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 1 October 2026
Messaging → Settings → Channels sets up the channels themselves, in this order: email (the address it goes out as), text messages, WhatsApp, and last, what contact details staff must collect at the counter. The balance that pays for texts and WhatsApp 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
- Until every record is live, email keeps going out from Velobook's address, not yours. The card shows a warning until then. Saving your address is not enough on its own
- Only the address changes. Replies still come back to your Inbox
- Remove, send as Velobook takes it back off
Turning texting on
- The Text messages switch turns texting on for the whole shop. It stays locked until you have loaded funds
- With it on, customers with a mobile get a text as well as the email when a booking is confirmed, moved or cancelled. You can also text quote links, or message a customer from their booking. Each text leads with your shop name and a manage link
- 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 is greyed out and says so, with no price, and the Text column is left off Messaging → Templates. Customers there get email, and WhatsApp if they choose it
- 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 booking updates over WhatsApp to customers who ask for them, instead of a text. 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.