Beam pricing and business FAQ Questions, answered for businesses

You get a referral QR code in the app. Put it where people already stand still: the counter, the receipt, the table tent, the window. Someone scans it, installs Beam, and that install is attributed to you.

Every attributed install pays you back in credits, which spend exactly like money on your next beam. The customers you bring in help fund the reach you buy later.

This is the cheapest reach on the platform, because you are converting people who already chose to walk into your shop. Start here before you spend anything.

Pick a genuinely quiet hour, keep the radius tight, and make the offer good enough to move someone off their sofa. A weak discount sent wide costs more and works worse than a strong one sent to the few streets around you.

Set a redemption cap the first time. It bounds your exposure while you learn what the response rate looks like.

A beam to your own customers is free. The Free plan is one beam a week to up to 25 of your customers, the people who have redeemed with you, joined through your link or signed up at your counter. Plans from $29 to $499 a month give you more beams a week to more of your customers.

A Town Beam goes to everyone inside the radius you pick, your customers and people who have never been in. It costs 7 cents per person it reaches, your own customers included, so you send one or the other, never both. Any business can send one, on Free too. Your first Town Beam is free: make it a special offer, since it is the one that turns the people nearby into your beamers.

You see the price before you send, every time. During the launch test, everything is free and the app shows what a beam would have cost.

Yes, in the sense that matters: if your credit balance covers the price, the beam costs you nothing new. No card is charged.

Credits come from two places. You buy them in packs, or you earn them from referral installs through your QR code. A business that works its QR code steadily can run beams it never paid cash for.

Credits do not expire, and they spend on any beam.

Free is one beam a week to up to 25 of your customers, which is enough to learn whether this works for your shop. Town Beams are open to every plan, Free included.

The paid plans, $29, $49, $79, $149, $249 and $499 a month, give you more beams a week (2 to 7) to more of your customers (75 to 5,000). Pick the one that covers your list; the app suggests it. Nothing is charged during the launch test.

People with Beam who are inside the radius you set, during the window you set. You control the radius from 0.2 up to 25 miles, the start time and duration, an optional cap on total redemptions, and optional audience targeting.

Targeting narrows who is eligible and raises the price, because you are asking for a more specific audience. For a local shop, a tight radius usually does more than heavy targeting.

1. The customer shows their screen: a large QR code with a six-character code under it.
2. Open the Validate tab and tap Scan QR Code. The camera opens.
3. Point it at their screen. The deal comes up as ready to use.
4. Confirm. The claim is marked used and cannot be reused.

It takes a few seconds and needs no hardware beyond the phone or tablet already on your counter. Scanning is the primary action because it is what the customer's screen shows first, and because a camera cannot misread characters that are easy to confuse by eye.

Note the direction of it: the customer claims a deal in their app and gets a code. You redeem that code at the counter. Nothing is charged to them either way.

Type the six characters into the field on the same screen and confirm. The result is identical. Dim screens, cracked glass and awkward angles are the usual reasons a scan will not catch, and typing six characters takes a couple of seconds.

Already Used means that claim has been redeemed. Each claim is good for one redemption, so a code that has been through the counter once, or a screenshot of it passed to a friend, will not go through again.

Expired or Released means the claim lapsed before they got to you. A claim holds for 60 minutes by default. If the beam is still running, ask them to claim it again on the spot and scan the new code.

Yes. Set the start time and it goes live on its own, which is how most businesses use it: set up the quiet-Tuesday beam on Monday and leave it. You can edit a scheduled beam before it starts, though the fields that determine the price lock once it is paid for.

Yes. You connect your Google Business Profile so we can confirm the business is real and that you are the one running it. It protects customers from claimed offers at places that do not exist, and it pulls in your address and details so you are not typing them twice.

1. A verified business profile.
2. An offer you are comfortable honouring at the counter.
3. Credits, or a card, to cover the beam.
4. Your referral QR code printed and on the counter.