Transactional messages are mostly automated messages for things like booking reminders or purchase receipts. Marketing messages are used for communication with clients, and these are the type that are used by the Message Center. The total amount of messages your business sends for each type is tracked separately. For customers in the U.S. and Canada, transactional messages are free, so your sent transactional messages won’t affect your totals from marketing messages sent by your business. For more information on plans and pricing, see Message Center: Subscription plans and SMS messaging.

Message Center works in partnership with Twilio. When using Message Center, all SMS messages sent by your business must adhere to the Twilio Acceptable Use Policy and Twilio Messaging Policy. For more information, see Message Center acceptable use.

Message Center is currently only available to customers in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK.

Compliance regulations in certain regions require a business to submit an application with supporting documentation in order to obtain and use a long code phone number. If your business is in one of these regions, you’ll have to send information about your business to WellnessLiving so that we can submit an application on your behalf. For more information, see Submitting a regulatory application for Message Center.

If you’re in one of these regions, you may also need to customize your automated notifications to comply with regulations. For example, if your region has spam-related rules that say that SMS messages from a business must include the business name and contact details, make sure to update your SMS messages to include these details for all outgoing messages.

1-way SMS allows you to send messages to clients, but clients can’t respond to these messages. This type of SMS can be used for messages that don’t require a response from the recipient, such as booking confirmations or purchase receipts. Automated marketing and automated notifications use 1-way SMS.

2-way SMS allows you to send messages to your clients and obtain their response in the form of preset text. For example, if a client is promoted on a wait list, you can send them a text that requests a preset response such as YES to confirm their appointment. Based on the client’s response, the WellnessLiving system will update their status on the wait list. Enabling the Message Center allows you to engage in 2-way SMS and conversational SMS.

Conversational SMS allows you to engage in end-to-end conversations with your clients. This way, you can provide them with all the information they need. For example, you can reach out to a client after they attend a session at your business and obtain their feedback on the session.

For more information, see Types of SMS messaging.

For more information on plans and pricing, see Message Center: Subscription plans.

Each SMS message you send or receive via WellnessLiving counts as one message, including 1-way and 2-way SMS communication. For example, to send one SMS message to 500 clients twice a month, you would need 1,000 messages for that month. In contrast, each MMS message you send uses three messages from your monthly total, so you would need 6,000 messages for the same volume and frequency.

When you purchase a message package, the messages are shared across all locations in your business. For example, if your business is subscribed to the SMS Message Center 1000 plan, you’ll have 1,000 messages per month to use across all locations.

You can upgrade or change your messaging package at any time to match your communication needs.

Yes! You can upgrade your plan at any time from the Subscription plans page of Message Center. If you upgrade mid-month, you will be billed according to your new plan at the start of your next billing cycle. For more information on plans and pricing, see Message Center: Subscription plans.

Your allotted monthly messages do not roll over, so make sure you choose a plan that meets your monthly SMS volume. For more information, see Message Center: Subscription plans.

If your SMS message is longer than 160 characters, it will be split into multiple segments. For more information, see SMS character limit.

If your SMS message contains any special characters (such as &, $, #), or SMS variables, your message may also be split into segments.

Each SMS message is limited to 160 characters and counts as one message. For more information, see SMS character limit.

We don't recommend using special characters because this can potentially affect the character count of your SMS message. For more information, see SMS character limit.

Yes. If you include a URL in an SMS message, it will automatically get shortened to use fewer SMS characters. For more information, see SMS character limit.

Yes, you can set your staff member’s role permissions to provide or restrict access to specific areas of Message Center.

Yes, you can assign staff members to conversations in Message Center. When a staff member is assigned to a conversation, they’ll receive an alert whenever a client sends a new message in that conversation.

Yes, you can set up the Alert Center to notify staff members whenever a new client message is delivered in the Message Center. When this alert is enabled, a red circle with a number will appear next to Alerts in the Top Nav Bar that indicates the number of unread alerts. You can also configure alerts so that there's a sound whenever there's a new alert. For information, see Alert Center and Alert types.

When you start using Message Center, you'll be prompted to choose a local number that will be used to send SMS text messages to your clients. You must select one of the numbers suggested by the system and you can't use your business’s phone number or any personal number for this purpose.

No, the phone number you’re assigned in the Message Center can only be used to send and receive SMS messages. If someone phones the number, they won’t be able to contact your business.

No, a conversation must first be initiated by your business by sending the client an SMS message. This can be in the form of your staff members initiating a conversation, an automatic notification, or an automated marketing campaign. After a client has been contacted by these means, they can respond to that SMS message. Their response will be delivered to your Message Center inbox as a new message.

No, the Message Center can only be used to send SMS messages to individual clients. You can contact a group of clients in a variety of other ways. For more information, see Contacting a group of clients.

All incoming SMS messages count as one message.