This guide takes you from a new Aloware account to a working setup you can run on your own. Follow the steps in order, because each one builds on the one before it. Every step ends with a You've got it when check. Don't move on until that check passes.

By the end you will have a registered business and texting campaign, active phone lines, users, teams and inboxes, inbound call routing, account settings for calls and messages, imported contacts, sequences and AloAi Agents, agents working in Aloware Talk, and your CRM connected to Aloware.

Aloware has two workspaces. Aloware admin is where you configure the account: lines, users, routing, settings and billing. Aloware Talk is where agents handle calls, texts and other conversations. Parts 1 to 6 happen in Aloware admin. The agent training section happens in Aloware Talk.

You need admin access to your Aloware account. The account owner has it by default.

Registering to send texts takes the longest, so have your business details ready before you begin: your legal business name, address, EIN (Employer Identification Number) and contact details.

Your website also matters here, because carriers review your SMS opt-in form (the form where people agree to receive texts from you) as part of the approval.

Decide which area code you want for your main line. If you plan to bring numbers over from another provider, gather the phone numbers, the account PIN, a recent bill and a CSR (Customer Service Record) from that provider.

Prepare a CSV file of the contacts you want to import. Have login details ready for any CRM, email or analytics tool you plan to connect.

US carriers require every business that texts from a regular 10-digit number to register first. This is called A2P 10DLC (Application-to-Person 10-Digit Long Code).

Registering also activates your Aloware account. You need it before you can upgrade to a Pro plan, use advanced features or port phone numbers into Aloware.

Registration has two parts. First you register your business, then your brand. Fill in every required field exactly as it appears on your legal documents. Your brand name, EIN and website must all match.

Standard approval takes 7 to 21 days. Start today so it's done by the time the rest of your setup is ready.

Brand registration costs $47.50, charged once. For every field and fee, see the A2P 10DLC fees: Brand and campaign registration.

An approved brand is not enough to send texts. SMS is blocked in Aloware until a campaign is approved and linked to your line. A campaign describes what kinds of messages you send and how people agree to receive them.

Choose the campaign type that matches what you send: customer care, marketing, mixed use, low volume mix or two-factor authentication. The type you choose sets what your opt-in form has to say. Mixed use requires separate consent for transactional messages and marketing messages.

Most campaign rejections come from three problems with the opt-in form:

Consent to receive texts cannot be required to use your service. Some content can't be sent at all, including SHAFT content (sex, hate, alcohol, firearms and tobacco), prescription medications and third-party lending. Your first message to a new contact must tell them how to opt out, for example by replying STOP.

Campaign fees are charged whether or not the campaign is approved:

A denied campaign keeps charging $10 a month until you delete it.

See Campaign registration: setting up your use case in Aloware, Registering lines in Aloware A2P 10DLC compliance and A2P 10DLC fees.

Aloware creates your first line when you sign up, using the area code you chose. In Aloware, a line is a container that can hold one phone number or many. You pay for numbers, not lines. A line with three numbers is billed as three numbers. Paused lines are still billed.

Open the Lines menu in Aloware admin and check that the line is active. If it isn't, or you want a different number, you can assign or replace it yourself.

See Step-by-step guide to creating lines in Aloware, or follow the interactive demo.

If you add a toll-free number, (note that toll-free numbers can't send or receive MMS). MMS works on local lines only. Toll-free numbers also go through their own verification, separate from A2P 10DLC.

To use numbers you already have with another provider, you must port them (move them) into Aloware. You need an approved business registration before you can submit a port.

How long a port takes depends on the type:

Ports are usually rejected because the details don't match your current provider's records: the account name, address or PIN, or because the numbers are still under contract. Check each detail against your latest bill before you submit.

A ported number can take calls right away, but it can't send texts until you add it to your approved campaign (Step 2).

You can also give specific users their own personal numbers. Extra numbers may cost more, so check your plan under Plans and Rates first.

See How to submit a Snap Port request in Aloware and How to port non-Twilio numbers into Aloware.

Aloware created the account owner as the first user, with admin access. Add the rest of your team and give each person a role:

Every user needs their own email address and phone number. Aloware shows an error if two users share either one.

Before you remove anyone, know how each user status affects billing:

See How to manage users in Aloware, Billing implication of paused and suspended users and Understanding the minimum license count in Aloware.

Teams group agents by department, shift or call priority. Teams and inboxes are separate: inboxes route calls, and teams organize agents. See Aloware Teams.

If you use contact visibility settings, a user set to Team-Owned Only who isn't in any team won't see any contacts. See How to configure contact visibility in Aloware.

Inboxes share incoming calls among a group of users in a set order. Group users into one or more inboxes based on how you want calls to ring. A user can be in more than one inbox, and you can change routing later.

When you set up an inbox, choose how calls are shared. Round robin rotates through agents, and longest available sends the call to whoever has been free the longest.

See Getting started with Inboxes in Aloware.

Routing decides what callers hear and where their call goes. Open each line's settings and set:

Use two or three routing layers at most. Each layer is another attempt to reach someone before the call ends. The default ring time for each agent is 30 seconds, and that's also the recommended setting.

If you route a line to one specific user, it becomes that user's personal line, and they get all of its inbound calls and texts.

Aloware requires callers to be told when calls are recorded, and this notice can't be turned off.

See Lines: routing and IVR settings and Lines: greet and record settings.

