SMS reminders without a subscription: how prepaid credits work

Saturday, nine in the morning, first appointment in the calendar — and an empty chair. At half past nine you call: "Oh no, it completely slipped my mind. You never told me!" You did. The reminder went out the day before, by email, right on schedule. But she opens her email once a week, and only for the electricity bill.

That's the gap reminders fall through: some clients don't have the app and don't have the email habit either. An SMS gets read by practically everyone — on every phone, with zero apps installed.

This guide explains how SMS notifications work in Appointa: no monthly subscription, prepaid credits, and built-in brakes so not a single credit is wasted.

Push is free — SMS only goes to clients without the app

Rule number one, because it shapes the whole cost picture: a client who uses the Appointa app never gets an SMS. They get a push notification — free, always. SMS is sent only to clients without the app (or those who deleted it in the meantime, leaving the push with nowhere to land).

So you're not paying for "SMS for everyone" — you're paying for SMS for exactly the slice of your clientele that actually needs it: the lady who's been coming to you for fifteen years and uses her phone for calls and texts, nothing else. The more of your regulars move to the app — how to get them there is covered in the guide to getting clients used to online booking — the less a month of SMS costs; a salon whose client base lives in the app spends almost nothing.

Four messages — and not one more

Appointa sends only transactional messages about appointments by SMS. There are four:

• The day-before reminder. About 24 hours ahead: "Appointa: termin u Studio Lea sutra u 14:30" — with a one-tap cancellation link. The client who changed her mind cancels on Friday evening instead of not showing up on Saturday. More defences against no-shows are in the guide to reducing no-shows.
• Salon cancellation. If you have to cancel, a client without the app gets an SMS with a rebooking link.
• Appointment moved. The new date and time, in black and white, right in their messages.
• Waitlist. When a slot frees up that matches a client on the list, they get an SMS with a quick booking link — first come, first served. Same when you manually notify the list about openings — details in the waitlist guide.

No marketing texts, chat messages or loyalty pings — only what a client needs to know to arrive at the right appointment.

Cancellations and reschedules are treated as service-critical: they go out by SMS even to clients who muted reminders, because nobody should travel to a locked door. Only the hard "Don't send SMS to this client" checkbox routes them to email instead.

On the client's screen the sender is "Appointa" — no reply number — and the text names your salon. A registered client receives the message in their own language, Croatian or English.

No subscription: credits you buy once

SMS is switched on with a single toggle — "Send SMS notifications" — in salon settings, on the web or in the Appointa Pro app. The first time you turn it on, you get 20 free trial credits to test on real appointments. Trial credits are used before purchased ones.

From there, prepaid packages take over, bought on the Billing page:

• S — 100 credits for €15 (€0.15 per message)
• M — 500 credits for €65 (€0.13)
• L — 2000 credits for €240 (€0.12)

VAT is not charged. Payment is a one-time card charge, credits land on your balance right after payment, and a payment confirmation arrives by email. Only the salon owner can purchase.

Most importantly: nothing changes on your subscription. The SMS add-on exists on every plan, including the free Starter — no upgrade to a pricier tier, no new monthly line item.

One credit ≈ one message

A credit is one SMS segment — 160 characters. The catch is Croatian letters: č, ć, ž, š and đ push the message into a more expensive encoding at 70 characters per segment, so the same notice suddenly costs two credits instead of one.

That's why Appointa's templates are deliberately written without diacritics — "Vas termin…" instead of "Vaš termin…". It looks like a small thing, but a standard notice thus fits in one segment and costs one credit, not two — and your balance lasts twice as long.

Built-in brakes: credits don't burn for nothing

The real difference lies in what does not get sent:

• To app users — they always get a free push; no credit is touched.
• To clients who muted reminders — the reminder simply doesn't go out and nothing is charged.
• To clients with the "Don't send SMS to this client" checkbox — one click on the client card and all their notifications go by email.
• To landlines — messages go only to valid mobile numbers; landlines are skipped automatically. Foreign mobile numbers work normally.

And once a message does go out, the credit is protected: it's debited just before sending, and if the operator rejects the message, it's automatically refunded to your balance. An undelivered message costs nothing.

When the balance runs low: a warning first, email instead

Two safety nets underneath it all. First: low-balance warnings that track your actual usage over the past days, not a fixed percentage — a salon sending ten messages a day gets the alarm earlier than one sending two. It arrives by email to the owner, and the billing card shows a yellow or red banner with a top-up link.

Second: if the credits run out completely, notifications quietly switch to email. The client still gets the reminder, the cancellation or the reschedule notice — not a single notification is lost, it just travels on the cheaper channel until you top up. The settings screen clearly shows your remaining balance, with a warning when the toggle is on but the balance is at zero.

The math: a month of SMS for a salon with 200 appointments

A concrete salon: 200 appointments a month, 60% of clients on the app.

• 120 appointments are covered by free push — €0.
• 80 appointments go to clients without the app — 80 SMS reminders, 80 credits.
• Add a dozen or so messages for reschedules, cancellations and the waitlist — roughly 90 credits a month in total.

With the S package (100 credits for €15), that's €13.50 a month. With the M package (500 for €65), a message drops to €0.13, the month costs €11.70, and one package lasts more than five months.

The other side of the scale: an average €40 service — one no-show prevented by an SMS reminder pays for three months of the entire SMS add-on. And reminders don't work alone: the cancellation comes in on time, the freed slot goes to the waitlist, and your Saturday fills up instead of gaping empty.

One more thing: the number shrinks over time — every client who installs the app moves from paid SMS to free push.

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A client with no app and no email habit — and a €40 appointment on the line? In Appointa you switch SMS notifications on with a single toggle, get 20 free trial messages and buy credits as a one-off, with no subscription change: the reminder with a cancellation link, the cancellation or reschedule notice and the waitlist offer land straight in their messages, and when the credits run out, everything falls back to email on its own. Try the demo for your industry — free, no card required. And the Starter plan is free — up to 30 appointments a month.

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Frequently asked questions

Do I need to change my subscription plan to enable SMS notifications?

No. SMS is an add-on available on every plan, including the free Starter — you enable it with a toggle in settings, and credits are bought as a one-off card payment on the billing page (100 for €15, 500 for €65 or 2000 for €240; VAT is not charged). There's no new monthly line item and no forced upgrade; the purchase is made by the salon owner, and a payment confirmation arrives by email.

What happens when I run out of credits?

Nothing is lost. Notifications automatically fall back to email until you top up, so the client still gets their reminder or reschedule notice. In practice it rarely gets that far: low-balance warnings track your actual usage and arrive by email in time, and the billing card shows a banner with a top-up link.

Can a client refuse SMS messages?

Yes, on two levels. A client who muted reminders doesn't get them at all — and you're charged nothing. And for any individual client you can tick "Don't send SMS to this client" on their card, so all their notifications go by email. The one exception to muting is cancellations and reschedules: those go by SMS even to muted clients — unless the hard checkbox is on, in which case they go by email too.

Is sending SMS compliant with GDPR?

Appointa sends only service messages about an existing appointment by SMS — the reminder, a cancellation, a reschedule and the waitlist offer — never marketing. Messages travel through Infobip, a Croatian-founded provider with data centres in the EU, so the data stays on European infrastructure. The sender is "Appointa", and a client who doesn't want SMS is simply excluded with the checkbox on their card.