Distribution Lists: Send a Single Email to a Group of Phone Numbers

Sometimes you just need to set up an email-to-text alert to yourself. That’s simple in text.email.

But what happens when you need to an text alert to go out to several people? And especially, what happens when that list of people is always changing?

That’s what text.email’s distribution lists are here for.

For example, let’s say you need the entire on-call team to get alerts when there’s a server outage. Now you can set up a list address (something like oncall@acme.text.email) and everyone on the list will get a text.

Here’s how to set it up…

Distribution Lists: Table of Contents

• How to Set Up a Distribution List in text.email
• Ready to Get Started with Email-to-Text Distribution Lists?
• Why Distribution Lists for Email-to-Text Are Even More Valuable Than You Might Think
• Some Ways You Can Use Distribution Lists
• Start Using Distribution Lists Today

How to Set Up a Distribution List in text.email

Here’s how to set up a distribution list so you can text multiple people with a single email.

#1. Go to the Distribution Lists settings in text.email

You can access the Distribution Lists settings from your account menu in the top right.

You’ll see any current distribution lists you have set up, and you can also create a new list on this screen.

#2. Create a new distribution list

Click on the Create new button in the top right.

On the next page, give your distribution list a name (something descriptive, so it’s easy for you to remember what the list is later). Also give it an alias — that’s what you’ll use as part of the distribution list email address.

For instance, I’ll set up the distribution list here for all of the on-call technicians on our team.

Then click Create.

#3. Add members to your distribution list

You’ll now see your new list on the main Distribution Lists screen.

Click on the Manage members button to add members (or, in the future, to manage who’s on the list).

Now you can add members to your list one at a time with the Add phone button, or bulk import your list with the Bulk paste option.

Here I’ll add a single phone number with Add phone…

And here I’ll bulk import several numbers. I just pasted them in, though you can import a CSV as well.

#4. Copy your distribution list address

Your list is all set. You can copy the address and drop it any place you’re setting up your group alerts.

And if and when you need to change who’s on your distribution list, head back to this page to manage your members.

Ready to Get Started with Email-to-Text Distribution Lists?

Our goal is really simple at text.email: We want to make it as easy as possible for you to turn emails into texts without APIs, software integrations, regulatory paperwork, or any of the other things other texting solutions require.

Distribution lists are the latest feature we’ve added to make it as quick and painless as possible for you to transform critical alerts into can’t-miss texts.

Distribution lists are included on all text.email plans.

You can sign up for an account at text.email — and you’ll be able to start dropping in your email-to-text address (and email-to-text distribution list addresses) in a matter of minutes.

Why Distribution Lists for Email-to-Text Are Even More Valuable Than You Might Think

text.email’s drop-in, no-code email-to-text process is easy.

But most of the systems where people use text.email are NOT so easy. Whether it’s a SCADA controller, a Prometheus system, or any of the other hundreds of monitors and platforms — it’s never quite that easy to change alert recipients.

The “recipient“ field on those systems is usually buried three menus deep. And you pretty much always need to look up how to find all three layers of those menus.

Meanwhile, the people who need the alerts change constantly. Techs rotate on and off call. Contractors get added. Somebody quits. A new facilities manager wants to be in the loop for compressor lockouts.

Every one of those personnel changes used to mean editing things at the source.

Distribution lists separate the two. The controller points at one address, forever (in this case, the distribution list). The people list is where the churn happens.

Why we built distribution lists

We built distribution lists just a few months into text.email because we kept seeing users manually CC’ing four or five @text.email addresses on the same alert.

That works, but it’s fragile. Miss one in the config and somebody stops getting paged. And, of course, who needs to be included is always changing (and, as I just talked about, making those changes is far more cumbersome than it looks).

The more we thought about it, the more it felt like the feature that makes text.email fit how alerting actually works in the real world. The source of the alert is the hardest thing to change. The list of people who care about it is the thing that changes most often.

Some Ways You Can Use Distribution Lists

Here are just a few of the scenarios that make sense for distribution lists:

• On-call rotations where the list changes every week or two
• Facility teams where the lead tech, the backup tech, and an off-site manager all need the same compressor alarm
• After-hours contractor coverage where you want your refrigeration vendor’s on-call number on the list without giving them access to your controller
• Home and family alerts (or even just an easier way to coordinate family plans).
• Multi-site ops with a shared response team
• Escalation coverage without a full, expensive paging tool like PagerDuty. For instance, primary + secondary + supervisor all notified at once instead of setting up actual escalation logic.
• Compliance/audit observers — a QA manager or compliance officer who needs the same alert the operator gets for logging purposes, even if they’re not responding.

Start Using Distribution Lists Today

If you’re already on a paid plan, distribution lists are live in text.email now. Choose Distribution Lists, create a new list, and add your numbers. Then update your systems to point at the new address.

If you’re not on text.email yet and this is the feature that makes it click for you, welcome aboard! You can sign up right here on the website (or, if you want to see it in action first, send a test email to yournumber@text.email to see how delivery works).