by Ben Dwyer Booker offers cloud-based spa management software for a variety of health and beauty businesses and bills itself as an all-in-one solution.
Booker states that more than 11,000 businesses utilize its software, and has offices in New York, California, Pennsylvania, and Arizona to better serve customers. In this Booker review, we’ll go over the popular features, include pricing details, and check out what customers are saying.
In 2018, Booker was purchased by popular health and fitness software company Mindbody. A separate Booker website still exists, with the logo noting that it’s called Booker by Mindbody.
Booker Features
Booker offers a number of features designed to make running a spa or salon easier. You can take advantage of booking options, integrated payments, customer management, and business management, as well as an optional customer-facing app.
Booking Options
A customizable booking page lets your customers book through your website using a “Book Now” button or through your Facebook page. Clients can see the open time slots, view descriptions of services, and more.
On your side, you can view a calendar of appointments by time slot or by staff member, see which time slots are still open, and manage staff, rooms, and equipment to make sure you’re prepared for all client appointments.
Integrated Payments
Booker offers the ability to accept payments in person with point-of-sale equipment or through your website. You’ll be able to accept cash, gift certificates, and credit cards if you opt for credit card processing at an additional cost. You can even choose to accept payments on smartphones or tablets, capture signatures right on screen, and send receipts to your customers by email.
If your customers prefer paying via PayPal, you can enable PayPal acceptance both in-store and online.
The Booker gift certificate program lets you provide personalized gift cards with your business’s logo.
Customer Management
The integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system allows you to easily create customer profiles tracking visits, total sales, appointment history, customer preferences, marketing campaign effectiveness, and more.
Business Management
Booker includes employee scheduling software that syncs with your calendar and can provide shift reminders to your employees.
If you sell products, like hair care items or home tanning supplies, you can use the inventory management system to track inventory, identify purchasing trends, and keep track of purchase orders for restocking.
Additionally, Booker provides robust reporting on daily sales, customer trends, labor/payroll, and more.
Optional App
A customer app lets your customers see your schedule, book appointments, view a map of your business location, check out your social media pages, and more. The customer app is an add-on feature with an additional cost of $30/month.
Marketing and Loyalty
Booker also offers a loyalty program option through partner Frederick that works with your appointment system to help encourage repeat business. You can set up email and text campaigns to promote specials or last minute deals.
You can also send customized emails based on your customers’ purchase history or appointment history or request feedback through a customer survey.
Booker Pricing
Booker offers a choice of 4 plans, with optional add-ons.
The Starter plan costs $129/month and includes features like online booking and point-of-sale payments. The Accelerate package costs $269/month and includes the Basic package features plus customizable email templates and unlimited text reminders.
The Ultimate plan costs $429/month and provides additional features like prompting customers for reviews and incentivizing referrals from existing customers.
The Ultimate Plus plan costs $549/month and provides the most features – all the ones that have been discussed already, plus a branded AI assistant and real-time business dashboards.
Optional add-ons cost extra. The customer app adds an additional $30/month.
Booker mentions that month-to-month contracts may be available. Costs for month-to-month contracts may be different than published pricing.
Credit Card Processing with Booker
In the past, Booker published compatibility with multiple credit card processors, giving you the ability to secure lower costs than if the company required a specific processor. Currently, the Booker by Mindbody site provides little information on processing beyond saying that it’s integrated.
Integrating credit card processing with Booker means that you’ll be able to take payments and automatically update inventory.
As Booker is not the credit card processor itself, the company doesn’t set your rates and fees for processing. The Mindbody website lists starting processing rates of 2.75% for Mindbody customers using integrated processing. Note that these rates may be different than what’s available through Booker, even though Mindbody owns Booker.
If you’d like to see pricing for processing credit cards, try CardFellow’s free quote comparison tool.
Booker Reviews
In the past, Booker included a section for customer testimonials on its site, where reviewers praised the simplicity of an all-in-one system – the integrated credit card processing and the ability to allow customers to purchase products online. Currently, the company offers success story case studies.
Booker has a Better Business Bureau profile, but is not currently accredited. (Businesses are not obligated to seek BBB accreditation to have a profile.) Booker currently has an B- rating, with one negative review and two formal customer complaints in the past 3 years.
The negative review states that the reviewer was told that Booker software would be able to assist with tax prep when it was not. The reviewer claims that they immediately cancelled upon learning the software couldn’t handle tax preparation, but that Booker didn’t cancel. Instead, Booker charged the customer and the customer requested a refund.
The formal complaints allege that customers had difficulty cancelling service and that fees were charged despite cancelling. One complaint references relentless sales calls.
Booker doesn’t have readily available reviews on other review platforms, including Yelp, Google Reviews, or Ripoff Report.
Have you used Booker.com for your salon or spa? What did you think? Let us know in the comments section, below!
I have had a Drybar account for 5 years. Last week I signed up an account with a Spa called YaYaFoot Spa.. Now all my Dry Bar email confirmations come from the YaYa Foot Spa email address! I called Booker, they couldn’t even understand the problem.
Be cautious about using anything “Booker.com” They have indicated in writing that they don’t know how to provide us with a copy of our data – even tho the Terms of the Agreement clearly state that we own our data and are allowed to have it 24/7.