When a bot is enough instead of a website
A website and a bot do the same job: show the product, take the order and the money. The difference is how a buyer reaches you. A website is found in search by the product name. A conversation with a bot is not a web page, so search will not show it: people come to a bot through a link from a channel, an ad, a business card or a chat. Hence the first question of the path.
- Do you sell a digital product paid for inside the messenger?A file, course access, a subscription. Telegram allows payment for these only in Stars. Yes → this article's calculation is not for you; see the section on digital goods
- Do new buyers look for your product on Google by name?For example spare parts, books, goods with a part number. A bot will not appear in search. Yes → you need a website; the bot can be a second channel
- Does the range fit into a few screens without filters?Dozens of items, not hundreds, and the buyer does not need to compare them by size, colour and price at once. No → a website or a marketplace
- Are buyers already in your channel or coming from ads via a link?Then the bot only removes the manual back-and-forth about price and payment. Yes → a bot is enough to start
- Do you have more subscribers and orders than the builder's free plan allows?Limits are in the cost section. Yes → a paid plan; compare it with the cost of a website
The 'few screens' limit is our editorial judgement, not a rule. Test it simply: open your range as a list on a phone. If a buyer has to scroll for more than a minute to find what they need, a catalogue in a bot loses to a catalogue with filters. What a website costs and what the price is made of, we covered in the article on the cost of a small business website, and the choice between your own shop and a marketplace in the calculation on a single batch.
How a bot takes payment
There are two workable ways, and they look different to the buyer.
- Payment inside Telegram. The bot owner connects a payment provider in the bot settings via BotFather, after which the bot sends an invoice with a Pay button. According to Telegram's documentation, the platform does not collect payment data and takes no commission: the buyer enters the card with the payment system, and the provider charges its own fee. BotFather shows the list of providers; the documentation page does not, so check whether your bank is on it.
- A payment link. The bot or a manager sends a link to the payment service's checkout page. This is how, for example, the 'Social networks' scenario on the plata by mono page works: a link in the chat instead of bank details. For the buyer it means switching to a browser; for you it is the same rate as for a website.
Standard rates on 25 October 2026 are the same for a website and a bot: LiqPay and plata by mono charge 1.3% for Ukrainian cards and 2% for foreign ones, WayForPay charges 2%, with no extra fee on refunds. A website is not required for card acquiring: LiqPay has a separate list of merchant requirements for messengers and bots, covered below.
Telegram adds one more rule that a website does not have. The bot owner is responsible for disputes and chargebacks, and the bot must answer the /terms command (the terms of sale the buyer accepts before paying) and offer a way to reach support, for example via /support. These come from the go-live checklist in the same documentation.
Digital goods: Stars only
For digital goods and services the rules differ. Telegram's documentation on digital goods says it plainly: payment for them inside the app is made exclusively in Telegram Stars, the invoice currency is XTR, and another provider or cryptocurrency is not allowed. The explanation is on the same page: this is how Telegram complies with the Apple and Google app store rules.
For a Ukrainian sole trader selling a course or templates this is a separate task involving Stars conversion, the date of income and taxes. We do not calculate it here, because we have not checked against primary sources how such income is recorded. If your product is digital, the calculation below does not fit you.
What a year costs
A hypothetical shop: 60 orders a month with an average order of UAH 900, that is UAH 54,000 of turnover a month and UAH 648,000 a year. All buyers pay with Ukrainian cards. The bot builder in the example is SendPulse, because it publishes prices in hryvnias; calculate other builders with the same formula.
SendPulse chatbot plans on 25 October 2026 (prices excluding VAT, as stated on the page):
- Free: 3 bots, up to 500 subscribers, up to 10,000 messages a month across all bots. Payment acceptance is not in this plan's feature list, so payment goes via a link.
- PRO, 500 subscribers: UAH 490 a month, or UAH 392 a month when paid annually.
