Messaging
Messages on Siterka go through our team: a person reads every message before it's delivered. That keeps conversations safe for parents and sitters alike, and nobody has to share a phone number or email too early.
What the inbox is
Open the inbox (/inbox) from the header menu — click your avatar, then Inbox. All your conversations are there. One conversation is one thread with one person — your messages and theirs, in the order they were sent. Messages go only between parents and sitters; two parents or two sitters can't message each other.
Before you start a conversation
To start a conversation you need to be signed in and have a published advert — that way the person you write to can see who you are and what you're looking for. If you haven't published one yet, the Send message button takes you to the advert form. You can always reply to a message someone sent you, advert or not. Don't want to share your phone and email publicly? In the first section of the advert form, turn on Keep my contacts private — the advert still goes live, and people reach you through messages.
How to start a conversation
You can start a conversation in two places:
From a profile or advert
Open a sitter's profile from /sitters or a parent's advert from /sitter-jobs and click Send message. A small window opens: the subject is optional; in Message, say who you are and what you're looking for. Closing the window discards text you haven't sent.
From the inbox
In the inbox, click Send a new message. On /inbox/new, start typing a name — suggestions appear as you type. Pick the person, write your message and send it.
Review before delivery
After you send it, a message is marked In review. Someone on our team reads it and passes it on, usually the same day. Until then you can see it in the conversation and on the Sent tab.
On the Sent tab every message shows a status: In review — waiting for us to read it; Delivered — the recipient has it, and you'll also see whether they've read it; Rejected — we didn't pass it on. Sometimes we lightly edit a message before delivery — for example, removing a phone number — without changing its meaning.
If we don't pass a message on, you'll see the reason in the conversation and we'll also email it to you. The message stays with you marked Rejected, and you can write a new one straight away.
Reading
The inbox has two tabs: Received and Sent. The number of unread messages shows next to Inbox in the menu. Open a conversation to read it — opening it marks the messages as read.
Replying
You reply inside the conversation: the message box is at the bottom of the thread. Write your text and click Send. Replies go through the same review as first messages, so the other person sees them once we've passed them on.
Email reminders
When a message arrives and you don't read it, we send you an email reminder — the first one the same day, then a few more over the following week. The reminder says who wrote to you and takes you straight to your inbox.
As soon as you read your messages, the reminders stop. If your inbox is read, we send nothing.
What we don't pass on
We don't pass on messages that insult, messages with details that identify someone who hasn't agreed to it (a child's full name, an address, a school), a phone number or other contact in the very first message you send someone, and messages that waste someone's time. Once a conversation is going and both sides want to swap contacts, that's up to you.