Channels: your email address, texting and funds
Send customer email as your own address, switch texting on, and understand the prepaid balance that pays for it.
Last updated 2 September 2026
Messaging → Settings → Channels sets up the channels themselves: the address your email goes out as, the texting switch, and what contact details a booking must collect. The balance that pays for texts is on Messaging → Settings → Funds.
Sending email as your own address
- Out of the box, customer email goes out under your shop's name from a Velobook address
- To send as your own address: enter it under The address customers see (a domain you control; Gmail or Outlook addresses cannot be used), add the records shown under Add these where your domain is managed at your registrar or host, then Check my records
- The sentence at the top of the card always says what customers currently see
- Only the address changes. Replies still come back to your Inbox
- Remove, send as Velobook takes it back off
Turning texting on
- The SMS switch turns texting on for the whole shop. It stays locked until you have loaded funds
- The card shows your per-text price: texts bill per 160-character part, picture messages at a flat rate
- Texting is available in Australia, the UK, the US and Canada; elsewhere the card says texts are not available in your region yet
- Require a phone number is on by default, so you always have a number to text
- Require an email address is off by default. It applies when staff book a job in; turn it on if your till needs an email to create a customer
- Send a test texts your own mobile. It costs one part, like a real text
- Your own Twilio sends through your own Twilio account, billed by Twilio. Most shops do not need this
Turning WhatsApp on
The WhatsApp switch sends the same booking updates over WhatsApp to customers who ask for them, at one flat price per message. It comes from Velobook's WhatsApp number with your shop named in the first line. How it works, what it costs and what customers see is in WhatsApp booking updates.
When a customer replies
A reply by text or WhatsApp always lands in your Inbox and your push notifications. The Email the shop switch only controls the extra email alert on top.
Funds: the balance that pays for it
- Texting is prepaid. Top up under Add funds on the Funds sub-tab (a Stripe checkout; funds land when payment clears)
- Set an auto-reload so a busy week cannot run you dry
- Every top-up, send and refund is listed underneath. A send that fails is refunded
- Set a monthly spend cap: once the month's spend reaches it, messages pause until next month or you raise it
- Sends do not stop dead at zero: the balance can run slightly negative before messages pause, so a batch is not cut off mid-send
A shop with no funds of its own spends its network's shared balance, and anything it adds goes into the same pot. The monthly cap sits on that shared balance: when the network reaches it, every shop on it pauses.