What Shipmate actually does.

What Shipmate is

A smart inbox built specifically for fishing charter captains. We sit between your incoming customer messages (Instagram DMs first, WhatsApp / SMS / email coming) and your booking flow. Every message gets a draft reply within seconds, in the customer's language, in your voice. You approve, edit, or skip. The reply goes out only if you say so.

Shipmate is not a chatbot, not a booking platform, not a CRM, not a marketplace. We work for the captain. We never take a cut of your bookings.

How Shipmate learns your voice

When you first connect Instagram, Shipmate pulls in your recent customer conversations and classifies them. Booking inquiries become voice samples. Friends, other captains, and spam get filtered out. You review the classification in one screen and flip anything we got wrong.

Then a short setup wizard asks the questions Shipmate couldn't answer from your past replies. What's your half-day price. What's your full-day price. What gear you supply. What your kid policy is. What time you leave. The answers become structured facts Shipmate uses when drafting.

You choose how closely Shipmate matches your voice. Most captains pick “slightly more polished than my usual replies.” Some pick exact match. Some pick significantly more thoughtful, especially if their typing style runs short.

What happens when a customer messages you

A customer DMs you on Instagram. Shipmate sees the message within seconds. It reads what they said, checks the conversation history, pulls the relevant facts from your setup, and drafts a reply that sounds like you.

The draft lands in your Shipmate inbox, marked “ready to send.” You open the app on your phone, see the customer's message and the proposed reply side by side. Three actions: send as-is, edit then send, or skip and handle later.

If the customer wrote in Spanish, Russian, German, or Arabic, Shipmate replies in their language. You see a translated English preview underneath so you understand the full exchange.

What Shipmate never does

Shipmate never auto-sends a message on your behalf. Every outbound reply is approved by you, one at a time. We never decide for you.

Shipmate never makes up facts. If a customer asks something specific and Shipmate doesn't know the answer (what rods you use, whether you fish a specific spot, what you're running this week), the draft is flagged for manual answer. You write the answer once. Shipmate remembers it for next time.

Shipmate never shares your customer messages with other captains. Your voice samples and customer threads stay scoped to your account. We don't train shared models on your data.

Setup, end to end

1. 1.

   Sign in to Shipmate with your email. We send you a magic link. Tap it on your phone.

2. 2.

   Connect Instagram. You'll need a Business or Creator account linked to a Facebook Page. If it's not set up that way, we walk you through the conversion in about three minutes.

3. 3.

   Shipmate imports your recent DMs and classifies them. Review the classifications, flip anything we miscalled.

4. 4.

   Answer a short setup wizard. Pricing, departures, gear, policies. About ten minutes of questions, on your phone.

5. 5.

   Pick your voice calibration (match exactly, slightly polished, more thoughtful). Add a booking link. Done.

6. 6.

   Drafts start showing up in your Shipmate inbox the moment a new customer DM arrives. Approve, edit, or skip. You decide when each one sends.

What we cover, what stays manual

Shipmate covers text messages and image messages. If a customer sends a voice note, we transcribe it and draft a reply. If they send a photo of a previous catch or their family, Shipmate reads the image and incorporates it. If they send a video, we flag it for you to handle manually, since video context is harder to get right.

If a customer asks something specific we don't have a durable answer for, we flag it. You answer once, manually, and we save the answer to your knowledge so it's handled automatically next time.

Multi-language

Shipmate handles English, Spanish, Russian, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Arabic from day one. Customer writes in their language, Shipmate replies in their language, you see an English preview so you always know what's being said.

Multi-boat operations

Each boat is its own Shipmate subscription. One captain or booking manager can run multiple boats from a single login, with separate inboxes per boat. Pricing scales linearly: $49.99 per boat per month. No volume discounts in v1, though that's on the roadmap.

Notifications

Shipmate emails you a digest when there are drafts waiting. You set the cadence: every 30 minutes, every two hours, once a day, or off. Most captains pick every two hours.

Push notifications and SMS alerts are on the roadmap but not in v1.

Pricing

$49.99 per boat per month. 30-day free trial. Card required at signup, charged on day 31. Cancel anytime during the trial with no charge. Cancel anytime after the trial; the subscription stops at the end of the current month.

See the pricing section for the full breakdown.

What's coming next

WhatsApp, SMS, and email channels. Facilitated bookings and payment processing (so captains without a booking tool can take deposits and full payments through Shipmate, with the captain settling in their own currency). Push notifications. Native iOS and Android apps. Calendar integration. Multi-language expansion. Booking platform integrations (FareHarbor, CaptainBook, Reservety).

Still have a question?

Email miles@shipmate.chat and Miles will reply. He fishes too. He built this because he watched a captain in Dubai answer DMs at 11pm with his thumb cramping. He'll be honest about what Shipmate does and doesn't do.