Which emails does Bookings send, and how do I set them up?

TeleportHQ Bookings sends seven emails: six to your customers (a confirmation, a request received, a request declined, a cancellation, a reminder and new dates) and one to you, the booking alert. All of them go through your own email sending service (SendGrid, Resend, Mailgun, Postmark or MailerSend). If your project already sends email through one, Bookings uses it. Otherwise, set it up once under Email Delivery in Booking Settings → Customer Emails. Until a service and a sender address are set, no booking email goes out.

Where the booking email settings are#

In the TeleportHQ editor, click Bookings in the left sidebar, then the gear at the top right of the panel (Booking Settings). In the Bookings Setup drawer, three rows are about email:

1. Customer Emails: "Confirmations, changes and cancellations, emailed to your customers." Its link Customer Emails opens the email service settings.
2. Booking Alerts: a switch, on by default, and its link Alert Settings, where you choose who gets the alerts.
3. Reminders: a switch, on by default, and its link Reminder Settings, where you choose how long before the start.

Each of these panels starts with How It Works, which explains its emails, and ends with Email Delivery: "One setting for every booking email: the ones your customers get and your alerts."

Set up Email Delivery#

If your project already sends email through a service, for example one saved in Project settings → Credentials → Email Providers, for your store or in the Marketing Studio, your bookings use it: Email Delivery reads, for example, "Sent through Resend from Seaside Rooms bookings@seasiderooms.com.", with a Change button. You have nothing to set up.

Otherwise:

1. In Bookings Setup, on the Customer Emails row, click Customer Emails. The Customer Emails panel opens beside the list. Under Email Delivery, it says "Booking emails cannot go out yet: your customers get none until a provider and a sender are set up."
2. In Email Provider ("Your own account with an email service."), click your service, for example Resend.
3. Paste its key: API Key for SendGrid, Resend and MailerSend; API Key and Domain for Mailgun; Server Token for Postmark. For where to find them, see How to connect an email or SMS sending service.
4. In From Email *, type an address your service lets you send from (a verified sender or domain), for example bookings@seasiderooms.com. Trying Resend by yourself, without a domain? Click Use Resend's test sender, next to the From Email label: it fills onboarding@resend.dev. Resend delivers mail from it to one address only, the one your Resend account was opened with, and refuses any email with another recipient. So put that address in your booking alert recipients and book with it when you test; nobody else gets a booking email until you verify a domain in Resend and send from it.
5. Optional: in From Name, type your business name, for example Seaside Rooms. Left empty, the booking emails your published site sends go out under the From name saved with your sending service, or else your store's Company Name, or else your project's name. In Reply-To, type where customers' replies go, for example hello@seasiderooms.com.
6. Optional: click Test Integration to send a test email.
7. At the bottom of the panel, click Save Customer Emails. The message "Saved. Your site uses it from now on." appears.
8. Publish your site, so your live site sends through this service too.

The keys are your project's: "changing them here changes them for every feature that sends through it." To use another service later, click Change under Email Delivery, or Keep [service] as it is to leave it unchanged.

Until Email Delivery works, TeleportHQ warns you in several places: an orange warning icon next to the Booking Settings gear and on the email rows, and, in Plugins → Bookings, Needs attention → Booking emails cannot go out with a Set up button. The message reads "Booking emails cannot go out yet: your customers get no confirmations, and alerts and reminders are not sent. Open Customer Emails to set up a provider and a sender."

The emails your customers get#

TeleportHQ sends each customer email in the customer's language, with a link to their booking page. Your published site sends them, or the editor sends them when you act in Growth → Bookings. Customer emails have no switch of their own: once Email Delivery works, they go out.

• Each confirmation is sent once, whether the booking was confirmed by the customer's booking, by the payment or by you.
• Marking a booking attended or a no-show emails nobody.
• A booking paid online also gets its invoice by email while Invoices and Invoice Email Delivery are on: a separate email with the PDF attached. Saving Customer Emails while Invoices is on switches Invoice Email Delivery on, unless you switched it off yourself. See Give customers invoices.

