Your trip ends soon. Check in now to avoid alerting your contacts. Reply SAFE to close it.
Sat 4:18 PMThree Words, One Routine
Every message you send to Rangerly should start with a keyword. GO starts a trip, EXTEND pushes your deadline out an extra hour, and SAFE checks you in.
Every message gets a response from us. Not out of politeness — we want you to have the reassurance that your request was processed as you intended. Double-check that we got it right before you head out.
GOStarts the trip and sets your check-in deadline
GO how long you’ll be where you’re going
GO 3h Franconia Ridge loop, blue Subaru at Lafayette Place
Both parts are required, in that order. The duration sets the deadline. Everything after it is the note your emergency contacts receive if you miss the check-in — so it is worth writing the thing you would want someone to read while looking for you, not just the trail name.
- Hours or minutes.
3h,3hr,3hrs,3hour,3hours,90m,90min,90mins,90minutes. The space is optional:3 hreads the same as3h. Decimals work too—1.5his ninety minutes. - A bare number means hours.
GO 2 heading to the copper hill quarryis a two-hour trip. - The note can run to 500 characters. Past that it is trimmed rather than refused, so a long message still starts a trip.
EXTENDPushes the deadline back an hour
We'll add one hour each time we receive an EXTEND message. You can extend as many times as you like.
Extending is silent. Your emergency contacts hear from us only if a check-in is actually missed. Plans change and EXTEND lets you make the adjustment and stay out longer.
SAFEChecks you in and closes the trip
When you're back in a safe spot, send us the SAFE message to close your trip and stop the timer.
If we receive it before your trip's deadline, we won't notify your emergency contacts at all. If your deadline has passed, your contacts would have been notified, and a SAFE messsage triggers a follow-up to let them know you are safe.
An Evening Run, Start to Finish
A 90-minute run that went long. Seven texts, one extension, and zero alarms raised. You made it back safely and your contacts never even knew you were out. That's the idea.
A One-Time Setup
To enable Text Mode, you simply add and confirm your mobile number on your user's account.
Put your mobile number on your account
At registration, or any time afterwards from Manage your account. You'll also need to tick the box that says that you want to receive text messages from us.
Reply
YESto the text we sendOne word, once. Until it arrives, a
GOfrom your number comes back with “Confirm your number first” rather than a trip. If the confirmation never turned up, there is a resend button on the same account page.Save +1 (603) 435‑2220
Everything in both directions goes through that one number. Saving it means the thread has a name on it at the trailhead, and means you are not scrolling for an unknown number while deciding whether to extend.
Your number is your login
Text Mode recognises you by the number on your account, so texting GO from a borrowed phone will not start a trip — it gets a polite reply saying so. When your own phone is dead or lost, the web app is the way through: sign in from any device with a connection and check in or extend there.
Requires one confirmed contact
A trip with no confirmed emergency contact runs and expires and tells nobody. If that is your situation, the reply to GO says so in as many words — “you have no confirmed emergency contacts, so nobody will be alerted if you don’t check in”.
We Rarely Text First
Rangerly won't text to say hi, send tips, or remind you we exist. We'll only reach out first for three good reasons.
Your deadline is close
Your trip ends soon. Check in now to avoid alerting your contacts. Reply SAFE to close it.
A reminder, not a guarantee. We can't reach a phone that's off or out of signal, and your deadline comes due whether or not this arrives.
You missed your deadline
Your trip check-in was missed, so your emergency contacts have now been notified.
So when you get signal back, you know your contacts have already been alerted and are waiting to hear from you. They get your note by email and text within about five minutes of the deadline.
An email, every time a trip starts by text
A trip was started on your Rangerly account by text
A security notice, not a receipt. If your number is ever stolen or reassigned, this lands in your inbox. It names the trip and the deadline, and tells you what to do if it wasn't you.
Low-Tech, Highly Reliable
Out where Rangerly gets used, simplicity and reliability are often the most important features. The app is great, until we lose that data connection.
