Most massage therapists are a business of one. That changes which features matter — and it means the honest recommendation is not always the most expensive plan.
You are the practitioner, the receptionist, the marketing department and the person who cleans the room. Every minute you spend playing phone tag about Thursday at two is a minute you are not on the table earning. The whole point of booking software, for a solo LMT, is to get the admin out of the hours you could be billing.
If you work alone, the free plan is a real plan, not a trap — it allows one user and unlimited appointments. But be clear about what it does not include, because for a massage practice two of these matter enormously:
| Free ($0) | Pro ($7/user/mo, billed yearly) | |
|---|---|---|
| Appointments | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Users | 1 — hard cap | Unlimited |
| Email confirmations | Yes | Yes |
| Two-way calendar sync | No | Yes (Google, Outlook, Exchange, iCloud) |
| SMS reminders | No | Yes |
| Card payment at booking | No | Yes (Stripe, Authorize.net) |
No calendar sync means your personal life is invisible to your booking page, and sooner or later somebody books you during your own dentist appointment. No card at booking means no deposit, and no deposit means the no-show is free for the client. For a solo practice, those two are worth $7 a month several times over — a single saved 60-minute session pays for the year.
You have a fixed number of hours in which a body can be on your table. A missed 90-minute deep tissue at 2pm is not “a small loss” — it is a fifth of your day, and you cannot fill it at ninety minutes’ notice. Two things reduce it:
A 60-minute massage is not a 60-minute appointment. It is intake and undressing, the hands-on hour, redressing, notes, payment, fresh linens, and airing the room. Book it as 60 minutes and you will be running twenty minutes late by lunchtime, every day, forever — and the client at 4pm can tell that you are rushing. Set the service duration to the whole thing, or add explicit buffer after each appointment. This is the single most common setup mistake in massage.
You need to know about the pregnancy, the recent surgery, the blood thinners and the site of the injury before the client is face down on the table. Send the intake form with the confirmation email so it comes back read and considered rather than scrawled in a waiting room.
One thing to be precise about: if you are handling protected health information, HIPAA support is on the Pro+ plan ($11/user/mo). It is not on Free and not on Pro. A great many massage practices do not require it; a clinical or medical-massage practice billing through a healthcare provider almost certainly does. Do not guess — and do not assume the $7 plan covers you, because it does not.
The moment you take on a second therapist, the free plan ends — it is capped at one user. Pro is $7 per person per month billed yearly, each therapist connects their own calendar, and Bookafy’s skill-based routing sends a prenatal or sports booking only to the people qualified to take it. What it still will not do is stop two therapists from booking the same treatment room. If rooms are your bottleneck rather than hands, you need software that books resources, and Bookafy is not it.
It works, but it is missing the two features that matter most: two-way calendar sync and card payments. Without sync your personal calendar is invisible to your booking page, and without a card you cannot take a deposit against no-shows. Pro is $7 per user per month billed yearly, which one saved session pays for.
HIPAA support is on the Pro+ plan at $11 per user per month. It is not included on Free or Pro. A clinical or medical-massage practice handling protected health information should be on Pro+.
Send an SMS reminder 24 hours ahead (Pro plan) and take a card at booking. State the cancellation policy in plain words on the booking page and enforce it the first time, or it will be ignored.
Yes. Set the service duration to cover intake, the hands-on time, notes, payment and resetting the room – or add buffer after each appointment. Booking a 60-minute massage as exactly 60 minutes is why most therapists run late by lunchtime.
No. Bookafy is not an EHR. It does no clinical charting, no SOAP notes, no CPT codes and no insurance billing. It handles booking, reminders and payment.
Try it on your own calendar. Bookafy is free for one user with unlimited appointments, and Pro is $7 per user per month billed yearly.
If you are still working out which tool you need, start with the overview: appointment scheduling software — what it does, what it costs, and when you should buy something else.
Also useful: every Bookafy integration, in three honest lists — what is native, what needs Zapier, and what we simply do not do. And the pricing page, where the feature matrix is the real answer to “is that on the free plan”.
