A guest finishes their photos and there is no Text it to me button anywhere. Nothing is broken. VertexBooth hides a delivery button until that channel can actually send, on the reasoning that a button which fails is worse than no button at all.
Here is how to switch text messages and email on properly.
First, the part nobody enjoys hearing
Each channel needs an account of your own with the company that actually sends the message. VertexBooth does not create one for you and does not resell you one. That is why this is cheaper than photo booth software that bundles it, and also why it takes twenty minutes the first time.
The QR code channel is the exception. It needs no account and is on already.
What you need
- An email address to sign up with.
- A card, if you want text messages. Email has a genuinely free tier; texts do not.
- About twenty minutes for both.
1. Open the Delivery page
In Studio, under Booth, choose Delivery. You will see three cards, one per channel, each with a status. Red banners at the top name exactly what is missing.
If you are recording a demo or sharing your screen, check Hide keys, ids and addresses on this page first. It blanks out every secret on the page so you do not broadcast them by accident.
2. Set up email first
Email is the easier of the two and the one with a free tier that stays free.
- Choose Brevo as the service. It sends 300 emails a day free, forever.
- Sign up at brevo.com and confirm the address you want your photos to come from. They email you to check you own it.
- In Brevo, open SMTP and API and copy an API key. An API key is just a long password that lets one program talk to another.
- Paste it into Brevo API key in VertexBooth, and fill in From address with the confirmed address.
If you would rather use a mailbox you already own, the Your own mailbox option works with an ordinary Gmail account and costs nothing, with a limit of roughly 500 a day.
3. Set up text messages
- Choose Textbelt unless you have a reason not to. You buy a key and that is the whole setup. Around 6 cents a text, and three dollars buys fifty.
- Paste the key into Textbelt key.
What the guest actually receives: a text with a link to their photo, not the photo itself. Textbelt cannot carry a picture inside the message. If you want the picture to arrive in the message, you need one of the other services, which costs more and takes longer to set up.
The other two options are worth knowing about. ClickSend is cheaper per message and can send the picture itself. Twilio is cheapest of all per message but rents you a phone number monthly and requires a registration that can take days to approve, so it only pays off at volume.
4. Watch the status change
As soon as a channel has what it needs, its badge flips from Needs setting up to Ready, and the button appears for guests on its own. You do not have to go and add it to a screen.
5. Send one to yourself
Run a session and deliver it to your own phone and your own inbox. Check that it arrives, that the link opens, and that the name on the email is the one you want guests to see rather than a half-finished placeholder.
Common questions
What do the prices in VertexBooth mean?
They are estimates written when that version shipped, to save you opening five pricing pages. They can drift. The service’s own billing page is the real number.
Can I just use the QR code?
You can, and plenty of operators do. Be aware that on its default setting the link only works while the guest is on the venue wi-fi and only while the booth is switched on. Turning on cloud storage removes both limits.