# SMS messages — confirmations, reminders and your own messages by SMS

> The SMS messages add-on — which SMS go out and when, what the customer receives and in which language, why SMS need a paid plan, what an SMS costs and how it is billed with your plan, the monthly cap, the limits that stop misuse, and every setting.

_Last verified: 2026-09-29. Source: https://bookodile.com/docs/sms-messages_

SMS messages is an add-on that sends your customers an SMS as well as an email:
the confirmation of an online booking, the reminder, a change or cancellation
you make, a waiting-list offer, and messages your team writes in
[Messages](/docs/messages). Like every add-on it is free to switch on. **SMS need a
paid plan: each SMS is billed monthly with your plan, on the same invoice**, at a
price per country, never more a month than your cap.

Emails are never affected. An SMS that does not go — switched off, no plan, the
cap reached, a limit — leaves the email exactly as it was, and never stops a
booking.

## Switching it on

**Settings → SMS messages**, one switch per branch: a quiet branch can stay on
email while a busy one sends SMS. It is off for every branch until you switch
it on, and it starts with all five kinds of SMS on.

### Not yet in Czechia

SMS are **coming soon** for businesses in Czechia: a branch there shows the
add-on as coming soon and has no switch. Its customers get every email as
before.

## SMS need a paid plan

SMS are the one part of Bookodile that needs a paid plan. Each SMS costs money to
send, and it is billed after it is sent — on your plan's monthly invoice — so it
needs a plan with an invoice and a card.

- **On a paid plan**, SMS go out as you set them.
- **In your 14-day trial**, SMS go out once a card is saved; they are billed on
  your first invoice.
- **On the free plan**, or while a payment has failed, nothing is sent. You can
  still switch the add-on on and set everything; the page says why nothing goes
  out, and every switch that is on reads **Not sending**.

## Which SMS go out

Each is a switch on the add-on's page, per branch. Emails always go; these go
by SMS too, to customers with a phone number.

- **Booking confirmations** — when a customer books online. A booking your team
  makes sends none: that customer was just told in person or on the phone.
- **Reminders** — at the time set in Booking settings: the day before at 08:00
  in your time zone, two hours before, or both.
- **Changes & cancellations** — when your team moves or cancels a booking and the
  customer is told. A visit moved or cancelled together is one SMS. A customer
  who cancels themselves gets none — they just did it.
- **Waiting list** — when you offer someone a freed time.
- **Messages** — lets your team choose SMS in [Messages](/docs/messages).

## What the customer receives

Every automatic SMS is the same shape: **your branch's name, then fixed words
with the date and time, and a link.**

> Sharp & Co.: Booking confirmed for 2 Oct at 14:30. Details or cancel: bookodile.com/m/x7Kp2QaZ9d

- **Always one SMS.** No service name and no customer name — both are typed by
  people and could be any length. The wording is fixed and cannot be edited.
- **Written without accents**, in every language. One accented letter shrinks an
  SMS from 160 characters to 70, and none of these would fit. Your branch's
  name is written without accents in the SMS too.
- **In your customers' language** — the language of your booking page, set in
  **Settings → Business profile → Language** — never the language your team
  reads the dashboard in. The add-on's page names it.
- **The sender is Bookodile.** Each SMS starts with your branch's name, which is
  how the customer knows who wrote.

The link opens:

| SMS | Opens | Works until |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmation, reminder, change | The booking's own page — details, and cancelling within your cancellation window | A day after the booking |
| Cancellation, waiting-list offer | Your booking page | 30 days |
| A message from Messages — the link follows **"Reply:"**, so the customer knows to tap it rather than answer the SMS | The conversation, to answer | 30 days |

After that the link opens a page with your business's name and your booking
page, and nothing else.

## What an SMS costs

An SMS is billed per part, at a price that depends on the country of the
number. Automatic SMS are always one part; a long message from Messages can be
several — the composer shows how many before you send.

The price of one part for your branch's country is on **Settings → SMS
messages**. Prices follow what the networks charge in each
country, so a part to a Vietnamese number costs several times one to a
Slovak number.

SMS go only to numbers in a country with a price: Slovakia, Austria,
Germany, Poland, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy,
France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Vietnam. A number anywhere else — Czech
numbers included, for now — gets the email only.

## How SMS are billed

SMS are billed **monthly with your plan, on the same invoice**, as one line for
all the SMS of the billing period, at their exact prices. Nothing is paid in
advance and there is nothing to top up. An SMS the network refuses is never
billed.

