“Appointment” and “reservation” get used as if they’re the same word, and they aren’t. An appointment books a person’s time. A reservation books a thing — a table, a room, a court, a kayak, a meeting space. Systems built for one are usually bad at the other, and picking the wrong one is the single most expensive mistake in this category. So before anything else: Bookafy schedules people, not resources.
| Appointment system | Reservation system | |
|---|---|---|
| What’s being booked | A person’s time | A finite thing: table, room, court, boat, seat |
| The scarce resource | Staff hours | Inventory — and it has to be counted |
| Typical buyer | Clinic, salon, consultant, agency, sales team | Restaurant, hotel, co-working space, tour operator |
| Needs a party size | Rarely | Almost always |
| Needs a waitlist | Sometimes | Yes — it’s core |
These are the four things people most often hope we’ll have, and we don’t. If two or more of them are non-negotiable for you, stop reading and buy a reservation platform — you’ll be much happier, and it costs less to find that out now than in month four.
Plenty of businesses think they need a reservation system and actually need appointment scheduling. The giveaway is that their “resource” and their “staff member” are the same thing.
Three businesses that search “reservation system” and should buy appointment scheduling
A tattoo studio. Four artists, four chairs. The chair is never the constraint — the artist is. Each artist gets their own availability, their own services with their own durations, and takes their own deposit through Stripe at the point of booking. That’s appointment scheduling, not reservations.
A driving instructor with three cars and three instructors. Same thing: the car belongs to the instructor. Book the instructor and the car comes with them.
A law firm booking consultations. A “meeting room reservation” is what it looks like; a partner’s hour is what’s actually scarce. Route the enquiry to the right partner by skill, or round-robin the intake calls across the juniors.
The moment the room, chair or vehicle can be used by someone other than the person who’s booked — you have a real inventory problem, and you need a real reservation system.
Pricing: Free is $0 for one user, unlimited appointments, email notifications. Pro is $7 per user per month billed yearly. Pro+ is $11 and adds HIPAA, a second SMS reminder and the custom API. The trial is 7 days of Pro+ with no card.
An appointment system books a person’s time — a consultant, a therapist, a barber. A reservation system books a finite physical thing — a table, a room, a court, a vehicle — and has to track how many of them are left. Bookafy is an appointment system: it schedules staff availability and does not hold an inventory of rooms or equipment.
No. Bookafy has no room or resource booking. It schedules people, so if you have more staff than rooms it will book them all at the same time without warning you. A business whose real constraint is rooms should buy a resource-booking tool.
No. When a time slot is taken it disappears from the booking page. There is no queue and no automatic promotion when someone cancels.
Yes, through Stripe, at the moment the booking is made. Payment is taken up front; Bookafy does not store a card to charge later if someone fails to show up.
You should not. A restaurant books tables with a party size, needs a waitlist, and needs to know how many covers are left at 7pm. Bookafy does none of those. Use a restaurant reservation platform.
Related: Appointment scheduling software · Group event scheduling · Class booking · Booking with payments · Pricing
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