To upgrade, log into our website at www.waitlist.me and click on the "Account" link at the top to choose your subscription and enter your credit card information. The annual options offer a 20% savings for paying for the year in advance. Each of the subscriptions allows you to serve an unlimited number of parties. The US & Canada plans come with a certain number of notifications bundled in each subscription; all other countries would pay for texts separately. This page has some more details about the subscription levels available. There are options for monthly or annual subscriptions.

There's a toggle at the top of the pricing page to select either the monthly or annual term for a subscription. You get a 20% discount if you opt to pay for the year in advance.

So for Premium, the monthly subscription is $34.99/month and the annual price is $335.88, which averages out to $27.99/month.

For Pro, the monthly subscription is $59.99/month and the annual price is $575.88, which averages out to $47.99/month.

And for Platinum, the monthly subscription is $99.99/month and the annual price is $959.88, which averages out to $79.99/month.

You can view all the payment receipts for your account by logging into www.waitlist.me, clicking on the Account link at the top of the page, then on the Billing History link. On that page, you'll see all of your invoices. You can click on any of the dates on the left to open the invoice, then click 'print to PDF' to save it.

Login at www.waitlist.me and head to the Account page. Choose the Cancel Subscription option to completely cancel your subscription. The subscription will downgrade on the next scheduled billing date and your card won't be charged again. You'll have access to all of the features until then.

To downgrade from a higher priced plan to a lower priced one, select Update Plan, and then choose Switch Plan for the option you would like. The change will take effect on your next billing date.

If your business is seasonal and you plan to upgrade again later, all of your settings will remain in place upon upgrade.

There are monthly and annual subscription options available. Any of the subscriptions can be cancelled any time by logging in to www.waitlist.me and going to the Account page. (You could also send us an email and we can take care of that for you.) The cancellation would take effect at the next scheduled billing date, and you would have full access to all of the features until then. There are no fees to upgrade or downgrade.

The annual subscription offers a 20% discount for paying for the year in advance. We don't offer partial refunds for the annual service. If you aren't sure whether the service would be the best fit, you can start with the monthly option and then switch to annual after you've had a chance to test it out.

Yes, our tutorials page has a good overview of the service and good demos of our core features.

Yes. For using reservations, this page walks through the basics settings you would want to tailor to your workflows.

Yes. You can see an overview video and more details on our table management features on this page.

This page will walk you through how to set up sections and layouts: Waitlist Me - Setting Up Layouts

The app has features for showing rolling averages as guides, and the Pro & Platinum services also have historical wait estimates that pull data by day/hour for the past 4 weeks. More details on that can be found here.
We have also found that having the actual wait times displayed next to the quoted times helps hostesses get better at providing accurate wait estimates and being able learn and adjust based on how close they are when serving guests. So there are a lot of data points that are easy to see at a glance and improve wait estimate accuracy.

Our reports page has a good description of the reports you can run on your Waitlist Me usage, and you can find more on the report details page.

With any subscription you'll have access to a public waitlist page that displays the current parties on the list. You can see more on the options for how that looks here: https://waitlist.me/features/display-waitlist

The default confirmation text message that goes out when customers join the list includes the [link] variable. This will fill in with a personalized link for each person who receives the text, and highlight their place in line. You can turn on and edit this text message online under Account > Settings > Notifications.

Pro & Platinum subscribers will see some additional branding options. This page has more details: https://www.waitlist.me/features/customize-public-waitlist

You can change the settings on your public waitlist page by logging in to www.waitlist.me and going to Account > Settings > Public Waitlist. All paid subscription levels have the option to customize the public waitlist URL, select the colors, and change how the wait time estimates display. See the full list of options here: https://waitlist.me/features/display-waitlist

With a Pro or Platinum subscription, you can add HTML to your public waitlist and hosted widget page. This page will show you how to edit the HTML options available for the public waitlist and the hosted web widget page.

To see customers recently served, on the website from the main waitlist page you would select the History option above the waitlist. In the app, it will be visible below the waitlist. The website will show parties served in the past week or so. The app will show only today's data, and there are options in the settings to select a longer timeframe (this setting is only available in the app on a tablet). Under the gear icon, go to Customization > Waitlist Info > History to choose 1-7 days to display the history.

The Platinum plan comes with an option to have the history deleted after the party is served. The option can only be turned on from our side, so you would need to contact us to enable that feature.

If you were looking for a quick reference of your volume of usage, go to the main waitlist page and select the Usage chart on the left. The on the right you'll also see options for monthly and annual usage. This will also show the texts and calls by calendar month.

