Online restaurant reservation system, what to compare before you sign

Every reservation system shows you a board and a booking widget, so the demo rarely settles anything. The differences that matter appear on the invoice, in who owns the guest list, and on the day you open a second site. Those are the three to compare.

What the fee follows, and what happens when you are busy

There are three common shapes. A marketplace charges a monthly fee plus an amount for every guest it seats. A vertical system charges per location and stays in one category. A flat per-venue subscription charges for the venue and nothing else.

The question to ask is simple: what does a very good month cost. On a per-cover model, a full dining room raises the bill, including for the regulars who found you long before the platform did. On a flat fee, a full Saturday costs what a quiet Tuesday costs.

What you are comparing	Per-cover marketplace	One system per vertical	Reserving
What the fee follows	the number of guests seated	the location, one category only	the venue, flat per month
Cost of a busy month	higher than a quiet one	the same	the same
Cost of your own regulars	charged again on every visit	nothing extra	nothing extra
Tables, rooms and chairs	tables only	one of the three	all three on one board
Where the guest books	mostly on the platform	on your site	on your site, on your domain
Who owns the guest record	shared with the platform	the venue	the venue, exportable any time
Second and third site	per site, repeated	per site, repeated	up to five on one account

What you are really buying from a marketplace

A marketplace sells distribution: people who were not looking for you specifically and found a table. That is a real service and it is worth paying for. What is not worth paying for is the same fee on the guest who typed your name into a search box, clicked your own website and booked there.

A venue can have both. Keep the marketplace for discovery if it brings you covers, take your direct bookings on your own site, and stop paying a percentage on the half of the book that was always yours.

One board against three systems

The moment a restaurant opens four rooms upstairs, or a salon adds two treatment rooms, or a hotel starts taking non-resident dinner bookings, a single-vertical system stops being enough. Three systems means three bills, three logins, three guest lists and a guest who is a regular in one of them and a stranger in the other two.

The engine here fits parties to tables, rooms, chairs, pitches and hourly spaces with the same rules, which is why one account covers every kind of venue.

Questions worth asking any vendor, including us

Compare the options

01Does the fee change when we are busy, and by how much
02Can we export the guest list today, without asking anyone
03Does the booking page run on our domain or on yours
04Does the availability engine know turn times and buffers, or only time slots
05What happens when the guest's exact time is gone
06Can a deposit be taken without a card reader at the venue
07Are staff logins included or charged per head
08What does a second venue cost
09What is the notice period, and what happens to our data after it

Run the demo before you decide anything

The engine on the home page is the real one, on a demo venue, with no card and no account.

Try the demo