FreeUp Free Plan with Iphone/IMessage

Is anyone using the new Free Plan without data on an iPhone? I want to know if iMessage will work on the iPhone without data plan.

Currently, I have an iPhone6 using the previous Free Plan with 100MB data. All iMessage to another iPhone phone number shows up in the usage as GPRS data rather than text message. iMessage to android phone numbers goes out as SMS and counts as text messages in the usage. To get iMessage setup on the iPhone, it also goes through GPRS to log into the AppleID account.

I want to get another sim to setup another Free Plan on an iPhone7, but if I can't setup the iMessage because it has no data, then this would not be any good. Any inputs appreciated.

iMessage activation can be done with SMS and Wifi (cellular data not required). However, you may be better off disabling iMessage altogether on iPhone7 without cellular data, unless you'll have Wifi frequently.

How to automatically delete old messages to free up space on iPhone, iPad https://imessageapp.net/