What to check about reminder settings before you commit

Reminder settings look like the most boring line on a features list — a checkbox next to "SMS + email reminders," done. Then you start actually running a practice on the tool, and that boring line turns out to hide a real decision: how many reminders go out, when they land, and whether the words in them are yours or the software's. Most people don't find the limit until they're a few months in and want to change something small.

What practitioners are actually running into

Three separate reviewers, on three different platforms, described hitting a version of this wall within the same few weeks:

"Can only have one email and one text reminder at this time." — a MassageBook review, Software Advice, September 2026

"I would love it if there were a few more reminder options for sending the clients reminders and the time-frame options to choose from" — a ClinicSense review, Software Advice, September 2026

"That we can't write our own memo in the text reminder." — a Vagaro review, Software Advice, September 2026

These are public reviews of three unrelated companies — read them yourself before taking my word for any of it. But a hard cap on reminder count, a wish for more timing choices, and wording you can't touch are the same underlying shape: the software decided what a reminder looks like, and the practitioner is stuck living inside that decision.

Why the setting is often rigid in the first place

Nobody outside these companies can see how their systems are actually built, so take this as an informed guess, not a claim about anyone's engineering — but a locked reminder template is genuinely easier to build and support than a fully open one. It's simpler code, fewer support tickets, and no risk of a practitioner accidentally breaking a merge field or sending something that reads wrong. Loosening it into something you can freely rewrite is more work for a feature that looks small on a pricing page. That's a legitimate tradeoff, not a lie — but it's worth knowing you're the one absorbing it if the honest answer to "can I change this" turns out to be no.

What to actually ask before you commit

• How many reminders, and can that change? Two is a common default across this category — ask whether it's the only option or a starting point you can add to.
• Can you move the timing? A day-before message and a same-day nudge work for most clients; a first-time booking or someone who's flaked before sometimes needs something earlier, or a second nudge closer to the appointment. Find out whether that's yours to adjust or fixed by the vendor.
• Can you write your own words? A template is a fine starting point. Whether you can actually edit it — swap a name, soften a line, add a note about parking — is a separate question from whether the software sends reminders at all.
• Try it before you sign, not after. Don't take any company's word for the answer, ours included — ask to add a third reminder, change the window, or rewrite a line, during setup. If it lets you, you'll know in thirty seconds. If it doesn't, better to find out now than the week you actually need it.

The honest catch

Here's the part worth naming on our side too: I've told you what's already configurable in Stillbook below, and if you're wondering whether the wording is fully yours to rewrite from scratch, or whether a third reminder is possible, that's a fair question — and I'd rather you ask it directly than take a confident answer from a blog post that I can't fully back up here. An honest "let me check and tell you straight" beats an overclaim every time.

What Stillbook does, plainly

The cadence is yours to set — up to two reminders, two days and two hours before by default, and you can move either one or turn it off. Each reminder goes out by text to clients who opt in to texts when they book, and by email to anyone who leaves an address, from a business number instead of your personal phone. More on how the reminders themselves are written has the fuller version. And if the answer to any question above matters enough to decide on, ask me directly before you commit — that goes for us as much as anyone else on this page.