- PRO, 2,000 subscribers: UAH 870 a month, or UAH 696 a month when paid annually. Payment acceptance is in the PRO feature list.
| Option | Builder per year | Fee per year | Total per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan + link, 1.3% | UAH 0 | UAH 8,424 | UAH 8,424 |
| PRO 500, paid annually + 1.3% | UAH 4,704 | UAH 8,424 | UAH 13,128 |
| PRO 2,000, paid annually + 1.3% | UAH 8,352 | UAH 8,424 | UAH 16,776 |
| PRO 2,000, monthly + 1.3% | UAH 10,440 | UAH 8,424 | UAH 18,864 |
| PRO 2,000, monthly + 2% | UAH 10,440 | UAH 12,960 | UAH 23,400 |
Calculation: builder plan × 12 + 648,000 × fee rate. SendPulse (excluding VAT), LiqPay, plata by mono and WayForPay rates on 25.10.2026; turnover is hypothetical.
What these figures show. At this turnover the payment fee is larger than the builder fee in every option except monthly PRO at 1.3%, where the two are almost equal. So the 0.7 percentage point gap between payment services matters as much as the builder plan: it is UAH 4,536 a year. The free plan looks cheapest, but the 500-subscriber limit will run out fast at 60 orders a month, and payment by link means someone matches orders and payments by hand. The total excludes the PRRO (see below), delivery and your time setting up the catalogue.
A PRRO receipt in a bot
The most common mistake is to assume a messenger bot sits outside the till rules. The law does not draw that distinction.
Article 3(2) of Law No. 265/95-VR on cash registers requires a settlement document to be issued to the person receiving goods or a service, 'including those ordered or paid for via the Internet'. A Telegram bot is exactly that case. The State Tax Service, in its clarification of 7 April 2025, adds: if a buyer ordered goods online and paid with an electronic payment instrument through a payment service, the seller applies the register, and the receipt must be issued no later than delivery of the goods.
The exceptions are the same as for a website, and we covered them in detail in the article on online card acquiring:
- Group 1 sole traders do not use registers (Article 9(6) of Law No. 265, referring to the Tax Code). The tax service stresses that since 2022 this is the only category exempt on general terms.
- Services paid exclusively through remote banking systems or money transfer services (Article 9(14)). The rule covers services only.
- A purely electronic product, where the place of settlement cannot be determined (per the tax service clarification). This does not fit a bot selling physical goods.
In practice: the payment service's receipt the buyer gets after paying in the bot is not a fiscal receipt. You can issue one with the tax service's free software register or with a PRRO built into the payment service; WayForPay says its PRRO fiscalises payments automatically with no subscription fee. Law No. 265 has a new version scheduled for 1 November 2026, but it concerns electronic excise stamps; the provisions we cite do not change in it.
What a bot must show
An online shop website has 'About us', 'Payment and delivery' and 'Returns' pages. A bot has no pages, so the same information has to be spread across the profile, a pinned message and commands.
✓ — the requirement is named directly in the source; ≈ — the source allows several places; ✗ — the information is not given in the bot.
Article 7 of the Law 'On Electronic Commerce' requires 'direct, simple, stable access' to the seller's details: for a sole trader that is the full name, place of registration, email and taxpayer registration number, plus information on taxes in the price and the delivery cost. LiqPay's bot requirements restate this in their own words: the company name and contacts, sole trader or company details in the profile, as a separate button or via /info, and working /info and /help commands. The full legal list (offer, 14-day returns, language) is in the article on the legal minimum for an online shop; for a bot it is the same.
Our position
A messenger bot is a sound first shop if buyers already reach you through a link, the range is small and the product is physical. A website brings no new traffic here, costs more and takes longer to launch. But a bot simplifies neither the till nor the legal side: a PRRO receipt, seller details and terms of sale are needed just the same. And at a few dozen orders a month the biggest cost item is the payment fee, so compare payment services first, not bot builders.
The position does not hold if new buyers search for your product by name: without a website you will not get them, and the bot will only be a second channel. Nor does it hold for digital goods paid for inside Telegram, where only Stars work. The cost calculation is hypothetical: plug in your own turnover, share of foreign cards and the builder plan you choose.
Checked on 25 October 2026 against Telegram's payments documentation (core.telegram.org), LiqPay rates and requirements, plata by mono, the WayForPay knowledge base and SendPulse plans; the legal rules against the texts of Law No. 265/95-VR and the Law 'On Electronic Commerce' on zakon.rada.gov.ua and the State Tax Service clarification of 7 April 2025 on tax.gov.ua. The arithmetic was recalculated in code; turnover and order numbers are hypothetical.