What Bookodile costs

Two things decide your bill: how many locations you run, and how many bookings you can take at the same time. Nothing else — not which features you use, not how much you charge, not how much you earn.

monthly cost = (base rate × locations) + (spot rate × active booking spots)

Both rates depend on the country your business is in. The exact figures, and a calculator, are on the pricing page — they live in one place on purpose so they cannot drift.

What a booking spot is

A booking spot is one appointment you can run at the same time as another. It is your bottleneck, not your headcount.

That distinction is the whole model, and it is worth getting right because it decides your bill:

• Three barbers with three chairs, all working at once → 3 spots.
• Five barbers sharing one chair → 1 spot, if you have told Bookodile the chair is a resource with capacity 1. The chair is the bottleneck.
• A spa with four therapists but only two treatment rooms → 2 spots, for the services that need a room.
• A solo coach → 1 spot.

The rule is simple: the price follows the setup you describe. If a scarce resource limits you, add it as a resource and your bill reflects it. Declaring an abundant resource costs nothing; leaving out a scarce one is the only mistake that costs you money, and you can fix it yourself.

One thing the count does not yet read: keeping a resource for a named person — the master barber's own chair — changes who can be booked where, but not what you pay. The meter counts people against resource units without asking who is kept for whom.

You pay only for spots that were actually used

A spot is billed for a month only if it held at least one booking that month. A chair nobody sat in costs nothing.

So a quiet month costs less than a busy one without you changing anything, and setting up capacity you might grow into does not start a bill.

The count starts again at zero every month. It follows the bookings, not your settings today: switching someone off part-way through a month does not remove the bookings they already have in that month, so their spot still counts for it. From the following month they stop counting, because they stop taking bookings.

Which month

Once you are paying, your month runs from the day you subscribed — subscribe on the 19th and every month runs the 19th to the 19th, and that is the window your spots are counted in. Your invoice arrives at the end of each of those months and covers the month that has just finished, so you are never charged ahead for spots you have not used yet. The invoice names the exact dates it covers.

On the free tier there is no subscription, so the 40-booking allowance runs on the calendar instead and starts again on the 1st.

A driving instructor who subscribes on the 6th is counted from the 6th to the 6th; a clinic that subscribes on the 28th is counted from the 28th to the 28th, and in a short month from the 28th to the last day, returning to the 28th afterwards.

Who is not a spot

Anyone who does not take bookings. Reception, an office manager, an owner who runs the business rather than serving customers — none of them are a spot, and none of them cost anything. Give them an account and a role that is not listed as a service provider.

The free tier

Free, permanently, while all three of these hold:

• 1 location
• 2 or fewer people who take bookings — anyone assigned to at least one service. Reception, an office manager, or anyone assigned to nothing is free and never counted. A self-serve space that customers book without a person — a court, a studio — counts as one each.
• 40 or fewer bookings a month

That is a real working business, not a trial: every feature and every add-on is included, exactly as on a paid account.

Go past any one of the three and the paid model above applies, with a 14-day trial available first rather than an immediate charge. The trial is one per account for the life of the account.

Only the booking count can be passed without you deciding to — your customers do it. A second location and a third booking spot are actions you take, and both are turned down with the way through shown, so you never find out you have outgrown the free plan after the fact.

What actually happens differs by limit, and only one of them can stop your customers booking:

• Bookings. The booking that passes 40 is accepted, and it starts your 14 free days by itself — nothing to click, no card. Pass 40 again in a later month once that fortnight has been used, and online booking stops until the 1st. Everything already booked stays exactly as it is.

• People who take bookings. Assigning the person who would take you past two is turned down, and you are shown the way through: start your 14 free days, or start the plan. You can always create the person — it is giving them a service that counts, because a service nobody is assigned to is performed by nobody. So reception, trainees and anyone waiting to start are free, and you can take somebody off a service to make room.

  On the paid plan this is not how you are billed. There you pay per booking spot — your bottleneck — so five staff sharing one chair are one spot. That model prices your bill; the free tier's limit counts people, because a limit has to be something an edit to a chair cannot move.

• Locations. Adding a second location is the one action the free plan turns down, because a location is billed from the day it exists whether or not it takes a booking. The locations you already have keep working.

When you are charged

Only after you start the plan yourself, from Settings → Billing. Nothing else starts it:

• Passing a free limit does not start it.
• The 14-day trial does not start it, and does not end in a charge.
• A card you save is never charged on its own. Saving a card stores it and nothing more — no plan begins, no money moves, and that stays true for as long as you leave it there. It only makes starting the plan one click instead of a checkout form.

So if you never press the button that starts the plan, you are never billed, however far past the free limits you go.

