Service: booking systems
Custom booking systems for classes, events and venues
I build booking systems around how your business actually runs: classes, events, rooms or tables, booked and paid online, with a dashboard for the people who run them. Built by one person, front end to back end, and yours from day one.
When an off-the-shelf booking tool stops fitting
Tools like Calendly, Mindbody or Fresha are a good start. They get you taking bookings the same day. They stop fitting when your business has rules the tool was not built for:
- More than one kind of user, such as guests who book and instructors who rent your space.
- Your own pricing: packages, memberships, different prices per class or per instructor.
- Monthly and per-booking fees that keep growing with your business.
- Customers booking on someone else's page instead of your own website.
What a booking system can include
- A public schedule of classes, events, rooms or tables, with filters and a date picker.
- Online payment as part of the booking.
- Capacity and rules: how many places, when booking closes, what can be cancelled.
- A dashboard for your team to add classes and events and see every booking.
- A CRM: each customer's details and booking history in one place.
- Separate dashboards for partners, such as instructors who rent your space and manage their own guests.
You choose what you need; the price follows from that.
Built for Savant, Dubai
Savant is a multipurpose event space in Al Quoz, Dubai. Guests browse its classes and events, filter by class type and instructor, and book and pay online. The instructors who rent the space run their classes from a CRM dashboard built for them, with their bookings and their guests in one place. I built all of it alone, front end to back end. Read the case study.
Payments, and the small things that bite
Bookings and money are the same job. Savant takes payment through Stripe, with N-Genius from Network International as a second option, because some Gulf cards and banks prefer it. Prices are stored as whole numbers in fils, so a platform that splits money between a venue and its instructors never drifts by a fraction. Seats are held while someone checks out and released automatically if they do not finish, so a class never looks full when it is not.
Custom or off the shelf?
| Booking tool subscription | Custom booking system | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | A subscription, often with fees per booking or per staff member | Hosting and optional care; no per-booking fees |
| Fits how you work | You work the way the tool works | Built around your rules, roles and pricing |
| Your brand | The tool’s look, with your logo | Your site, your design, one address |
| Your customer data | Stored in the tool’s system | In your own database, in your name |
| Cost to start | Low, and you can start today | From $5,000, plus time to build it |
If a subscription does everything you need, keep it; I will tell you so. A custom system pays off when the tool is costing you bookings, fees or hours every week. The full comparison, with a three-year cost example, is in custom booking system or booking software?
What it costs
Booking systems start at $5,000 (about AED 18,400). More features cost more, and you get a fixed price in writing before anything starts. What moves that number is broken down in how much a custom booking system costs. Care and maintenance after launch starts at $99 a month. For how this compares with the market, read the price guides for Lebanon and Dubai.
Questions people ask
How long does a booking system take to build?
Longer than a website, because there is more to build and test: the booking rules, payments, and the dashboard behind it. You get the timeline in writing together with the price, after we have talked through how your bookings work.
Can guests pay online when they book?
Yes. Payment is part of the booking, through a payment provider set up in your business’s name, so the money goes straight to you.
Can it replace the booking tool I use now?
Usually. If your current tool can export your customers and bookings, they can normally be brought across, so you do not start from zero. I look at what you have before I quote.
Do I own everything?
Yes. The code, the domain, the hosting, the databases, every account. All of it registered in your name from the start, never mine. If anyone ever tells you they need to set it up under their own account, walk away.