The settings in this part are under Aloware admin > Account menu. They apply to your whole account.

The Power Dialer calls through a list of contacts one after another, so agents don't dial each number by hand. Configure it before agents start using it. You can set the calling window (the hours when calls are allowed, by time zone) and whether agents must redial after an unsuccessful call.

The dialer creates one task per phone number, not per contact. A contact with a main, a mobile and a landline number becomes three tasks, so a 500-contact list can make a much longer queue.

See Account menu: Power Dialer settings.

A broadcast is one message sent to many contacts at once. A sequence (Step 16) is a series of automated steps. Set broadcast limits so bulk messages aren't sent outside business hours.

Before your first broadcast, check three things. Each one can block a send:

Contacts who have opted out or are on your Do Not Call (DNC) list are removed from the send automatically. An opt-out stops texts, but you can still call that contact.

See Getting started with Aloware Talk broadcast, the broadcast cost calculator and Guide to SMS opt-outs and opt-ins in Aloware.

Tags and lists both group contacts, but they work differently. A tag is a label you put on a contact. A list is a group of contacts you can send to a sequence or load into the Power Dialer. Adding a tag also creates a list from it. Decide how you'll use tags now so they stay consistent as your contacts grow.

Deleting a tag doesn't delete the contacts that have it, but the delete dialog offers to delete them. Read it before you confirm.

See Tags in Aloware admin and Understanding list management utility in Aloware.

A disposition is a code that records how a call or conversation ended, for example "Voicemail left" or "Not interested." A call disposition describes one call. A contact disposition describes where the contact stands overall.

Turn on forced call dispositions so agents must choose one after every call. If you use a CRM, let the CRM manage contact dispositions.

AloAi Voice Analytics writes AI summaries of calls and shows the sentiment (tone) of each conversation. Turn it on now so summaries start with your agents' first calls.

Always Record records the audio of every call, but a call is only transcribed if it lasts longer than a minimum talk time. See the AloAi Voice Analytics configuration guide.

Upload your contacts as a CSV file and match each column to the right Aloware field. Include a phone number column. Rows without a valid phone number fail validation.

Aloware checks whether a contact already exists by phone number first, then email, and never by name. If any contacts in your file are already in Aloware, tick Update Existing Contacts. Otherwise you'll get duplicates.

While importing, you can assign the contacts to a user or inbox, add an import tag, or enroll them straight into a sequence. If you're moving from another dialer, you can import your Do Not Call list too.

See the Guide for admins: how to import contact lists.

You won't run reports yet, but find the export options now so you know what's there. On the dashboard, you can export call data to CSV and choose the columns, such as number, start time, talk time and contact. See Generating reports in Aloware.

A sequence sends a series of automated follow-ups over hours or days, like an email drip campaign.

Steps can send a text, email or ringless voicemail (a voicemail that arrives without the phone ringing), wait, add or remove a tag, or add or remove a list.

A contact already enrolled in one sequence can't be enrolled in another. If a contact seems to have skipped a step, the sequence's history view shows what happened.

See How to use sequences in Aloware and Creating a sequence workflow in Aloware.

AloAi Agents are AI agents that send reminders and follow-ups, and answer common questions, so contacts stay engaged without your team doing it by hand. See the Guide to setting up and utilizing AloAi.

Connecting Aloware to your CRM or other tools keeps your data in sync. Every integration follows the same three steps:

After connecting, check that each Aloware user is matched to the right user in your CRM.

Pick the integrations that match the tools you use:

Aloware Talk is the workspace where agents handle calls, texts and other conversations. Walk each agent through Steps 19 to 26 before they go live.

Each agent logs in with their own credentials. Aloware Talk works on web, desktop and mobile. Turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) for secure login. To use the desktop app, see Installing the Aloware app.

Show each agent the main sections:

Aloware Talk has several kinds of inbox.

See How to set up and use connected inbox in Aloware.

Have each agent try every channel before going live:

You've got it when each agent has scheduled a follow-up, tagged a contact and mentioned a teammate in a note.

Agents can enroll contacts in AloAi Agents for automated reminders. They can watch conversations AloAi is handling and take over when a person needs to step in.

After a call, agents can read the AI summary for the main points and check the sentiment indicators for the tone of the conversation.

Agents track their numbers on the Wallboard and in Stats. There they can see live call activity, queue status, call length, response rate and completed tasks.

Supervisors can use call coaching (barge and whisper) to help agents during live calls, from inside Aloware Talk.

In User settings, each agent:

Before your team goes live, confirm each item:

Open the Dashboard and check that you can see live calls and past calls, messages, voicemails, emails and faxes.

Open Reports and check that you can track team performance, call volume and customer activity.

Review your subscription under Plans and Rates so your first invoice has no surprises.

See Understanding Aloware billing, Managing your credits and Understanding usage charges in Aloware

Each phone number has its own reputation with the carriers. Numbers that make a lot of calls, or call the same people too often, can get labeled as spam. How your agents call matters more than any tool:

Aloware also offers tools that help your calls get answered. Each does one thing, and none of them replaces the others:

See Lines: registering for CNAM in Aloware, Understanding STIR/SHAKEN, NumberGuard and What is local presence.

For urgent questions, use the in-app chat. For anything else, search support.aloware.com. For billing questions, start with Understanding Aloware billing.