When online booking stops

One rule: you are outside a free limit and your 14 free days are gone. Everything already booked always stays; only new online bookings are affected, and your calendar, customers and history are untouched.

There are two ways to meet that rule:

• You pass 40 bookings in a month and your 14 free days are already used. Online booking stops until the 1st, when the count starts again — or until you start the plan, which reopens it immediately. If your 14 days are not used, the booking that passes 40 starts them by itself instead: nothing to click, no card, and the page stays open.
• Your 14 free days end while you are outside any free limit. The trial lifts every limit, so a business can build past them during it — five booking spots, a second location. When it ends, the setup as it is that day is measured: if more than two people take bookings (counting any room that is booked with nobody attending as one more), or there is more than one location, or it is over 40 bookings, online booking stops until the plan is started. Switching someone off, or a room, before the day brings you back inside.

This is why the trial is worth starting when you actually need it rather than to look around: it is once per account, and it is the only way to be over the free limits without having started the plan.

A card on file does not prevent either of these. It is not a subscription, so it changes nothing about what happens — starting the plan is the only thing that does.

Country bands

Rates are grouped into bands by country, so the same setup costs less in markets where it is worth less. Your country is set on your location.

If your country has not been recorded, you are billed at the lowest band. An unrecorded country is a gap in our data, and a gap should never cost you more.

A few countries cannot be chosen at all, because our payment provider cannot sell into them: China, Cuba, Iran, Kosovo, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. The full list of what falls outside the product is on What Bookodile does not do.

Paying yearly

Not available yet. Every plan is billed monthly, and checkout offers no annual option.

Currency

Where the euro is used, you pay Bookodile in euros. Everywhere else, in US dollars. The country of your organisation's first location decides, and the whole organisation pays in that one currency — every location, wherever it is, at its own country's band.

The euro countries are the 21 in the euro area, plus Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, the Vatican and Montenegro, and the EU territories that have their own country code (Réunion, Guadeloupe, Åland and the rest). Czechia, Poland and Hungary keep their own currencies, so businesses there pay in US dollars.

A euro price is a real price, not a conversion: the figure on the pricing page, in Settings → Billing and on your invoice is the same, to the cent — €8.20, never "about €8". Euro prices are always shown with cents. When a price changes, the new one is for new subscriptions; an existing subscription is never moved to a new price without notice.

In US dollars, what you pay is set and settled in dollars, and checkout may show the amount in your card's own currency.

Once a subscription has started, its currency stays what it was. A barbershop in Bratislava that opens a second location in Brno pays euros for Brno too, at Brno's rate; a physiotherapy practice whose first location is in Prague pays dollars for every location, including one it later opens in Vienna.

The prices your customers see for your services are a different thing. They use one currency per organisation, taken from your country when you sign up and fixed once money has moved, and every location of the organisation shows that currency.

A location in another country joins the same organisation when that country uses the same currency — a business in Bratislava can add a location in Vienna, and a gym in Berlin one in Lisbon. A location in a country with a different currency is set up as a separate business instead, so its customers see prices in their own currency: Bratislava and Brno are two businesses, each with its own subscription, under one sign-in.

SMS messages

SMS are the one thing billed by use, because each one costs money to send. The SMS messages add-on is free to switch on; SMS themselves need a paid plan and are billed monthly on its invoice, at a price per country, in your plan's currency — euros where you pay in euros, US dollars elsewhere — never more a month than your cap, which starts at your plan's monthly price and can be raised up to three times it. The price per SMS part for your country is shown in Settings → SMS messages.

What is never charged for

• No commission. Bookodile takes no percentage of anything you earn.
• No per-booking fee.
• No feature is behind a price. Every add-on is included at every level, including free. There is nothing to upgrade to.
• No charge for people who do not take bookings.
• No setup fee, and no minimum term.

Worked example

A hair salon with one location and three stylists, each with their own chair.

Three chairs in use means three spots, so the bill is one base rate plus three spot rates for their country's band. In a quiet August when one stylist takes no bookings at all, that month is billed at two spots.

They open a second location with two chairs. The bill becomes two base rates plus five spot rates.

They also hire a receptionist. The bill does not change.

Limits

• Quoted prices are before tax. Whatever applies where you trade is added at checkout.
• Spots are counted per location, then added up across your organisation.
• One currency for your prices per organisation, fixed once money has moved. A location in a country with another currency is a separate business.
• Bookodile bills in euros or US dollars, nothing else. A country with its own currency — Czechia, Poland, Hungary, the UK and the rest — pays in US dollars, which checkout may show in the card's own currency.
• The currency you pay Bookodile in does not change once a subscription has started, even if the first location moves to another country.
• Bookodile does not process your customers' payments, so none of this relates to how your customers pay you — see Money.