Three ways to text your waitlist, and which one to choose

Waitlist App can text your customers in three different ways, and the right one depends on how much setup you want to do:

  • Free (device-native): the app opens your own phone's Messages, WhatsApp, or email with the message pre-filled — you tap Send. It works anywhere and costs nothing. It is manual, and the message is sent from your personal number.
  • Pro (notification packs): we send real SMS from our own number, automatically, with no Twilio account and no code. You buy a pack of credits and turn on the events you want texted. This is what this guide is about.
  • Enterprise (bring your own Twilio): connect your own Twilio account and texts go out from our servers but bill to your Twilio. Best for international sending, very high volume, or businesses that already use Twilio.

What a notification pack is

A notification pack is a one-time purchase that adds a balance of text credits to your Pro account. For what a pack costs, see the pricing page. There's no subscription to the packs and no Twilio bill. The per-message cost is already included.

Availability: managed SMS goes only to phone numbers in the US and Canada. If a customer has a number from another country, you can still text them from your own phone.

The daily benefit: customers see their own place in line

The reason to turn on texting isn't the text itself — it's the tracking link inside it. When a customer is added, they get a message with a link to a clean, branded page showing their live position and estimated wait. Instead of waiting by the host stand or asking "how much longer?" every few minutes, they can leave the area, buy a coffee, and check their phone.

For a busy salon, urgent-care clinic, or weekend brunch spot, that one change usually does two things. It reduces the number of interruptions at your front desk, and it reduces no-shows, because people who can see "you're 2nd, about 10 minutes" actually come back when it's their turn.

Set it up in three steps

  1. Buy a pack. In your Pro dashboard go to Settings → SMS Alerts. You'll see your current balance and a Buy a pack button. It opens a normal secure checkout. The credits are added to your account as soon as the payment is complete.
  2. Choose what gets texted. In the same SMS Alerts section, turn on the events you want to send automatically: Added (the welcome + tracking link), Notified ("you're up now"), and Seated (an optional thank-you). Turn on only the ones you need. Each send uses one credit.
  3. Write your own messages. Edit the templates so they sound like your business. You can insert {{name}}, {{business_name}}, {{tracking_url}}, {{position}}, and {{party_size}} and the app fills them in per customer. Keep them short — a single SMS is 160 characters before it splits into a second segment.

That's it. From then on, as you add and advance people in your queue, the texts are sent automatically and your balance goes down.

Managing multiple stations or locations

A common question is whether several team members can manage one shared list together. They can. The online queue syncs across every phone, tablet and laptop you sign in on, and on a paid plan editor links let staff add people, notify, seat and take reservations from their own phone. There are also two other ways to handle a multi-chair or multi-station operation:

  • Use separate queues. Online accounts can have several queues, and more queues need a paid plan. Each stylist, provider, or location can have its own line, with its own QR code and its own screen.
  • Put a live board on a shared screen. The public display board (free account) shows the live queue on any TV or monitor. Its privacy setting chooses how each guest appears, for example first name and last initial, or a ticket number. View-only links put the queue on a front-desk tablet. Everyone on staff, and your customers, can see the same queue.

When to bring your own Twilio instead

Packs are built for the common case: a US or Canadian business that wants automatic texting without setting up Twilio. Upgrade to Enterprise and connect your own Twilio account if you need to text international numbers, you're sending at very high volume and want direct per-message billing, or you already operate Twilio and want everything on one bill. Our separate guide on connecting Twilio explains that setup.

International numbers

Notification packs cover US and Canadian phone numbers. If your business serves guests from outside North America — a hotel near a major airport, a tourist-area restaurant, or a medical practice that sees internationally-based patients — some of those customers will have numbers that packs simply cannot reach. Using your own Twilio account gives you access to Twilio's international carrier network, so a guest checking in with a UK, Australian, or Brazilian mobile number gets the same real-time queue updates as anyone else. Before enabling international delivery, verify that your Twilio account has the geographic permissions enabled for the countries you need — Twilio restricts certain regions by default for fraud prevention, and you'll need to enable them in your Twilio console.

