How your customers sign in
Some of what you sell only makes sense to show the person who bought it — an order history, a booking, a members-only page. So your customers can sign in to your business, and this is what that looks like for them. It is switched on one business at a time — if it isn't on for yours yet, see "Customer sign-in isn't turned on yet".
There's no password to invent
When a customer signs in, I ask for their email address and send a six-digit code to that inbox. They type the code back in, and they're signed in. That's the whole thing.
No password to choose, none to forget, and nothing for you to reset when they lose it. It also means an address that can't receive mail can't become an account, so the contact detail you hold for a customer is one you know reaches them.
A code is good for ten minutes and works once. They get five tries at typing it before that code stops working.
They don't have to remember your web address
Every code email names the page they sign in on and links straight to it — the page they actually came from, not a general one. A code goes out on every sign-in, so that email is always the newest message you've sent them, and it's what gets them back in weeks later when they no longer remember where your customer area lives.
Until your site is published there's nowhere to point them, so those emails carry the code alone.
They can ask for a fresh code, but not on a hair trigger: one code a minute to any single address, and five in an hour. That ceiling isn't about your customer — it's what stops someone using your sign-in page to bury a stranger's inbox.
Their sign-in belongs to your business alone
A customer signs in to your business, not to a platform account they carry around. Somebody who buys from you and from another business here is two separate customers who happen to share an email address: two records, two sign-ins, nothing shared between them.
That cuts both ways, and both ways are the point. Nobody else can see who your customers are. And you never inherit a stranger from another business just because they used the same address somewhere else.
Small print under the sign-in box and in its emails names ZenBusiness — see "Terms, privacy, and who sees your information".
How long they stay signed in
Thirty days — and the clock restarts on every visit, so it's thirty days of silence that ends it, not thirty days from when they signed in. A customer who drops in once a month is never asked for a fresh code at all.
It's deliberately generous: a customer who has to fetch a code every single visit stops visiting.
If someone shouldn't have access any more
Suspending a customer shuts the door on signing in: no fresh code will be sent to them, and a code they're already holding won't be accepted. It's the right move for a refund dispute, a client you've stopped working with, or an address that turned out to belong to the wrong person.
It also reaches someone who is already signed in and browsing: from their very next action, they can't do anything. You make that call yourself, from your customer list — see "Your customers, and who can sign in".
If a customer says the code never arrived
Almost always one of three things, in this order:
- It's in spam. Ask them to check the junk folder first. This is the answer far more often than the other two combined.
- The address has a typo. A mistyped address that's still a valid one gets a real email — sent somewhere else. Read it back to them.
- They asked several times in a row. I limit how often codes go to one address, so a burst of requests gets turned down. A minute clears the first limit — but if they've already burnt through five requests in the last hour, the wait can be most of an hour. Tell them to stop asking and use the newest code they've already got.
- They're suspended. Someone who has been shut out sees exactly the same "your code is on its way" page as everyone else, and receives nothing. The page can't say otherwise without telling any stranger who types an address whether it belongs to one of your customers.
One thing catches people out: only the newest code works, and typing an older one isn't harmless. It spends one of the five tries belonging to the code that is live. Three stale attempts and the good code is burnt too, and now they really are stuck. Point them at the most recent message first, then let them type.
If none of that explains it, tell me in chat and I'll get a real person on it — see "Talking to a real person".