Booker is a leading appointment scheduling, point-of-sale, and business management software that powers thousands of spas and salons worldwide. The software includes a complete suite of management tools, and provides integrated online booking, marketing, and more. Booker is completely web-based, which makes it available from any computer with a browser and internet connection, anywhere at any time. It can also be used via a smartphone or iPad.
$129
per month
JRNI
Score 3.0 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
JRNI is an enterprise SaaS scheduling platform for personalizing and optimizing the customer journey. JRNI is based on the former BookingBug (rebranded in 2019).
$19.95
per month
Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Acuity Scheduling is an appointment management platform developed by the company of the same name in New York and acquired by Squarespace in 2019.
$14
per month
Pricing
Booker
JRNI
Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
Editions & Modules
Starter
$129
per month
Accelerate
$269
per month
Ultimate
$429
per month
No answers on this topic
Emerging
$14
per month
Growing
$23
per month
Powerhouse
$45
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Booker
JRNI
Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
Free Trial
No
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
$250
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
Pricing is available in 4 levels and is available by contacting jrni.com.
Overall, the cost, ease of use, and setup were all above average with Acuity. I tried many different programs (some not listed as a comparison) but I was very happy with Acuity and am glad we stuck with it.
Booker is very user friendly with videos to help our staff who are setting up schedules. It has very robust features that our school district didn't really need when we piloted it. It has a great option for widgets to be added to websites, whether district or school site. We find that the more widgets are available, the more appreciative our parents are. This is definitely a product that is used in the business world and not in the school district world so it doesn't really have the personalization we need as a school district or a school sites. Should the site change its potential customers, it would be a great fit for us because scheduling is very challenging in a large school district, be it at the district level or at individual school sites
If at any time you have a problem, they will be there to help you, and because the software is simple to use and you can rapidly become accustomed to it, I would strongly recommend it. The software helps a great deal with your requirements, and it keeps getting better over time. They provide excellent enterprise support and are able to construct extremely customized systems in response to customer requirements.
I think any business can benefit from Acuity Scheduling. In my experience, however, and maybe I just haven’t found the correct settings yet, it’s been difficult to manage 4 business schedules with multiple employees and varying hours that change day-to-day and week-to-week. So I definitely would recommend it to more simple business models with set hours, as it seems like it would have all the functions one might need. I still would recommend to more complex businesses like mine as well, but also include discussion of some of the potential drawbacks.
Booker does very well as a point of sale program. From front desk check out to back end report generation, Booker gives us an accurate daily picture of business activity.
Booker is very good at tracking gift certificate activity. We have a large number of gift certificates and are able to find, edit and void with ease. We are also able to look at the history for each individual certificate or series which helps in troubleshooting.
I do not work with scheduling myself but staffers have found Booker to be a valuable tool for managing rooms and therapists.
The service team at Booking Bug has always been swift and professional in dealing with our queries, and our configuration and use of Booking Bug has become more efficient as a result of the team's assistance.
Booking Bug's system of notifications, by way of confirmation emails and booking reminders, are incredibly useful for both clients and staff. Clients arrive 'prepped' with everything that they need to know/bring, and are able to easily amend/cancel appointments where previously they might have failed to attend (without notifying our clinics).
The configuration process is very simple, and allowed us to specify complicated requirements for individual clinics. We have a range of different services, and Booking Bug easily accommodated these.
Clicking on the link opens up my calendar, which has an uncluttered look, making it easy for my prospects and clients to review their options and make their choice.
I am able to customize my schedule, the types of appointments I want to offer, and even decide how many appointments I want in a day. There are so many details that I can customize.
I can customize how my calendar and emails look for my prospects and clients so that I come across professional and coordinated. I want the look of my business, website, etc. to have a polished, cohesive, and interesting presence.
I love that there is a workshop/class/series option for my workshops. My attendees reserve their place and pay upfront. I can duplicate these events or add future dates. It's wonderful. This saves us a lot of time and is so convenient.
I haven't had any trouble with my scheduler. It works flawlessly, so I don't have to take time out of my day to fix, troubleshoot or call customer service.
I love that I can add questions for my prospects to answer right away before booking a call. This means 3 fewer steps for me. 1. They answer these questions without an email from me. 2. They make their reservation and get a follow-up email, right away. 3. I customized the follow-up email with more details and actions to take to prepare for our call.
Quite a few of our clients book several places per course date in one go. Their feedback is that they don't see anywhere where they can write the names of the course attendees. It's quite usual where the one who books the courses in Bookingbug is not the one attending the course. I would like to see this improved so that it's clear where the client can input the attendees' names.
Booking Bug meets the requirements of our business, and allows us greater time to do what we do best - dealing with clients and providing phenomenal service. Why would we change, when Booking Bug adapts so well to our needs, and their support team assist us so efficiently?!
Acuity Scheduling has been very reliable. If you don't believe me, check out their status page here. They do a pretty decent job maintaining their app. To be fair, it's a pretty simple tool so they shouldn't run into too many hiccups given it doesn't feature near as many options as other applications on the market run.
It gets the job done but is overly detailed and has many steps to do a simple task. Reports are continuously being archived and discontinued. As soon as I get used to one it is no longer available
It is very easy to use once you get to know the program but with years of working with the program I am still finding new things that I had wished I knew about earlier. I feel like aspects of the website become hidden that would help productivity a lot if I knew they existed beforehand.
Booker is not always that quick to respond however, I will say, they do research the problem before getting back to you which I do like. Overall, they are kind and helpful in their responses. Though one big concern is that when there is a larger issue, they are not the best at circling back and contacting us to let us know if or how it has been resolved.
Every time I had a question on how to do something or had any issues with Acuity Scheduling, mainly in the very beginning, when I was learning the platform, customer service was excellent. They were prompt to respond, friendly, and very helpful until I had the right solution.
When we tried Micros, though it has robust hardware and software, It is not meant for salons. Square again the same thing, it is meant for small non salon and non service oriented businesses. Booker is by far the best of all salon softwares we have used.
In the case of Schedulicity, the system was awesome (very easy to set up and had some nice features) but did not offer the functionality and flexibility that AcuityScheduling does. In the case of SimplyBook.me, they offer lots of functionality but the interface is extremely complex and you pay a la carte for features so you're going to pay exponentially more for the same set of features as compared to AcuityScheduling. Their customer service was also lacking, in my opinion.
It's the only system I've come across where courses can be added very easily. If I had 10 courses to begin with, and suddenly I needed to set up 100 or more, I can do this in a very short period of time. All redundant steps have been eliminated by the clever design.
Notifications are a great way that communicates to the customer their appointment confirmation, and appointment reminders.
Increased employee / staff communication, they can now log in and see their schedules.
Entering credit card at time of appointment reservation is helpful to us since we have a cancellation policy and keeps the client accountable if they are a no show or cancel last minute.
