A Name, an Email, and a Heads-Up
A contact starts as a name and an email. We don't ask for their phone number. That's theirs to give, and they can add it when they accept.
The rest of this page follows one invitation. You're Sam asking Alex to be your emergency contact.
Send the heads-up yourself
An email from a service they've never heard of is easy to ignore. After you've texted “you'll get an email from Rangerly,” it'll be on their radar. Nothing gets a contact confirmed faster.
Add more than one
One person can be asleep, abroad, or out of signal. A second one covers for that. Every confirmed contact gets the alert, so pick two who aren't usually in the same place.
What Lands in Their Inbox
It's the only thing we send someone before they've said yes. Here it is, exactly as it arrives.
- From:
- Rangerly <DoNotReply@rangerly.net>
- To:
- Alex Jordan <alex@example.com>
- Subject:
- Sam named you as an emergency contact on Rangerly
Rangerly Trip check-ins & overdue alerts An invitation
Sam is using Rangerly.
Will you be an emergency contact?
Rangerly is a check-in service for people who head out on their own. Sam Rivera uses it to say when they expect to be back from something — a solo hike, a long drive, meeting someone new.
If they don’t check in by the time they set, we email or text the people they named. Sam would like that to be you.
Accept
What you’re agreeing to
- Nothing until a check-in is missed — no digests, no marketing.
- One message when it matters, with what Sam left for you and what to do.
- You can remove yourself from any message we send.
Unsubscribe · support@rangerly.net
Accept opens one page. No password, no account. It says plainly what they're agreeing to and puts No thanks on the first screen. Nobody should have to dig to say no.
They Choose How We Reach Them
The invitation leads to two questions: can we email you, and can we text you too? They can say yes to either or both.
“Can we send you email?”
Their address is already filled in. If they keep it, email is confirmed on the spot, because the invitation already proved it works. If they change it, the new address gets a confirmation email first.
“Can we text you too?”
Optional. We send one text and wait for them to reply
YES. Until they do, alerts won't go by text.Sam added you as an emergency contact. Please confirm that you’re willing to receive alerts if they miss a scheduled check-in by replying YES to this message. Reply YES to opt in, HELP for info, or STOP to opt out. Msg frequency varies. Msg & data rates apply. Privacy Policy: https://rangerly.net/privacy / Terms of Service: https://rangerly.net/terms.YES
Save our number
The last screen offers Save contact card, which adds our number and address to their phone. An alert might be months away, and an unknown number at 4am looks like spam.
You'll hear about it
An email titled “Alex accepted,” and a text: Alex Jordan is now a confirmed contact. Nothing to keep an eye on.
Two Channels, Tracked Separately
Email and text channels are confirmed separately, so each contact has two statuses. The pill on their card sums them up. Tap it for the detail.
They said yes and the channel works. Alerts reach them here.
Asked, not answered yet. Alerts won’t reach them here until they do.
They turned it down or unsubscribed. Only they can opt back in.
Never used. Usually a contact who didn’t give a phone number.
Problems explain themselves
A contact who’ll get your alerts has a plain card. Any other card says what’s wrong and explains how to fix it.
Waiting on Priya
Invited, not confirmed. Until they press CONFIRM in the email, an alert won’t reach them.
Resend invitation
Invited. The contact hasn't responded to your invitation, yet. You can resend the invitation if needed.
We can’t reach Marcus
They’ve opted out of every way we had to reach them. There’s nothing to resend — ask them to opt back in, or replace them.
Remove Marcus…
Declined. They’ve opted out of everything. There’s nothing to resend, so the card offers to remove them instead.
You switched Alex off
We’ll skip them on every trip until you turn them back on.
Turn back on
Disabled. You switched them off. Grey, not red, because it’s your call, not a problem. Turning them back on is one tap.
Disable, or delete?
Disable if you’ll want them back. It keeps their confirmation, and turning them back on is one tap. Delete if you won’t, which is also the fix for a contact who’s opted out. Adding someone again after a delete means a new invitation and a new yes from them.
