Status right now: check-ins are paused. The prepaid balance on the texting service we send through ran out and we did not catch it, so no check-in texts — and no verification codes — are going out at the moment. Nothing is wrong with your number and there is nothing for you to retry. The chat at feelbetterbot.com works normally and always has. This notice clears itself the moment real texts start sending again; it is generated from actual send records, not switched on by hand.
What a check-in is
One short text message from FeelBetterBot asking how you are doing, on the schedule you picked. It is written for you rather than sent as a blast, it is signed FeelBetterBot, and it carries a link back to the chat. If you text back, you get a reply. That is the whole thing. There are no promotions, no offers, and no marketing of any kind in a check-in.
You do not need check-ins, or a phone number, to use FeelBetterBot. The chat is free, requires no account, and asks for no phone number to begin. Check-ins are something you add on purpose.
Text or email — your choice
A check-in can arrive two ways, and you pick which. By text is what this page mostly describes below. By email is the same check-in on the same schedule, sent to an address you verify the same way.
The reason both exist is worth saying plainly, because it is a failure on our side and not a feature. Texts are sent through a prepaid service. On 9 August 2026 that balance ran out, nothing here noticed, and check-ins stopped for everyone for weeks — including people who had signed up and never received a single one. Email has no balance to run out of and costs us nothing per message, so it cannot fail that way. If you would rather not depend on the thing that broke, choose email.
Two differences worth knowing before you pick. An email check-in is not a conversation: we do not read replies sent to it, and every check-in instead carries a link straight back into the chat, where the full conversation and everything remembered about you already is. And an email check-in has no message or data rates attached to it.
How you turn them on
There is no way to be signed up by anyone but you, and no way to be signed up by mistake. The flow is the same every time:
- Open the chat at feelbetterbot.com and open the check-in panel.
- Choose text or email.
- Enter your own US mobile number (or your own email address) and choose how often you want to hear from us: every day, a few times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), or once a week (Monday).
- We send a one-time 6-digit verification code to that number or address, and nothing else. The code always goes over the channel you picked, because that is the only thing that proves you control it.
- Type that code back into the panel. It is single-use and expires after five minutes.
Check-ins begin only after that code is entered correctly. Until then the number is not on any list — the code is checked against a hash and the subscription record is created in the same step, so an unverified number cannot receive a check-in even in principle. Requesting codes is rate-limited per number and per network, so nobody can use the form to text a number they do not control.
How often we text
At most one check-in per day, and never more than the cadence you chose — daily, Monday/Wednesday/Friday, or Mondays. If you reply to a check-in, we reply back; those replies are capped per day, and past the cap you get one message pointing you to the chat and then silence rather than an endless thread.
Message and data rates may apply.
How to stop
Two ways, and both work immediately:
- In the app — switch check-ins off in the same panel you used to turn them on. This is the primary way, and it is more discoverable than a keyword.
- Email check-ins — the in-app switch is the way out, and every check-in email carries the link to it. STOP and the other keywords are a text-messaging convention and do not apply to email.
- By text — reply STOP to any check-in. STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END and QUIT do the same thing. Your subscription is switched off on our side as soon as the reply reaches us.
Reply START to begin receiving them again — your number is already verified, so you do not have to redo the code, and we text back one confirmation so you know it took. Reply HELP or INFO to any check-in and we text back who we are, how to stop, and a link to this page.
What we do with your number
- We use it to send your check-ins, and to match a text you send back to your own conversation so the reply makes sense.
- We do not sell it, rent it, or share it with advertisers. It is not used for marketing.
- Turning check-ins off stops the texts and keeps the record switched off, so you can turn them back on later without verifying again. If you would rather it were deleted outright, ask through the feedback form on the main page and we will remove it.
The rest of what we store, and why, is in the privacy policy. The terms covering the service as a whole are in the terms.
One thing worth saying plainly
The promise of a check-in is that someone shows up when they said they would. That means an outage is not a technicality here — it is the product failing at the only thing it claims. When check-ins are not sending, this page says so, the app says so, and the first text after a gap acknowledges the gap rather than opening with a breezy "how's today going?" as though nothing happened.