Message event guests

Email one group of a Cal Event’s guests from the Guests board, then track each message’s delivery and retry failed sends from Message history.

Hosts can send a one-off email to the guests of a Cal Event, for example to share a venue change, say the doors are open, or send a link to the recording afterwards. Every message is listed under Message history, with who sent it, when, which guests it went to and how delivery went.

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Who can message guests

Message guests and Message history appear on the event’s Guests board for:

• The event’s hosts
• Team members whose role lets them edit the team’s events
• The owner of a personal event

External co-hosts don’t see either button. Anyone who can message an event’s guests sees every message sent on that event, whoever sent it, and can retry any of them.

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Send a message

1. Open the Guests board

   Go to Events, open the event, and select Attendance → Guests.

2. Open Message guests

   Select Message guests in the toolbar. On a phone, select Message guests in the bar at the bottom of the screen instead. It’s there on every tab of a published event and takes you to Guests.

   
3. Choose who gets it

   Under Send to, pick one group: Going, Maybe or Pending. On desktop the dialog opens on Going; on a phone it opens on the group you’re filtering by. The dialog shows how many guests will get the email.

4. Narrow it down (optional)

   Use Check-in to send only to guests who have Checked in or are Not checked in; leave it on Any to include both. If the event has more than one location, you can also pick one under Location to send only to guests who chose it, or leave it on All locations. The dialog opens on the location the Guests board is filtered by, and the guest count updates to match your choices.

5. Write the message

   Enter a Subject and a Message. Messages are plain text; paste links as plain URLs.

6. Send now or later

   Under When, leave Send now selected to send straight away, or choose Send later to pick a date and time. See Send a message later.

7. Send

   Select Send, or Schedule if you chose a time. For a message sent now, a toast shows its status while it goes out.

Group	Who receives it
Going	Confirmed guests who RSVP’d yes, and the event’s accepted co-hosts
Maybe	Confirmed guests who RSVP’d maybe
Pending	Guests awaiting approval, on the waitlist or with a payment pending

When you send to Going without choosing a Location or Check-in option, the event’s accepted co-hosts get the message too, and the guest count includes them. Their email has no unsubscribe link. A co-host who also registered as a guest gets it only if their registration is in the group. Co-hosts aren’t added to Maybe or Pending, and the event’s hosts aren’t added to any group.

Invited people who haven’t RSVP’d, and guests who declined or cancelled, can’t be messaged. Location and Check-in only narrow the group you picked, so they never add guests from outside it. Only confirmed guests can check in, so Pending with Checked in has no one to send to.

Pending guests aren’t admitted yet, so their email doesn’t include the venue or join link.

Some guests in the chosen group don’t receive the email:

• Guests who RSVP’d by phone have no email address, so they’re skipped. The dialog tells you how many before you send.
• Guests who unsubscribed from host messages for the event are skipped. Guests can unsubscribe from the link in a host message; they stay registered and still get essential updates, like a time change or a cancellation.

Messages are sent to the guests who are in the group when sending starts. Guests who register, and co-hosts who accept their invitation, after you select Send don’t receive it.

You can also ask the Cal.com assistant to message one group of guests, narrowed by location or check-in in the same way. It shows the group, the guest count, the subject and the message on an approval card, and sends only after you approve.

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Send a message later

Choose Send later under When to send the message at a time you pick, for example an hour before doors open. Select the date and time; they’re in the event’s time zone, which the dialog shows under the picker, and the dialog confirms when the message will be sent. Then select Schedule.

The time has to be at least 5 minutes from now and no later than 7 days after the event ends. Everything else works as for a message sent now, with one difference: the guests are worked out when the message goes out, not when you schedule it. Someone who registers before then gets it, and someone who unsubscribes before then doesn’t. If the event is cancelled or unpublished before the time, nothing is sent.

A scheduled message shows in Message history as Scheduled for its time. Open it to read its Subject and Message, with its line breaks, and check what will go out. To cancel it, select Cancel message. You can cancel until its time arrives. A cancelled message is never sent, and guests aren’t told.