One bar is a usable amount of signal
A text needs a sliver of a connection for a fraction of a second, and it queues and retries when it doesn’t get one. Our app needs a working data connection for as long as it takes to load. At the edge of coverage, text mode is a better bet.
Nothing installed, nothing running
There is nothing sitting in the background, nothing to update the night before a trip, and nothing to find in an app drawer with gloves on. The messaging app you already have is the whole interface.
Any phone that sends a text
A ten-year-old handset, a prepaid brick for emergencies, a modern phone with the data switched off to make the battery last the weekend. Text Mode is made for this.
The trip runs on our servers
Once GO comes back confirmed, your phone has done its job. It can be off, dead, or at the bottom of a lake — the deadline still comes due on our servers, and your contacts still get your note. Nothing about the trip depends on your handset staying alive.
The Honest List
Text Mode covers the things you do while you are out. It is not the whole product, and a few of its edges are worth knowing before you are standing in the rain discovering them.
Only from the number on your account
There is no way to authenticate a text, so the number is the authentication. A borrowed phone gets a polite refusal; the web app, signed in, is the way through from any other device.
One open trip at a time
Close the current one with
SAFEbefore starting another.No contact management
Adding, confirming or removing an emergency contact is the web app’s job.
No location, ever
Nothing about Text Mode reads your location. What your contacts receive is the sentence you typed after
GO, which is exactly as much or as little as you chose to say.Carriers are not instant, and not guaranteed
Your deadline is set from our clock when the message reaches us, not from when you hit send, and a text can be delayed or dropped anywhere along the way. Which is why every command answers: if the reply to a
GOdoesn’t come back, assume the trip didn’t start.Standard message rates apply
Ours and yours are ordinary SMS — whatever your plan charges for a text is what this costs to run, on top of the subscription. Nothing about Text Mode is billed separately.
Text Mode Questions
No. Text Mode is plain SMS, so it needs no data connection at all—only enough signal to send a text, which is considerably less than a browser needs to load a page. You can leave mobile data switched off for the whole adventure and still start, extend and close your trip in Rangerly.
+1 (603) 435-2220, and yes—one number in both directions, so the whole of Text Mode is a single thread in your messaging app. Messages to that number are not monitored by our staff; for a person, email support@rangerly.net or call +1 (617) 981-4131.
No. Text Mode identifies you by the mobile number on your account, so a GO from an unfamiliar number is refused and told why—there is no way to prove who sent a text, so the number has to be the proof.
If your own phone is dead or lost, log in to the web app instead. A friend's phone, a laptop, or a computer at the trailhead lodge will all let you check in or extend.
Fifteen minutes to seven days. Below fifteen minutes there is no room for the reminder we send before your deadline; above seven days a mistyped duration would create a trip that effectively never comes due. Anything outside the range is refused with a message saying so.
Extensions are not capped. EXTEND adds an hour, as many times as you need—there is no number to mistype, and refusing one would strand someone who is still out and still checking in.
Not at all. Extending is silent—your contacts hear from Rangerly only if a check-in is actually missed. Running late won't notify them so long as you keep extending.
Every GO comes back with the trip we read out of it, including the note, so a misread is visible immediately. If the duration is wrong, text SAFE to close the trip and GO again—closing a trip you started minutes ago alerts nobody.
If we could not read your message at all, you get told that too, with an example. Nothing fails silently: a command that produced no reply is a command that did not arrive, and should be sent again.
No. It is part of the $5/month subscription—there is no separate plan, no message bundle and no per-trip charge. Standard message and data rates from your own carrier may apply, as they would for any text you send.
Reply STOP to any message. That ends every text we send you—including the reminder before a deadline and the notice that your contacts have been alerted—but it does not close your account or stop your contacts being alerted when you miss a check-in. Your trips carry on; you just stop hearing from us about them.
Three words. One number.
Thirty days free, no credit card required, and nothing to cancel.
Start a 30-Day Free TrialOr read how a trip works, what you’re asking of an emergency contact, or the guide for contacts themselves.