Why we built a booking platform that takes 0% commission

When we started building Bookatu, we talked to a lot of salon, spa, studio and clinic owners. Different trades, different countries, but the same quiet complaint kept coming up. Their booking software took a cut of their own success. The harder they worked, the more it cost them. That did not sit right with us, so we built the opposite.

The model we did not want to build

The big marketplaces are clever. They are free to join, which feels generous, and then they earn from the relationship you bring them. New-client fees, a slice of each payment, and ads that put a rival in front of your own regulars at the very moment they go to book. The platform grows by sitting between you and your client.

The deepest problem is the shape of it. When a platform earns a percentage of every booking, your software bill climbs in lockstep with your takings. A great month quietly costs you more. Growth turns into a tax. We wrote about the maths of this in Why 0% booking commission matters for your margins, and the numbers are worse than they first look.

What 0% commission actually means

Bookatu takes no commission on your bookings. When a client books and pays, the service revenue is yours, in full. It does not matter whether the booking came through your own link or through the Discovery network where local businesses are listed. There is no per-booking fee waiting in the background, ever.

• No cut is taken from any booking, so the full service price stays with you.
• Money from deposits and sales goes into your own account, not a platform wallet (see Getting paid and payouts).
• A busy month rewards you, instead of quietly costing you more.

So how do we keep the lights on

We charge a simple subscription instead. It is based on how many active clients you have, not on how many staff you add or which features you switch on. Every feature is on every plan. That keeps the cost predictable and tied to the size of your business rather than to how hard you worked in a given week. You can see what each plan covers on the pricing page.

This is a deliberate choice about incentives. Because we do not earn from your bookings, we have no reason to insert ourselves into your client relationships. The only way we succeed is if the software is good enough that you choose to stay. Our interests and yours point in the same direction.

The promise underneath it

Zero commission is really one part of a bigger idea. Your clients are yours, your money is yours, and your data is yours. We dig into the first of those in Your clients are yours, and into the second in Getting paid your way. If you ever decide to leave, you can export everything and walk out the door with your client list in hand (see Exporting your data).

If a tool that backs your independence rather than taxing it sounds like the way it should have always been, you can start free and try the whole thing for yourself. Have a look at the pricing page to see how the plans work, with no commission on a single booking.