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View message history

Select Message history next to Message guests on the Guests board. On a phone, select ⋯ in the bar at the bottom of the screen, then Message history. The panel lists the event’s messages newest first, 20 at a time; select Load more to see older ones. If nothing has been sent yet, the panel says No messages sent yet.

Each row shows:

• The sender’s name (Deleted user if their account has been deleted, Unnamed user if they have no name)
• When the message was sent
• The group it went to: Going, Maybe or Pending
• Its status
• Once sending has finished and at least one guest received it, the counts on one line: sent, failed, skipped by phone and unsubscribed

Select a row to open its details: who sent it, the group, the date, the status and each count. A message still waiting for its scheduled time also shows its subject and message text. Once its time arrives, or for any other message, the subject and message text aren’t shown, and no message shows its location or check-in choice.

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Statuses

Status	Meaning
Scheduled for (date and time)	The message is waiting for its time. Nothing has been sent. You can cancel it.
Cancelled	You cancelled the message before its time. Nothing was sent.
Sending…	The message is going out. No counts are shown yet.
Sent to N guests	Every guest in the group with an email address received it, apart from any skipped guests.
Sent to N of M guests	Some guests received it, and the email to others failed.
Not sent	No guest received it.
Not sent. This event can no longer be messaged.	The event was cancelled or unpublished, or its messaging window closed, before anyone received the message.

Count	Meaning
Sent	Guests the email was delivered to
Failed	Guests the email couldn’t be sent to
Skipped, RSVP’d by phone	Guests in the group without an email address
Skipped, unsubscribed	Guests who unsubscribed from host messages for the event

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Retry a failed message

When a message reads Sent to N of M guests or Not sent, its details may show Try again. Select it to send the message again. Guests who already received the message don’t get a second copy. The group is checked again, with the same location and check-in choices, so guests who were already registered and have since moved into it, for example by being approved, can receive it; guests who registered after the original send still don’t. The row then reads Sending… and updates on its own until sending finishes.

Try again isn’t offered when:

• The message was sent, is still sending, or is waiting for its scheduled time
• The message reads Not sent. This event can no longer be messaged.
• The message is more than 30 days old, counted from its scheduled time if it had one
• The message has already been retried the maximum number of times

A retry is refused if the event can no longer be messaged, or if the group no longer has any guests with an email address or now has more than 1,000. Retrying doesn’t count toward the daily sending limits.

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Send and list messages with the API

You can also message an event’s guests and list its sent messages with API v2. Both endpoints follow the same access rules as the Guests board, so co-hosts can’t use them, and sends count toward the same daily limits.

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/v2/events/{uuid}/messages	Email one group of guests. Send a segment (GOING, MAYBE or PENDING), a subject and a body, and optionally a locationId or checkedIn (true or false) to narrow it down.
GET	/v2/events/{uuid}/messages	List the event’s messages, newest first, with each one’s segment, createdAt, sender, status and counts.

A send returns the message’s id, a status of QUEUED (or FAILED_TO_QUEUE if nothing could be sent), recipientCount, the number of guests and co-hosts who’ll be emailed, and skippedPhoneCount, the number skipped because they RSVP’d by phone. The message then goes out in the background; list the event’s messages to follow it. In the list, status is SENDING, SENT, PARTIALLY_SENT, NOT_SENT or NOT_SENT_EVENT_UNSENDABLE, matching the statuses above. counts is filled in only for SENT and PARTIALLY_SENT; it’s null while the message is sending and whenever nothing was delivered. To get the next page, pass pagination.nextCursor from the previous response as the cursor query parameter.

With an OAuth access token, sending needs the EVENT_WRITE scope and listing needs EVENT_READ. Retrying a message is only available from Message history on the Guests board.

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Limits

• You can message an event’s guests while it’s published and not cancelled, until 7 days after it ends.
• A message can go to at most 1,000 guests with an email address. If the group is larger, Send is disabled.
• The subject can be up to 200 characters and the message up to 5,000 characters. HTML and script links aren’t allowed.
• Each person can send up to 20 messages a day, and each event can have up to 5 messages sent a day.