If you want a way to speed up the process of adding parties to your waitlist or standardize how staff enter important information, you can set up Quick Notes. A simple tap brings up a list from which you can easily select the most common notes you or your staff uses, such as birthday or anniversary celebrations, customer seating preferences or needs, dietary restrictions etc.

On the website, go to Account > Settings > Quick Notes to enter & edit your list. In the app, go to the gear icon > Customization > Quick Notes.

Also, this page has more information on how the Quick Notes feature works.

Clover offers the Waitlist Me app in the Clover Marketplace. You can get the app from there, create an account, and use it on your Clover device. Or, simply log in to Waitlist Me on another Apple or Android device, or through the website. There are monthly and annual subscription options. The only way to upgrade or downgrade is the Waitlist Me website, and you can do so on the Account page.

There's an option to link your Square account in the iPad version of the app. For people who are already customers in Square, their name and full phone number will come up when you start typing their phone number. You can also choose to have your Waitlist Me customer entries automatically added to your Square customer list.

To turn this on, go to the gear icon in the Waitlist Me app on your iPad. Select the Square menu option. You'll need to login with your Square credentials, and then you can turn on the customer sharing features you wish to use. Please note, if you log out of the Waitlist Me app, you would need to log back in with your Square credentials for the feature to function again. Also Square would need to be logged in to on each device you wish to use it for.

If you have multiple locations, each separate location would need its own subscription to have its own unique waitlist, with notifications and other settings customized to each place.

For logging into locations you can have one or more user accounts. So you can have an admin account with access to all locations for managing billing or reports, and you can have individual logins for each location that keeps it simpler for staff members logging into their own place. There is not a difference in cost for having one or multiple users. The separate subscriptions are based on how many different accounts with separate waitlists you have.

Here is some more information on managing multiple places and users.

You can add more users to your account by logging in at www.waitlist.me and heading to Account > Users.

Enter an email address to invite a new user to the account. Also set the permission level - Admins have full access, Users have full access except they can't add/remove users, and Limited Users can't change most settings or access payment information/reports.

Adding and managing multiple locations is easy. First log into the Waitlist Me website and click on the My Places link on the upper right. You will see a plus sign, which allows you to add more places. Simply use the Search feature to pull up the address & phone number, or type everything in yourself.

From your My Places page, you can see all your accounts and can navigate between locations by clicking on them. You can also see at a glance some data on customers waiting and served across your places.

The app is designed to handle a single queue. If you have a lower volume and want a simple way to categorize your customers, you could try using either the status colors, notes or assignments to differentiate them. Otherwise if you have multiple areas (each with their own set of guests waiting) and a lot of volume, the easiest way to avoid confusion is to have separate accounts.

With a subscription, you can edit the text messages in the online settings under Notifications (or in the app it's under the gear icon > Customization > Notifications). A few tips to keep your messages from being blocked by carriers as spam: don't use emojis, multiple exclamation points, multiple stars, or all caps.

The confirmation text is Off by default when accounts are at the basic free level; you can set it to On or Ask Me after upgrading. There is a toggle at the top to switch between customizing the waitlist or reservation (Waitlist/Reservations) confirmation texts.

For the second notification, US & Canadian users can choose to use a text or an automated phone call and Pro & Platinum users have the additional option of using text-to-speech to create a custom voice message for the second notification. Additionally, for reservations, there is an option to use email for any of the three preset notifications (visit this page for more details on setting those up).

All US subscriptions include up to 3 text messages per customer: an optional confirmation text when they are added to the list, and two notification texts when you are ready to serve them. The default texts include information telling customers to respond with a 2 if they are on their way or a 3 to cancel. This will display in the staff's view of the waitlist as 'coming soon' or 'not joining.' If customers respond to your text, you can easily see if they are on their way, need to cancel, or have a question. You can see more about how that looks here. Pro and Platinum users have the option to send additional free-form text responses to text messages received, up to three times per customer visit.

Yes. This page has more information on setting up your notifications to send email notifications

You can add a prepaid texting balance to your account on the website by going to the Account page and clicking the Add Balance button. Choose $25, $50 or $100 to add a balance immediately.

You may also want to consider setting up the Auto-recharge option so that you never run out of notification credits. Default settings will add $25 to your balance when it gets down to $2. Click the blue hyperlinks to select a different recharge amount, or adjust the threshold for how low the balance can get before it gets topped off.

The texting feature isn't designed to be a chat app, so there isn't a way to initiate a text outside of the preset templated notifications (confirmation, first & second notifications). However, if a customer replies to one of the preset text messages they receive, Pro and Platinum users have the option to respond with a free form text up to three times per customer visit. The goal is to keep things simple for you and your customers rather than get into a long chat with them that could be time consuming.