**Settings → Billing** shows this billing period's SMS and earlier months;
**Settings → SMS messages** shows the same beside the cap.

## The monthly SMS cap

SMS stop for the rest of the billing period when they reach your cap, and your
customers get emails only until the next period starts.

- **The cap is what your plan costs a month**, so it grows with your plan.
- **Settings → SMS messages says whether it is enough.** It shows how many SMS your
  cap covers at your country's price, and replays your last 30 days with the SMS you
  have switched on — how many that would have been, what they would have cost, and
  whether that fits your cap or what cap would. Switch an SMS off and the estimate
  moves at once. A booking with a phone number usually means a confirmation (when
  it was booked online) and a reminder — two with a reminder the day before and on
  the day. Messages you write yourself are not counted.
- **You can raise it, up to three times your plan price**, in **Settings → SMS
  messages** — never lower than the plan price. Only the workspace owner and people
  whose role has **Manage billing** can change it.
- **At 80% of the cap** the owner gets one email, the bell shows it to the team,
  and a yellow card appears at the top of the sidebar for people who manage
  billing. **When the cap is reached**, the same again, with a red card. Each
  once per billing period.
- **A message that did not go by SMS says so in the conversation** — "SMS not
  delivered", with the reason: a phone number that is not a real number, a
  country SMS cannot reach, a customer who stopped SMS, the cap reached, or no
  paid plan. Fix what it names and send again.

A worked example: a hair salon's SMS cap is its plan price, which covers a few
hundred SMS a month to local numbers. A gym on the same plan that sends a reminder
the day before and two hours before every class doubles its cap for a busy month;
a physiotherapy practice that only sends confirmations never comes near it.

## Limits that stop misuse

Fixed rules, the same for everyone, with nothing to set:

- **One number:** at most 3 SMS a day from your business, and 10 a day from all
  businesses on Bookodile.
- **Confirmations of online bookings:** at most 20 an hour per branch — or 4 for
  each team member who takes bookings, if that is more. Above it, confirmations
  go by email only. This is the only SMS a stranger can make you send, so it is
  the only one capped by the hour.
- **Reminders, changes, cancellations, waiting-list offers and messages are never
  capped by the hour** — a full day of reminders goes out at 08:00 however many
  there are.
- **Messages:** 30 messages an hour per person, 100 SMS a day per branch, 6
  parts per message.

A limit stops an SMS, never a booking and never an email.

## Every setting

| Setting | Where | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| SMS messages | Settings → SMS messages | Whether this branch sends any SMS. Off by default. |
| Booking confirmations · Reminders · Changes & cancellations · Waiting list · Messages | Settings → SMS messages | Which kinds this branch sends. All on when the add-on is switched on. Without a paid plan, in a trial without a card, while a payment has failed, or once the cap is reached, none of them go out — the page says so above the switches and marks each one that is on **Not sending**. |
| Monthly SMS cap | Settings → SMS messages | Where SMS stop for the billing period. Your plan's monthly price unless raised, up to three times it. Owner and **Manage billing** roles only. |
| Language | Settings → Business profile | The language every SMS is written in. |
| Pause customer messages | [The master switch](/docs/notifications#the-master-switch) | Stops automatic SMS with the emails. A message someone writes in Messages still goes. |

## Worked example

A barbershop with ten barbers has 110 bookings tomorrow. At 08:00 every one of
those customers gets a reminder by email and one SMS — all 110 go, none held
back. A customer who booked online an hour ago got a one-SMS confirmation with a
link to cancel if they must.

A physiotherapy clinic in Košice has a Slovak booking page, so its SMS read in
Slovak — without accents, so each stays one SMS. It switches off **Waiting list**
SMS, because it calls those patients anyway, and keeps the rest.

## Limits

- **Not yet in Czechia** — neither for a branch there nor to a Czech number.
- **SMS are one-way.** A customer answers on a linked page, never by replying.
- **The wording is fixed.** You cannot edit the automatic SMS or add a service
  name to them.
- **The sender is Bookodile**, not your business's name.
- **No bulk SMS campaigns.** SMS go to one customer at a time.
- **No SMS for bookings your team makes.**
- **SMS need a paid plan** — the one feature that does.
- **The cap cannot go below your plan price**, or above three times it.
- **No SMS to North America yet.**
- **Demo workspaces never send SMS.** Anyone can type any number into a demo.
