Booking system: off-the-shelf or bespoke

A ready-made booking system is almost always sufficient, and it’s cheaper than anyone claims. A bespoke solution is worth it in three situations, and these are easy to spot in advance. This article explains what the monthly cost of a ready-made system actually consists of — the monthly fee is often only a small part of it — and when it’s worth building your own.

The monthly fee is not the price

Appointment booking systems are usually compared on the basis of a monthly fee. This is misleading, as the fee typically consists of four parts, and only the first one is shown in the price list.

Expense item	How is it billed?	When will it surprise you?
Monthly fee	Fixed	Never — this is what you see
Subscription fee	Per employee	When you hire another designer
Text messages	Per message sent	When reminders are enabled and there are lots of bookings
Marketplace commission	Percentage of the booking value	When a customer finds you via the service’s own search function

The latter two factors determine the actual cost for a small business. A text message reminder costs a few cents, but a hundred bookings a month means a hundred messages — and if two reminders are sent per booking, that’s two hundred. Marketplace commission, on the other hand, increases precisely when the service is performing well.

One price has been verified: Calendly costs $10 per user per month, or $8.30 when billed annually. The free version includes one event type and one calendar integration — meaning it’s sufficient for booking one service, but not several.

Four questions that reveal the true cost

Ask every supplier for these in the same format. Only then will the prices be comparable.

• What’s the cost with two staff members? Some providers charge on a per-user basis, others do not. The difference amounts to hundreds of euros a year.
• How much does a text message cost, and how many are sent per booking? The confirmation and reminder are two messages, not one.
• Does the service charge a commission on bookings? And if so, does this apply to all bookings or only those made via the service’s own search function?
• Will I get the customer database back if I cancel my subscription? This isn’t a question about price, but it will be more expensive than any of the previous options if the answer is no.

Use the answers to calculate the monthly price based on your own booking volume. That’s the only figure that matters — the starting prices in the price lists aren’t comparable with one another.

When is ‘ready’ good enough?

Almost always. To be specific: if ‘booking’ means a customer selecting a service, a provider and a time, a ready-made system does this better and more cheaply than any bespoke solution. It’s a solved problem, and there are dozens of products that work well for this.

We sell bespoke solutions, so it’s not really fair to say that. Still, that’s what we say on the phone: try the ready-made solution first. A month’s use of a ready-made system tells us more about your needs than two hours of specification meetings.

Three situations where ‘ready-made’ isn’t enough

1. The thing you need to book isn’t time

Ready-made systems book time slots from a calendar. If you’re booking items — holiday homes, boats, aircraft, meeting rooms — the logic is different: the same day may be available for one item and booked for another, and the price often depends on the season and duration.

You could stretch this to mean ‘time allocation’, but the end result is a system that nobody understands.

2. The booking is linked to something else

If a booking is to generate an invoice in the invoicing software, a work order in the system or a stock reservation, a workflow must be set up. A ready-made system handles the booking but not the workflow — and manual data entry is a source of errors every single day.

Please note: this does not necessarily mean a bespoke system. Often, the right solution is a ready-made package plus integration, which costs a fraction of what it would cost to build your own.

3. There are more than two rules

For example: a particular service can only be booked with a specific provider; a cleaning break is required between two bookings; the first visit takes longer than subsequent ones; and on certain days, only existing customers are accepted.

One or two rules like this can be handled via the settings of a ready-made system. Five cannot, and so they have to be dealt with manually — which negates the whole point of the system.

How much does a bespoke design cost?

We do not quote a price until we know what is to be built, as the prices of booking systems can vary significantly depending on the number of rules and integrations they contain.

That’s why the work begins with a specification: €490 (0% VAT). This involves going through the requirements, integrations and whether the finished product will actually be sufficient. The end result is a fixed price and a schedule — and the cost of the requirements specification is fully credited if the work is commissioned.

The specification quite often ends with the recommendation: “Take a ready-made system and carry out a single integration with it.” It’s the cheapest option, and yet it’s the one we recommend.

In demand

Can the booking system be integrated into the existing website?

Almost all ready-made systems offer either an embedded form or a button that takes you to a booking page. The embedded form looks nicer but is slower: it loads third-party code onto your page. If your website’s speed is a selling point, a button linking to a separate booking page is often a better compromise than embedding the booking form on the homepage.

What about data protection — is customer data sent to a third-party service?

That’s fine; it’s standard practice and not a problem in itself. However, there are two things that need to be sorted out: the service must be listed in your privacy policy, and you must have a data processing agreement in place between you. If the booking involves health data, the requirements are stricter, and it’s worth checking them before you make your choice, not afterwards.

How long does it take to build a bespoke website?

Specification takes a week, after which the duration depends on the number of rules and integrations. A simple booking system without integrations takes weeks, not months. If someone promises a timeline before the specification phase, they are just guessing.

Can I switch to my own website later on?

Oh, and that’s often the most sensible approach: a ready-made solution tells you exactly what you need within a year, and your own site is then built on the basis of facts rather than guesswork. Just make sure right at the start that you can extract customer and booking data — that’s the one thing that makes the migration impossible if it’s overlooked.