Very high send volumes

For most service businesses — a barbershop, a boutique clinic, a mid-size restaurant — a notification pack covers daily messaging comfortably. But some operations send a very large number of messages: a DMV service center, a hospital outpatient department, or a multi-site franchise that serves hundreds of guests per hour across locations. At that scale, per-message billing through your own Twilio account can become more economical than purchasing packs in bulk, and you gain direct visibility into carrier-level delivery reports inside the Twilio dashboard. If you're unsure which model fits your volume, a simple estimate is to count your average daily seated guests, multiply by two or three messages per guest (join confirmation, ready alert, and occasionally a follow-up), and compare that against the pack tiers available on your plan.

Consolidated billing and existing Twilio contracts

Many larger operators — multi-location food groups, healthcare systems, hospitality brands — already have a negotiated Twilio contract in place. Routing waitlist messages through that existing account keeps all SMS spend on a single invoice, simplifies accounting, and may let you take advantage of volume discounts your organization has already secured. If your engineering or IT team actively manages Twilio for other customer-facing communications (appointment reminders, marketing texts, two-factor authentication), adding the waitlist integration to the same account also gives them unified observability over message delivery and spend.

Choosing the right path

A summary of the decision:

  • Use notification packs if you serve domestic (US/Canada) customers, prefer a flat predictable cost, and don't want to manage a third-party account.
  • Bring your own Twilio if you need international delivery, send at very high daily volume, or already have a Twilio account you'd like to keep consolidated.

Both options give customers the same experience. The difference is operational: who manages the carrier account and how the messaging cost is structured.

Good to know

  • You choose which events send a text. Turn on only the events you need: Added, Notified or Seated.
  • See the cost before you buy. The pricing page lists what a pack costs.
  • You still control when texts are sent. Auto-send is per event; turn any of it off any time, and manual notify from the dashboard always works too.

Phone number formatting and validation

Each guest entry can carry a phone number, an email, or both. Managed SMS reaches only US and Canadian numbers, so check the number with the guest when you add them. For a guest with a number from another country, you can text them from your own phone or send an email.

Message content and character limits

Each notification template supports personalization tokens — guest name, estimated wait, queue position, and your business name — so each message is specific to the customer. Standard SMS messages cap at 160 characters for a single segment. Keep each template short so that it fits in one segment.

Replies and unsubscribes

Guests cannot reply to the waitlist by SMS, because the waitlist does not handle incoming texts. Guests can cancel their own spot from their tracking link. On a paid plan, branded automatic emails are sent from Waitlist App's servers with your logo and brand colour, and unsubscribes are honoured.

Several queues on one account

An online account can have several queues, for example a main dining room, a bar seating list, and a private event waitlist. Each queue gets its own QR code and its own screen, and more queues need a paid plan. On a paid plan, a combined display can show several queues on one screen.

Check a template before you use it

Before you start using a new template, read it as a guest will read it. A template can include the guest's name, the business name, their place in line and a wait estimate, so check that each one reads correctly. Do this every time you edit a template. A small wording change can read differently as a text message than it does on screen.

What the dashboard shows

The Overview shows people waiting now, active lines, seated today, and line-size charts for each line. Each guest has a status (waiting, notified, seated, removed or no-show), so you can see who has been notified. On a paid plan, Insights adds average wait, busiest hour and a peak-hours heatmap.

The articles below continue from this guide. Whether you want to adjust the exact words a customer receives, scale to thousands of sends a month, or connect SMS to the rest of your front-desk process, each guide covers one topic completely without assuming you've read the others first.

SMS and notifications

  • SMS alert templates & triggers — more detail on per-event sends and message variables. Learn how to personalise every message with the customer's name, estimated wait time, and queue position.
  • Connecting your own Twilio (Enterprise) — for international or high-volume sending. Walks through obtaining a Twilio Account SID and Auth Token, mapping them inside your dashboard settings, and choosing a sender number that meets local carrier registration requirements.

Queue and waitlist management

Customer experience

Billing and account management

Not finding what you need? The Help Centre has a searchable index of every setup guide, and the built-in chat assistant, QT, answers questions and guides setup in your language.