to answer with yes.

A local SIM card and first messages

Once connected to your CRM, a Viber number becomes your company's address. Customers save it to their contacts, and changing it later is costly. Decide which SIM card to use before launch, together with your plan for the first outreach.

Connecting to E-chat takes four steps. Sign up for an account, add your number and confirm it by scanning a QR code with your phone, wait for sync, and link the account to your CRM following the guide. The last step takes no more than a minute.

A +63 number or your home country code

Customers see a +63 number as local. It requires a Philippine SIM card in the phone where Viber is activated. After activation, you can't delete Viber from that phone or use the "Change Number" feature. The phone itself can be turned off, and that doesn't affect the service.

Your home country code works if you're handling existing customers who saved your contact themselves and share it with friends. For cold contacts, a local code is clearer - people see a Philippine number and don't have to wonder who's messaging them from abroad.

Viber limits and planning outreach to your database

According to the E-chat help center, a new Viber account risks being blocked as early as the fifth message to new contacts in a day. For a long-established account, the ceiling is no more than 20 new contacts a day with no prior chat history. Once a customer has replied even once, no restrictions have been observed in that conversation. Treat an account that has been blocked before as new, no matter how old it is.

Say a travel agency brings 240 contacts back from a trade show in Manila and connects a fresh Philippine SIM card. In the first week, it messages 3-4 people a day, which adds up to 25 contacts. Then it goes up to 20 a day and spends another 11 days on the remaining 215 people. Covering the whole database takes two and a half weeks, and by then some people will have forgotten about the show.

To avoid waiting, collect inbound chats. A QR code at your booth and a button on your website that open a chat with you on Viber produce conversations started by the customer, and the limit on initiating chats doesn't apply to them.

How to message first without getting flagged as spam

Spam complaints lead to blocks. The E-chat help article on WhatsApp directly advises against putting links in first messages and recommends varying greetings and spreading sends throughout the day. It makes sense to follow the same rules for Viber, since one complaint costs more than an extra day of warm-up.

The same text sent to twenty people in a row looks like a mass mailing and draws complaints. Change at least the first line and include something the person remembers about you - the day of the show, the tour name, the product in their cart.

Consent to marketing messages

The Philippines has a 2012 data privacy law. Without going through its sections, stick to a simple rule - promotional messages require the person's consent. Add a consent checkbox to the booth form and the website form, and save the consent date in the customer record in your CRM.

[Expert insight] According to the E-chat help center, nine out of ten Viber blocks happen because of too many first messages to people with no prior chat history. The integration service has no effect on blocks. Viber imposes them itself based on account behavior, so we recommend planning your warm-up schedule before the trade show, not after the first block. If you add Telegram as a second channel, it's more lenient. It first restricts sending temporarily, and in our experience a restriction via the API lasts from 4 to 24 hours, while permanent bans are reserved for systematic violations. Messaging someone first by username is safer there than by phone number.

An outsourced team in the client's CRM

The Philippines is itself a major outsourcing hub. According to IBPAP, the IT-BPM industry association, the sector had about 1.9 million jobs and $40 billion in export revenue at the end of 2025, adding 80,000 jobs over the year. It's quite likely that a team in Manila or Cebu handles support for your Filipino customers, or that your agency handles other companies' customers. Either way, the first thing to settle is whose name the Viber account is registered in.

Who owns the number

The company that owns the customers registers the E-chat account and the SIM card. Agency agents get access to the client's CRM as regular users. With this setup, an employee can't take the phone number, export the database, or move chats to a personal account. This is part of E-chat's customer database protection.

If the client switches contractors, the new team opens the records and sees the full chat history. Nothing has to be migrated, begged from the old agency, or rebuilt from screenshots.

Ten agents on three numbers

E-chat doesn't limit the number of managers, you only pay for connected numbers. Viber costs $29.99 per month per number. Take an agency with ten agents working on three projects, each with its own Viber. Three connections at the base price come to $89.97 per month, which is less than $9 per agent. If you prepay for several connections for 12 months, the discount goes up to 40%, and E-chat offers special terms from 20 numbers.

A separate Viber per project is more convenient than a shared one. Customers of different clients don't get mixed up in one chat list, each number has its own first-message limits, and you don't have to split reports by project manually.

Shifts hand over work without calls. The morning shift in Manila leaves the conversation in the record, and the evening shift in Europe opens the same record and picks it up. If an agent steps away from the computer, they can reply from the messenger on their phone, and the message will still be saved in the CRM.

Travel business - from booking to transfer reminder

According to the same Viber data, transactional messages grew 89% in 2024, and that directly affects travel businesses. Booking, payment, voucher, transfer time - customers want to see all of it in one chat with your company.

It's convenient to build the flow in your CRM around deal stages, and E-chat will deliver the messages to Viber.

Documents and videos in the chat

A Viber message holds up to 4096 characters, and a file can be up to 200 MB. A PDF voucher, directions to the pier, and baggage instructions go through without cloud links. Hotel videos are trickier, since drone footage easily exceeds the limit, so compress it in advance or split it into two parts.

Automated messages by booking status

Automated messages in E-chat are a feature of your CRM. A robot or trigger fires when the status changes, and the service delivers the text to the customer on Viber. A typical set for a travel agency looks like this.

Status paid - a confirmation with dates and the booking code. Three days before the trip - a reminder of the transfer time and meeting point. On the day of the flight home - a request to leave a review.

The CRM sends messages based on its server time. If the server runs on Berlin time and the robot sends a reminder at 9 am, it's already 3 or 4 pm in Manila. For the message to arrive by 9 am Manila time, schedule it for 3 am server time in summer and 2 am in winter.

Tourists from other countries

If you run a hotel or dive center in Palawan, guests also come from abroad. According to Infobip, 85% of people in the UK use WhatsApp, 85% in Spain as well, and 90% in the UAE. Such a guest may not have Viber at all, and your transfer reminder won't reach them.

Connect WhatsApp to the same CRM, it costs $15.99 per month, and add a contact channel field to the record. The front desk sets it to Viber or WhatsApp at booking, and the CRM robot sends the reminder to the right messenger.

FAQ

Question: Can we connect both Viber and WhatsApp to one Philippine number?

Answer: Yes, each messenger is connected and billed separately. Viber costs $29.99 per number per month, WhatsApp $15.99, Telegram $16.99. Incoming and outgoing messages are unlimited on any plan.

Question: Our CRM isn't on E-chat's list of integrations. What should we do?

Answer: Viber connects through ApiX-Drive or Wepster, while WhatsApp and Telegram need your own solution built on the E-chat API, the documentation is open in the help center. Ready-made integrations include Kommo, amoCRM, Bitrix24, Odoo, NetHunt, KeyCRM, and two dozen other systems.

Question: How many messages per month are included in the plan?

Answer: E-chat doesn't limit the number of messages or contacts. Limits are set by the messenger itself, and for Viber they apply to first messages to strangers, not to chats with people who have already replied.

Question: Will our chat history be kept if we change the number we use for the Philippines?

Answer: Yes. When you change the number in E-chat and connect the new one to your CRM, the history stays in the customer records. Let customers know about the change in advance, in the old chat, while it still works.

Question: How quickly does E-chat support respond if Viber stops receiving messages?

Answer: On weekdays from 9 am to 7 pm, support responds in 3 minutes on average. You can reach us on Viber or through the Telegram bot @echat_support_bot.

Question: Can we test the setup before paying?

Answer: E-chat gives you the first 7 days free. In a week, you'll have time to connect Viber to your CRM, add agents, and run a couple of real bookings through Viber.