Host notifications and text reminders

Attendees always get email: confirmation with calendar invite, 24-hour and 1-hour reminders, cancellation. Hosts choose how they hear about things under Admin → Notifications.

Host pings#

Events: someone books, an attendee cancels, an attendee joins the Bookly video room, a call starts in one hour. Channels: email (always available), WhatsApp or SMS via Twilio, and a Slack incoming webhook. Each host sets their own phone, channel and toggles.

Attendee joined (Bookly video)#

Turn it on under Admin → Notifications. Bookly registers a Daily.co webhook for participant.joined pointing at <APP_URL>/api/webhooks/daily and stores the HMAC key on the workspace. The first person to enter a booking's room triggers one ping; the host joining their own room is ignored by display name, so set your booking-page display name to what you use in the video room.

Text messages (Twilio)#

Env: TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID, TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN, TWILIO_FROM_SMS (an E.164 number you own), TWILIO_FROM_WHATSAPP (the sandbox number +14155238886 for testing, or your approved WhatsApp sender). Either sender may be omitted; the admin shows which channels are available.

• Hosts receive texts on the channel they pick.
• Attendees receive text reminders only for event types with "Text reminders" enabled and only when they typed a phone number. Bookly tries SMS first and falls back to WhatsApp.

WhatsApp business messaging needs an approved sender and, outside a 24-hour conversation window, an approved message template. The sandbox is enough to test; production needs the Twilio WhatsApp onboarding.

Who the guest sees as the sender#

Every email to a guest is sent from the verified platform address in EMAIL_FROM (so SPF and DKIM hold), but with the host's name in the sender line, "Ahmad Hakroosh via Bookly" <noreply@example.com>, and the host's own address as Reply-To. Replies go straight to the host. Applies to confirmations, reminders, cancellations, follow-ups, proposals, payment requests and client recaps. The platform name comes from the display name in EMAIL_FROM.

Look and wording#

Emails are rendered with React Email in the workspace's look: your logo and name in the header (Admin → Settings → Branding: logo URL and accent colour, on Pro, Team and self-hosted installs; the Free plan keeps the Bookly mark), your accent colour on buttons, the booking details in a card, and a plain-text alternative generated from the same template. "Powered by Bookly" appears in the footer unless the plan removes branding. The same logo, colour and footer rule applies to the booking pages themselves.

Under Admin → Settings → Guest emails you can replace the opening words of the confirmation, reminder and cancellation emails; the details block, buttons and branding are always added. Placeholders: {name} {host} {event} {when} {where} {duration} {bookingUrl} {workspace}, plus {relative} in reminders ("tomorrow", "in 1 hour"). Blank fields keep the defaults, and each template has a Preview link that renders it with sample data. The follow-up after a meeting is set per event type; proposals and payment requests have their own templates on the same page.