We know how important it is to be able to communicate with your guests via email and SMS. To make sure you are always able to message your guests when needed, it is important to have a full understanding of what does and does not, count against the message limits that are set for your Waitwhile Subscription plan.
Important Terms
Account Message Limit - total number of outgoing messages (SMS and Email) you are able to send each billing period
Account Message Quota - remaining number of outgoing SMS messages you have for the current billing period
Visit Message Limit - total number of outgoing messages per channel (SMS or Email) you are able to send to an individual customer during a visit
Things to Know about your Account Message Limit/Quota
Individual locations within your account all share from the same overall allotment of messages for the billing period, and your Account Message Quota will reset back to the Account Message Limit amount on the first day of your new billing period. Whether or not you have a monthly, quarterly, or annual plan will determine how often your quota will reset back to your limit amount.
monthly subscription plans - Account Message Limit is the total number of messages you are able to send per month
quarterly subscription plan - Account Message Limit is the total number of messages you are able to send per quarter
annual subscription plans - Account Message Limit is the total number of messages you are able to send per year
What counts against the Account Message Quota?
Counts | Doesn't Count |
All outgoing messages*, both SMS and Email count against your Account Message Quota. | Messages that are unable to be sent (Message status is BLOCKED) |
Messages that are successfully sent but cannot be delivered (Message status is typically returned as FAILED or UNCONFIRMED) | Incoming messages from your guests (viewed in the Chat modal) |
| Messages sent with your own Email or SMS Provider |
Visit Message Limits
Your Visit Message Limit works a little differently than the overall Account Message Limit. It is the number of messages that can be sent per channel, to a single customer per visit. This number resets for a customer not at the start of a new billing period, but rather at the start of a new visit.
For example, if your Visit Message Limit is 8, you can send 8 SMS messages and 8 Emails to that customer for that specific visit. This means that if they've joined your Waitlist, and you've used up all messages for that visit, in order to send more messages they would have to sign up again for the Waitlist to start a new visit. Similarly for bookings, it would need to be a fresh new booking. If a booking date is changed/rescheduled it will still count as the same visit, so it is best to create a brand new booking which will then give you a fresh allotment of messages that can be sent to that guest.
Oh no! I've run out of messages!
If you suspect that you've hit your limit or are close to it, you can always reach out to Waitwhile Support and we can check your current Account Message Quota for you.
Keep in mind that not just SMS alerts/notifications sent to your guests count against your Account Message Quota, and sometimes other outgoing messages (such as User Notifications) can unexpectedly eat into your message quota. If you have a lot of users, you may want to make sure that User Notifications and Performance Reports are only enabled for those who really need to be receiving them.
If you're still consistently exceeding your Account Message Limit each billing period, you may want to consider upgrading your subscription plan. Someone from our amazing Sales & Support team would be happy to discuss plan options with you to see what would best fit the needs of your business.
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