The short version
- A conversation starts with the person texting your agent.
- No bulk sends, marketing blasts or cold outreach, on any plan.
- Stop writing to anyone who asks you to stop.
- No health information, card or bank numbers, or government IDs on iMessage.
- Apple, Meta, Telegram or our iMessage line provider can stop a line, and so can we.
People text first
A person starts the conversation: by texting your line's join message, an opt-in link, a QR code, or a sign-up form that opens their messaging app. A ticked box on a website does not count as starting a conversation on iMessage.
Once they have written, your agent may write to them when it needs to: a reminder they asked for, a follow-up, an answer that took a while. On WhatsApp, after 24 hours of silence, WhatsApp itself requires an approved template.
You may not use Flow for bulk sends, marketing blasts, cold outreach, or messages to lists you bought, rented or scraped. This holds on every plan, including paid ones.
Writing first to someone who never texted is available only on a dedicated iMessage line with the Outbound add-on, within the line's warm-up limits. When it is switched on, the first message must say who is writing and why, and how to opt out (for example, "reply STOP").
Consent and opting out
You must have the person's permission to message them, and be able to show how you got it. When someone asks you to stop, by replying STOP, unsubscribe or in their own words, stop writing to them first on every channel, right away, until they ask you to start again. You may still answer if they write to you.
Flow Framework agents keep this rule for their reminders and nudges, and Flow records STOP on SMS. On other channels and other code, honouring opt-outs is your agent's job.
Data you can't send
On iMessage, never send or ask for:
- health information about a person;
- payment card or bank account numbers;
- government ID numbers, such as Social Security, passport or driving licence numbers.
Our iMessage line provider keeps message content for up to six months and signs no health data agreement, so Flow refuses iMessage for accounts that handle protected health information. Flow refuses WhatsApp and Telegram for those accounts too. Don't put health information about real people in the dashboard's tests either.
What you can't use Flow for
- Anything illegal where you or the people you message are.
- Spam, scams, phishing, or collecting passwords and one-time codes.
- Harassment, threats, hate, or sexual content involving minors.
- Pretending to be another person or business, or hiding who is writing.
- Malware, or links meant to deceive.
- Getting around limits: several accounts or apps to dodge a plan's people limits, rotating numbers after blocks, or reselling Flow's lines without an agreement with us.
- Attacking, overloading or probing Flow, or another customer's agents and data.
Sanctioned countries
Flow is not available to businesses or people in countries or regions under comprehensive sanctions, or to anyone on a sanctions list. Don't use Flow to message people in those places, or to get around sanctions.
iMessage lines
Apple decides who may message on iMessage, and our iMessage line provider decides what it treats as spam. Either can limit or stop a line at any time. People's spam reports can get a number blocked by Apple, and on a new line one report can be enough. Flow cannot reverse that.
Flow paces every line to keep it healthy. On a shared line, one person's misuse risks every app on it, so we act quickly there.
What we do about misuse
If we believe an account breaks this policy, or puts a line or the people on it at risk, we may slow or hold its messages, pause a sender, move it off a shared line, revoke its keys, or suspend or close the account. Where we can, we tell you first and say why; when a line is at risk, we may act first and tell you after. If a channel or our iMessage line provider requires us to act, we will.
If you think we got it wrong, email us and we'll look again.
Report misuse
Got a message from an agent on Flow that you didn't want? Reply STOP to it, and tell us at samyak@flow.engineer with the number or bot it came from.