Features
A free booking site, with the costs on the table.
The Free plan is a booking site for classes and appointments with no monthly fee, no card to sign up and no trial that runs out. When clients pay by card, we collect the payment for a commission on each one – and this page sets out that commission, the limits, and the point where a paid plan costs you less.
What the free plan includes
Your booking site
A site at yourname.bookbooknow.com, live as soon as you sign up, with a page for each service and each class date. All five design templates and their four styles, with a live preview.
Classes and events
Set a weekly class once and its dates keep being added ahead of time – 10 weeks ahead by default, anywhere from 1 to 52 – with one-off workshops alongside. Each session has a capacity, shows as sold out when full, and can be booked for several people at once.
Appointments
Clients pick a time from your weekly hours, with the buffers, minimum notice and days off you set.
Booking forms
Ask health, experience or intake questions as people book. The answers stay with the booking and in your CSV export.
Emails and self-service changes
Confirmations with calendar links, one or two reminders at times you choose, and a link that lets clients cancel, or move a booking up to the cut-off you set, with refunds following your policy.
The admin work
Add bookings for walk-ins and phone calls, keep a client list with private notes, export or anonymise client data for UK GDPR requests, and protect your login with two-step sign-in.
The limits, straight from the plan
- 5 services and classes. A service is one thing people book, such as a weekly class, however many dates it runs on.
- 1 admin login. One person runs the site. Team logins with roles: On Studio and Pro
- 300 emails a month. Every email we send for your site counts: confirmations, reminders, changes and, if you choose to get them, the emails to you about each new booking. A booking with one reminder and a new-booking email to you uses three, so the allowance covers about 100 bookings a month. Once it is used, emails stop until the next month, though bookings still come in.
Not on Free: payments into your own Stripe account, your own domain, QR codes on tickets and check-in at the door, waitlists, discount codes and early-bird prices, client login, the embeddable timetable, reports and client import. Each comes with a paid plan, and the pricing page shows which. Your site also carries a small BookBookNow credit in its footer, and emails arrive from your studio name "via BookBookNow".
Card payments on the free plan cost a commission
You do not need a Stripe account. Clients pay the full price by card when they book, BookBookNow collects it, and on the Free plan there is no monthly fee; card payments we collect cost 6.5% + 20p* each. Free places cost nothing to take.
- The commission includes Stripe's fee for a standard UK card. Dearer cards add Stripe's extra fee at cost, shown against the payment.
- The commission is the amount you pay: tax is not added on top, and you get a VAT invoice for it each month.
- Payouts are not automatic: you ask for one and we send the transfer.
- Collected payments work for studios charging in GBP, USD or EUR.
When a paid plan costs you less
The commission is lower on each paid plan, so past a certain number of card bookings the plan fee pays for itself. Two made-up studios, both letting us collect their card payments, all on standard UK cards:
| Free | Starter | Studio | Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plan fee, paid monthly | None | £15.00 + tax | £29.00 + tax | £49.00 + tax |
| Commission* | £34.00 | £28.00 | £20.00 | £16.00 |
| Total, plan fee before tax | £34.00 | £43.00 | £49.00 | £65.00 |
| Total with UK VAT on the plan fee | £34.00 | £46.00 | £54.80 | £74.80 |
| Free | Starter | Studio | Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plan fee, paid monthly | None | £15.00 + tax | £29.00 + tax | £49.00 + tax |
| Commission* | £147.00 | £120.00 | £84.00 | £66.00 |
| Total, plan fee before tax | £147.00 | £135.00 | £113.00 | £115.00 |
| Total with UK VAT on the plan fee | £147.00 | £138.00 | £118.80 | £124.80 |
For a class priced at £10.00, each paid plan costs less than Free once you pass this many card bookings a month, before tax on the plan fee: Starter 100, Studio 82, Pro 108. Paying yearly lowers the plan fee, and on a paid plan you can connect your own Stripe account instead, where we take no commission and you pay Stripe's card fees directly. Past about 100 bookings a month the Free plan's 300 emails also run out before the month ends, so at 150 bookings its column shows the cost only: confirmations and reminders would stop partway through the month.
Made-up examples to show how the costs work, using the plans on sale today. They leave out refunds, dearer cards and currency conversion.
Is the free plan enough for you?
A good fit if
- You are starting out, or run a handful of classes or services
- You take a modest number of card payments, or many of your places are free
- You have no Stripe account and want to take cards from the first day
Not the right fit yet if
- You need more services, logins or emails than the plan allows
- You want payments to settle in your own Stripe account, or your own domain
- You rely on memberships, class packs, text-message reminders or staff calendars – no plan has those yet
Questions
Is the free booking system a trial that ends?
No. The Free plan has no trial period and no card on file, so there is nothing to cancel before a date. The 14-day free trials belong to the paid plans, which take a card at sign-up.
Can I get round the email allowance with my own mail server?
Only on Pro, where booking emails can go through your own mail server from your own address and do not count towards an allowance. On every other plan, Free included, emails go out from your studio name via BookBookNow and count towards the monthly allowance. Once it is used, skipped confirmations and notifications show in Admin → Logs, and reminders are held until the allowance resets, so any for bookings that start before then are not sent.
Can I use my own Stripe account on the free plan?
No. On the Free plan card payments are collected by BookBookNow for a commission. Connecting your own Stripe account, with no commission from us, comes with the paid plans.
How do I get the money from bookings paid on the free plan?
Payments build up as a balance in your admin, with a statement. New payments are held for 7 days, then you ask for a payout to a UK bank account or an IBAN and we send the transfer. Any bank transfer fee comes out of the payout.
Can I move from the free plan to a paid plan later?
Yes, from Admin → Billing, paying monthly or yearly. Your site, services, clients and bookings stay where they are. If you later move back to Free, the change waits until the end of the period you have paid for.
* The commission includes Stripe's fee for standard UK cards. Stripe charges more for some cards – about +1.3% for premium and business UK cards, +1% for European cards and +1.65% for other international cards, plus 2% when Stripe converts the payment from another currency – and we add that difference at cost, shown against each payment.
Start free today.
No card needed on the Free plan. Paid plans from £12.50 a month + tax, billed yearly (£150.00 + tax a year), or £15.00 a month + tax paid monthly, with a 14-day free trial.
Prices are in GBP, before tax. Tax is added at checkout for where your business is: UK businesses pay VAT at 20%, which a VAT-registered business can usually reclaim.