Why Bookabee's Pricing Works the Way It Does

When we were designing Bookabee's pricing, we kept coming back to the same question: why do so many booking platforms charge you the most when you can least afford it?

If you're a brand new children's activity provider — maybe you've just qualified as a coach, or you're running your first term of classes at a local school hall — you're not exactly flush with cash. You've got venue hire, insurance, equipment, DBS checks, and marketing costs before a single parent has booked. The last thing you need is a £35/month software subscription on top of that, before you even know if anyone's going to sign up.

And yet, that's exactly what most booking platforms ask for.

The problem with flat monthly fees

The standard model in our industry looks something like this: pay a fixed monthly fee (typically £25–35), plus a percentage on every booking (often 2–3%, sometimes higher). Some platforms waive the monthly fee but crank the transaction percentage up to compensate. Others hide behind "contact us for pricing" — which usually means it's expensive and they'd rather explain it on a sales call.

The issue isn't that these are bad businesses or that their pricing is unreasonable for established providers. The issue is that a flat monthly fee hits hardest at the exact moment a provider is least able to absorb it — right at the start.

A club processing £5,000 a month in bookings can comfortably absorb £35/month for software. A new provider running two classes a week at £6 a head, trying to build from nothing? That same £35 is a meaningful chunk of their slim margin, and they're paying it whether the classes fill or not.

How we designed Bookabee's pricing instead

We wanted a model where your costs scale with your success. Not the other way around.

Starter: no monthly fee, 2.5% per booking + Stripe fees. This is for clubs just getting started. You pay nothing until a parent actually books and pays. If you have a quiet month, your software costs are quiet too. The 2.5% is higher than our paid tiers, but you're trading a lower percentage for zero fixed costs — which is the right trade-off when you're finding your feet.

Grow: £19/month, 1.5% per booking + Stripe fees. Once your classes are filling up and you've got steady income, you can switch to the Grow tier. The monthly fee is modest, and in return your per-booking cost drops significantly. For most providers, the savings on the lower transaction fee will more than cover the £19 — meaning you're actually paying less overall than you were on Starter.

Pro: £39/month, 1.0% per booking + Stripe fees. For established providers processing a higher volume of bookings, the Pro tier drops the transaction fee even further. At this level, you're running a healthy business and your booking platform cost is a small, predictable line item.

The key idea is that you move between tiers when it makes financial sense for you — not because we've locked essential features behind a paywall. Every feature in Bookabee is available on every tier. The only thing that changes is the balance between your monthly fee and your per-booking fee.

The maths in practice

To make this concrete, imagine a provider processing £2,000 in bookings per month.

On the Starter tier, you'd pay 2.5% — that's £50 in Bookabee fees (plus Stripe's processing fees, which apply regardless of platform). On the Grow tier, you'd pay £19 plus 1.5% (£30) — so £49 total. At that volume, the two tiers cost almost the same, which is roughly the natural crossover point.

Go above that and Grow starts saving you real money. At £4,000/month in bookings, Starter costs you £100 in fees. Grow costs you £79. Pro costs you £79 too at that level — but push to £6,000/month and Pro drops to £99 while Grow would be £109.

The point isn't to obsess over exact numbers. The point is that the model self-corrects. When you're small, you pay less. When you're bigger, you have options to pay even less per booking. You're never penalised for being early-stage, and you're never locked into a tier that doesn't make sense for your volume.

Why we didn't just make it free

We could have gone with a purely transaction-based model — no monthly fee at any level, just a flat percentage. Some platforms do this, and it has obvious appeal.

But there's a tension. If our only revenue comes from transaction fees, we'd need to keep that percentage high enough to sustain the business — probably around 2.5–3% across the board. That penalises larger providers who are processing thousands of pounds a month and would reasonably expect a better rate at scale.

The tiered approach lets us offer genuinely low transaction fees to providers who've grown, because the monthly subscription provides a stable revenue base. It aligns our incentives properly: we want you to grow, because when you grow, you're more likely to move to a paid tier. And when you're on a paid tier, we can afford to charge you less per booking.

Everyone wins. We think that's how pricing should work.

Compare it to the rest of the market

Without naming names: the most popular children's activity booking platform in the UK charges £35/month plus 3.1% per booking. On £4,000/month in bookings, that's £159 in total platform fees. On Bookabee's Grow tier, the same volume costs £79. On Pro, it's £79 too.

That's half the cost. For the same core features — term bookings, safeguarding, waiting lists, digital registers, online payments.

We're not cutting corners to offer lower prices. We're a leaner operation, we've built the platform efficiently, and we believe that children's activity providers — many of whom are small businesses or sole traders — shouldn't be paying premium SaaS prices for software that's essential to running their business.

Start free, scale when you're ready

If you're thinking about trying Bookabee, the Starter tier is the simplest way in. There's no commitment, no monthly fee, and no credit card required to set up your account. Run a term on it. See how it feels. If your classes fill up and the maths starts to favour a paid tier, you can upgrade in a couple of clicks.

And if you stay on Starter forever because it works for your volume? That's fine too. We'd rather have a happy provider on the free tier than an unhappy one overpaying on a plan they don't need.

Get started at bookabee.co, or drop us a line at hello@bookabee.co if you've got questions about which tier makes sense for you.