Booking Alerts: the emails you get#

Booking Alerts is on by default: "Email me when a customer books or cancels online, and when a payment needs me." Your published TeleportHQ site emails you, with the booking's details, when:

• a customer books ("New booking") or sends a request ("New booking request"). A booking paid online is announced once it's paid;
• a customer cancels online ("Cancelled by the customer"). If they paid online, the alert says "Cancelled by the customer — it was paid online: refund its order". Refunds are never automatic;
• a payment arrives after the booking was released and its time was taken ("Paid after its dates were taken — contact the customer or refund the order").

What you do yourself, in Growth → Bookings or in your admin panel, sends you no alert. Every alert has the subject "Booking update"; the detail What Happened in its design holds the event, such as "New booking".

To choose who gets the alerts:

1. Make sure Booking Alerts is switched on, then click Alert Settings. The Booking Alerts panel opens.
2. In Send Them To, type an address in Enter email address and press Enter, or click Add. Add up to 5 addresses. To remove one, click the cross on its tag.
3. Click Save Booking Alerts.

With no address, the alerts go to the project's Alerts go to list (Project settings → Credentials → Email Providers), or else to the workspace owner; the hint under the field names them.

Reminders#

Reminders is on by default: "Email customers before their booking, from an hourly run of your published site."

1. Make sure Reminders is switched on, then click Reminder Settings. The Reminder Settings panel opens.
2. In Hours Before The Start, type how long before the start the reminder goes out, for example 48. "From 1 hour to 2 weeks." It starts at 24.
3. Click Save Reminder Settings.

How TeleportHQ sends reminders:

• Every hour, at a quarter past, your published site emails each customer whose confirmed booking starts within that time: once per booking, in their language and timezone.
• A booking made closer to its start than that gets no reminder: the customer got its confirmation a short time before. Requests waiting for your answer get none either.
• Your site must be published, after Email Delivery is set up: "Reminders go out from your published site: publish it for them to start." The hourly run is a scheduled workflow named Booking Reminders that TeleportHQ adds to your project.
• Plans. Reminders work on Trial, Pro and Premium. Once your trial or subscription has ended, the Reminders row shows a PRO label and its switch shows off; clicking it opens the upgrade window: "Booking reminders are sent by an hourly run of your published site, which is available on paid plans." See plans and pricing.

Change what the emails say#

The seven booking emails are components of your TeleportHQ project, in the email-templates folder of your components: the six customer emails in customer → booking, the booking alert in store-owner → booking. A new project names them booking-confirmed, booking-requested, booking-declined, booking-cancelled, booking-reminder, booking-changed and booking-owner-notification.

To change one, open it in Pages, Components & Tree View and edit it like any component. Insert booking details such as Customer Name, Booking Reference, Booked, Option, Extras, When, Date, Time, Guests, Location, Total, Paid Online, Customer Notes, Reason, Booking Link and Add To Calendar Link. Dates and times are written in the booking's timezone and language.

If you deleted one, right-click a component in Pages, Components & Tree View, choose Use as email template, then the matching entry, for example Make booking confirmation email.

Troubleshooting#

"Booking emails cannot go out yet: …" No email service, or no sender address, is set. Set up Email Delivery as above.

"Pick the provider your booking emails are sent through." Click a service under Email Provider before you save.

"Enter your Resend API Key." (or another service and key) The service's key is missing. Paste it.

"Enter the address the booking emails come from — one your provider lets you send from." From Email * is empty or is a placeholder address. Type an address your service has verified.

"Enter a valid reply-to address, or leave it empty." Fix Reply-To, or clear it.

"The email delivery was saved, but the rest was not: …" The service was saved, but the panel's own setting wasn't. Click the save button again.

"Up to 5 addresses.", "Every address must be an email address." or "These addresses are too long together: remove one." Send Them To takes at most 5 valid addresses, 255 characters in all.

"The customer was not emailed: …" An action in Growth → Bookings worked, but its email didn't go out; the rest of the message says why. See Why didn't my customer get an email?.

No reminders arrive Check that Reminders is on, that your site was published after Email Delivery was set up, that the booking is confirmed and was made before its reminder time, and that your plan is active. See Why isn't Bookings working?.

Good to know#

• One email service for the project. Saving a service here also gives it to every other feature of your project that sends email and has none yet. See How to choose which email and SMS provider your project sends through.
• Store emails are separate, and listed in Which emails does the store send to you and your customers?.
• Approve Each Booking, cancellations and refunds are explained in What can I change in Booking Settings?.