Run a waitlist
When your Beacon says you are full, a client can leave their address instead of going away. Nothing is sent to them automatically when your capacity changes - telling them is your decision, and it is a deliberate one.
What happens when someone joins
They enter an address on your Beacon and they are on the list immediately. There is no confirmation link to click - the signup itself is the consent, and the moment, the method and the originating address are recorded against the entry as the evidence of it.
Two emails go out at that point:
- One to them, saying they are on your list and carrying a one-click link to come off it. It asks for nothing.
- One to you, saying somebody joined. You can switch this one off - see Choose what you are emailed about.
Somebody who signs up again with an address already on your list gets nothing, and the form answers them exactly as it answers a new signup. That is deliberate: an answer that differed would let a stranger use your form to find out whether a particular person is on your list.
The “how many were ahead of me” line
You can switch on a line in the confirmation email telling somebody how many people were ahead of them. It is off by default, and the wording is worth understanding before you use it, because it is not what people expect:
When you signed up, 12 other people had already confirmed a spot ahead of you.
That is the past tense on purpose, and it is not a live position. “You are number 13” stops being true the moment anyone ahead unsubscribes - and an email cannot be edited after it is sent, nor recalculated when it is read. A statement about a moment that has already happened is permanently true, and it is the only thing the app honestly knows.
It counts people who had confirmed their spot and had not unsubscribed - not everyone who had ever signed up, which would inflate the number. And when the count is zero it prints nothing at all, because “nobody was ahead of you” reads as “this list is empty”.
Telling the list you are free
When capacity opens, you choose who to contact, see exactly which addresses will receive it and which will not and why, optionally add a short note, and confirm. One email goes to each.
Nothing here is automatic. No email goes out because your status changed. There is no scheduling, no segmentation beyond your own tags, and no open tracking. One purposeful message, sent because you decided to send it.
The limits, and why you cannot change them
Every Candid Beacon owner sends from the same domain. There is no per-owner sending reputation, so one person mass-mailing a stale list degrades delivery for everyone else. That is why these are fixed constants rather than settings:
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Recipients in one send | 50 |
| Emails in a rolling 24 hours | 200 |
| Before you can contact the same person again | 14 days |
The cooldown is the one that protects you rather than the platform. Mailing the same client “I’m free!” three weeks running costs you more than a missed send ever could.
Two kinds of mail, and they behave differently
This distinction decides whether a message can be switched off and what has to be in its footer, so it is not cosmetic.
| The confirmation | Telling the list you are free | |
|---|---|---|
| Class | Transactional | Commercial |
| Sent because | They just did something | You wanted to say something |
| Unsubscribe | A footnote - they asked for this one | Stated plainly in the body, plus one-click headers |
| Postal address required | No | Yes - and it will not send at all until one is configured |
Adding promotional content to a transactional email reclassifies the whole message, with every obligation that carries. This is why the app’s transactional mail is as bare as it is.
Coming off the list
Every email to a third party carries a working unsubscribe link, and it is honoured whatever else is going on. Three things follow that are worth knowing:
- You cannot override it. Your own notification preferences govern mail to you. They have nothing to do with somebody’s unsubscribe, and cannot reach it.
- Deleting an entry is not unsubscribing them. Deleting an unsubscribed entry discards the record of their objection. If somebody has opted out, leave the row where it is.
- A bounce or a spam complaint stops mail automatically. A permanent bounce or a complaint blocks that address for good; a temporary failure is counted rather than acted on, because inboxes recover.
How long entries are kept
| Entry | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Unsubscribed | 30 days after they unsubscribe |
| Signed up but never consented | 30 days |
| The originating address on the consent record | 24 months, then cleared - the consent record itself is kept |
Active entries are kept while your account exists, and go when it does - see Delete your account.
Whose list it is
It is yours. You decide who is on it, what is said and when. Candid Beacon provides the mechanism and sends on your behalf - which means your name appears as the sender while your actual email address never does. Recipients cannot reach your mailbox through your Beacon.
It also means some obligations are genuinely yours rather than the app’s, and one is worth flagging: because there is no confirmation click, the only evidence that somebody consented is the signup record. Some places - Germany most notably - effectively expect a confirmed opt-in for commercial mail, which narrows where telling your list you are free is safe to use.