So for instance, with a Pro or Platinum subscription, if a customer receives the confirmation notification that they've been added to your list and replies asking a question, you and your staff would have the ability to answer the question.

You can see more about how these features work here.

You can embed a web widget on your website, use a link to our hosted widget page (customizable), set up a self check in kiosk, and/or allow customers to join the list from their Google search (currently this last option is only available for restaurants in the US and Canada).

This page has a quick video that shows how the widget works, and just below the video are additional details on what features are included in each subscription level.

You can get the link for your hosted widget page or find the code to embed the widget on your site, by logging into your account in a web browser, then clicking Account > Settings > Add Yourself. This is also where you would edit other settings available for the widget.

This page walks you through setting up the widget: https://waitlist.me/features/waitlist-widget

Yes. Here is a page that will walk you through the set up of your device as a self check-in Kiosk: Self Check-in Kiosk

We teamed up with Google to allow customers to add themselves to your waitlist. This step-by-step visual guide shows how feature works. Note that this feature is only for joining the waitlist through Google and not for reservations.

All of our subscription levels include a QR code option, which can provide a quick and easy way for guests to add themselves to your waitlist. You can find your QR code in the settings for the Add Yourself Web Widget. This page has more details.

Also this page has information about setting up the widget in general.

Login to your account at www.waitlist.me and go to Account > Settings > Add Yourself. Toggle the switch to On. Click View in the Add Yourself sections to go into the settings for the widget. This page walks you through the main features you would want to set up.

With a Pro or Platinum level subscription, you have the option to tailor the customer experience to reflect your brand image and messaging by adding custom HTML to key touchpoints, namely, the Add Yourself widget and the Public waitlist page. This page will show you how: Waitlist Me - HTML Options (Blog)

The estimated wait time shown when customers use your widget can be customized by navigating to Settings > Add Yourself, and scrolling to the Main View fields.

The various options for wait estimates are as follows:

• People and Groups – Show the number of parties and the total number of people on the list.
• People – Show the number of people on the list.
• Minutes By Group – Display an estimated time by multiplying the number of parties by a number of minutes you specify. For example, selecting 5 minutes will multiply the number of groups on the list by 5, and present that result as the estimated wait.
• Minutes By People – Display an estimated time by multiplying the total number of people on the list by a number of minutes you specify.
• Last Estimated Time – Report the last estimate given by your staff.
• List View – Show the public view of the waitlist, so people can see where they are in line.
• Hide – No estimates, just go straight to the Add Yourself part.

This page here also gives a few visual examples of what the various options will look like from your customer's view.

The service works on both Apple and Android tablets.

If you prefer Apple products, you can use an iPad or iPad Mini, you'll just want to make sure they are newer models running the latest version of iOS.

If you prefer the Android platform, we generally see that tablets in the $150+ price range work better than cheaper models.

We utilize reasonable and appropriate protections and procedural safeguards to ensure that personal information in our care is not misused or accessed without authorization. In complying with FCC regulations, we don't allow phone numbers entered into the app to be exported by our business customers. Access on our side is restricted to those employees who have a need for such access to perform a legitimate business function relating to the services or for maintenance, internal security or related issues. Beyond that, our service runs on Google App Engine, a serverless cloud platform that has a number of built in security features which you can learn more about here.

While no system is 100% perfect, outages in the service or with our partners are very rare and typically resolved in as timely a manner as possible. We use Google's Cloud Platform, which is generally very reliable and rarely experiences issues. From the user side, some things that can affect how well the service works for you include the type of internet connection you have (we recommend a strong wifi connection), the type of device you use (we recommend newer devices running the most current operating systems) and for your customers receiving text notifications, how good their cell service is in your area.

If you're having a problem with the app on an Apple/Android/Clover device, please use the "Report Issue" feature, which you can find in the Help area of the Waitlist Me app settings. That will send us the device logs so we can better troubleshoot the issue and help you promptly.

We don't use customer information for anything other than sending notifications to guests added as part of the service. We don't sell customer information and for additional security we don't allow customer phone numbers to be exported in any of our reports.

For more info you can check out our privacy policy:
https://www.waitlist.me/privacy_policy

You can still use Waitlist Me, but you'll be unable to communicate with your customers via text or phone notifications until connectivity is restored and your waitlist syncs.

Phone numbers are not downloadable and only used for the purpose of notifying customers. We will never share or sell any of your or your customers' information.