The Honest List
What we can't do. Better to find out here than after a missed check-in.
Only confirmed contacts get alerts
An invited contact gets nothing until they complete the confirmation process. If you start a trip without a confirmed contact, we'll warn you that no one will receive an alert if you miss your check-in.
A text that never arrives fails silently
If a carrier drops the confirmation text, your contact has nothing to reply to. If they’re still showing as
Invitedafter they say they accepted, resend the invitation using the button on their contact card.Invitations expire, and resends run out
Invitation links expire, but the resend button will generate a fresh one. After five resends it reads
Limit reached: delete the contact and add them again with a different address, or pick someone else.Contacts can opt out anytime
Any contact can decline or unsubscribe whenever they want. Once they do, Rangerly stops sending your alerts to them, and only they can opt back in.
Contacts don’t hear when you leave
Only when you’re late. If you want someone to know you’re heading out, that part’s on you.
Text and email, no calls
Alerts arrive as texts and emails, so a silenced phone can miss them. Having multiple contacts helps mitigate that risk.
Contact Questions
No. They get an email with a signed link, press Accept, answer two short questions and that is the end of their involvement until you miss a check-in. There is nothing for a contact to install, sign in to or remember.
Not while you're out. Contacts have no app, account, map or history to check, so they can't look in on you during a trip.
They only hear from Rangerly if you miss a check-in. Then they get a link to a page with:
- the note you wrote when you started the trip
- when you left
- when you were expected back
- any profile details you chose to share
That's all they see. What the note says is up to you.
Accepting and confirming are two different steps. Pressing Accept in the email only opens the questions; the channel isn't confirmed until they have either confirmed the email address they gave us or replied YES to our text. Their card tells you which of those channels it is waiting on.
The usual culprit is the text. Open the pill on their card, press Resend invitation, and ask them to look for a message from +1 (603) 435-2220.
If the contact is still in the Invited state, you can open the pill on their card and press the Resend invitation button.
If you have recently sent the invitation, you may have to wait a bit before resending it. The wait gets longer each time you resend it, and there are five of them: 15 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours and 24 hours. The first fifteen minutes run from when you added the contact rather than from a resend, so somebody you added a moment ago already has a cooldown on them. After the fifth the button reads Limit reached. At that point the problem is not delivery: delete the contact and add them again with a different address, or pick somebody else.
No, and you are not asked for one. A confirmed email address is enough for a contact to be alerted. The invitation offers them the option of adding a mobile number for text alerts as well, and whether they take it is up to them.
Text is worth having where you can get it: an alert at 11pm is considerably harder to miss as a text than as an email. But a contact with email alone is a working contact, counted in the confirmed total like any other.
We reccomend at least two. A missed check-in alerts all your confirmed contacts at once, so if one is asleep, abroad or out of signal, the others still get the message.
Choose people who won't be in the same place. Two people who live together and travel together count as one contact, not two.
Yes. Disable that contact before you start the trip, then turn them back on before your next one. When you create a trip, Rangerly shows you who will be alerted, so you can check before you go.
Remember that contacts hear nothing unless you miss a check-in. For a short trip, leaving everyone on is usually fine.
They can, at any time—an unsubscribe link in any email, or STOP to any text. That channel goes to Declined, and if it was the only one they had, their card turns red and says we can't reach them.
Resend does not help here and isn't offered: opting back in is theirs to do, not yours. The card offers Remove instead, and the honest move is to ask them directly or find somebody else.
No. You add, confirm and remove contacts in the web app, which works on your phone's browser as well as a computer. Text Mode has only three keywords, GO, EXTEND and SAFE, because those are what you need while you're out. Setting up contacts is a one-time job you do before you go.
Set it up before your next trip.
Thirty days free, no credit card required, and nothing to cancel.
Start a 30-Day Free TrialOr read how a trip works, the Text Mode guide, or the guide we wrote for contacts themselves.