# Overview

> What Beam handles for you, and what stays your responsibility.

This is not legal adviceConsult your legal counsel to make sure your communications comply with the laws that apply to you.

## Activation and compliance

A workspace can send only after payment is confirmed and a platform administrator assigns an active line. Availability, timing, and area-code preference fulfillment are not guaranteed. Your legal and consent obligations still apply regardless of the channel or line source.
What replaces the paperwork is behavior: the systems that watch messaging traffic judge numbers by how they act. Beam's pacing, opt-out handling, and warm-up exist to keep your behavior unmistakably legitimate. Hold up your end by messaging only people who asked to hear from you.

## What Beam handles automatically

  - Opt-outs. STOP, unsubscribe, quit, cancel, or end from a contact immediately blocks all future sends to them. The API returns 403 if you try.
  - Pacing and hours. No 3am messages, no machine-gun bursts, no day-one blasts from fresh numbers.
  - One thread per contact. Consistent sender identity, which both people and filters reward.

## What stays yours

  - Consent. Laws like the TCPA in the US govern who you may message. Opt-in from your own forms, bookings, and inbound texts is the standard to hold.
  - Content. What you say and what you sell through the channel. See Prohibited content.
  - Identity. Say who you are early in a conversation with someone new.

## The practical rule

Message people who expect to hear from you, say who you are, honor every opt-out instantly (Beam does), and keep records of how each contact opted in. Do those four things and you are ahead of the vast majority of business texters.