Help

Texting is not live yet. Forwrd is taking pre-orders at $5.99/month or $60/year, a price you keep for as long as your subscription stays active. Pre-order here.

Pre-order customers get the number by email the day it goes live. Until then you can sign in to see your plan or manage billing. Full refund if you cancel before launch: email support@forwrd.email.

Everything happens by texting our texting number (announced at launch). Commands start with @ and must be the first thing in the text. Capital letters do not matter.

Your first text from a pre-ordered phone

If you pre-ordered on the website, the first time you text us we ask you to reply LOCK IN, to confirm the phone is yours. Nothing is forwarded until you do, so send that first message again afterwards. Reply NO if the phone is not yours and we will disconnect it.

Commands

Text this	What happens
`@setup`	Start signing up, or pick up where you left off.
`@help`	Text back this command list and the support email.
`@add`	Add another email address. We ask for the address, then a handle, then the code we email you, then your bill changes.
`@list`	Text back your handles and which one is the default.
`@default <handle>`	Make that handle the default.
`@remove <handle>`	Remove an address. You cannot remove the last one.
`@status`	Your plan, your next billing date and how many addresses you have.
`@cancel`	Email you a link to the billing page, where you can cancel. Nothing is cancelled by text alone.
`@unlock`	Unbind this phone from the account. We ask you to confirm with YES.
`STOP`	Stops every message from us and unbinds the phone. Carrier-standard; STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, END and QUIT do the same.
`HELP`	Same as @help. Carrier-standard.
`START`	Turns messages back on after STOP.

Sending a normal message

Anything that does not start with a command is forwarded as email.

Picking up milk, back at six → goes to your default address.
@work Invoice is approved → goes to the address labelled work, and the @work part is stripped out of the email.
A photo with no words → arrives with the subject “Photo from your phone” and the picture attached.

The subject line is the first 60 characters of what you wrote, so put the important part first.

Forwrd Personal: your own number

Forwrd Personal includes everything above plus your own US local number, assigned when texting goes live. We email it to you, and it is on your account page.

Anyone can text it. Each text arrives as an email at your default address, showing who sent it.
To answer, reply to that email from any mail app. We text the new part of your reply to them from your number: only what you type above the quoted email, without your signature, up to 1,000 characters. Replies must come from one of your confirmed addresses.
Texts from your own phone to your number work exactly like texts to our texting number (announced at launch), commands included.
People who text your number can reply STOP at any time; after that your replies to them are not sent, and we email you to say so. Up to 100 replies a day.

Things worth knowing

Replying to an email forwarded from your own phone does not reach your phone: that direction is a one-way bridge, phone to inbox. Only texts someone else sends to your Forwrd Personal number can be answered by email.
A photo too big to attach to an email is put on a private download link instead, and that link stops working after 7 days.
If you text from a number we do not know, you get one reply telling you to text @setup, and then we go quiet for a day. That is deliberate, so a stray number cannot be looped.
You get 3 tries at any code we email you, and each code lasts 15 minutes.

Still stuck?

Email support@forwrd.email. A person reads it. Tell us the number you text from and roughly when the problem happened, and we can find it in the delivery log.