Fleetola can text your customers as well as emailing them. Turn on Text messages under Settings → Messages. There is nothing to sign up for and no account to connect: Fleetola sends the texts from its own sender, and every one starts with your business name - Harbour Car Hire: your $380.00 payment is overdue.
Which texts
Six, each with its own switch under the master one: payment due tomorrow, payment overdue, pick-up tomorrow, ready to sign (with the signing link), booking confirmed and the return reminder. Each goes at the same moment as its email, which still sends as before. The words are fixed; the SMS tab shows each one.
What it costs
Each text segment costs the price shown beside the switch (15c in Australian dollars unless agreed otherwise), added to your Fleetola invoice after the month ends. A text up to 160 characters is one segment; a longer one is two or more. Texts this month shows the count and the cost so far. A text that could not be sent costs nothing. If texts are not part of your plan, the switch says so and nothing is texted. Texts start once your Fleetola plan has a card on file; on a free plan, ask Fleetola to switch them on.
When texts don't go
Texts are held overnight: one that falls due between 8pm and 8am leaves at 8am your time. A customer who replies STOP is not texted again until they reply START, and you can switch texts off for one customer on their record. Each customer gets at most three texts a day from you; the signing link, payment and return texts have three more of their own, so a booking confirmation never crowds them out. Each business has a monthly limit (500 unless Fleetola has set another) - past it, texts stop until the next month and the emails carry on. Texts go only to mobile numbers in your own country - a landline or an overseas number is emailed, not texted. Fleetola can allow other countries for your business on request.
Tip: Sign-in codes are never texted - they stay on email.