Why we built Bookr differently from Setmore
A hairdresser messaged me last month. She'd been using Setmore for three years. Her words: 'I just need people to book me. Why is this so complicated?' That question shaped everything we do.
The moment we decided to build something new
I spent weeks interviewing barbers, stylists, and personal trainers before MRVL launched Bookr. The pattern was consistent. Setmore worked fine for scheduling, but it felt overbuilt for what they actually needed. A nail technician in Manchester told me she spent more time fiddling with Setmore's settings than booking clients.
Setmore is powerful. It's been around since 2012. It handles team bookings, payments, marketing automations, and more. But for a solo hairdresser or a trainer working from a garage? That power comes with friction.
We asked a different question: what if a booking page was just a simple link, shared like anything else? No dashboard exploration. No feature overload. Just bookr.app/yourname, your services, your times, and done.
Building for mobile first, not desktop first
Setmore feels built for people sitting at desks. Log in. Navigate menus. Update availability. Most of our users? They're in the salon, the gym, or between appointments on their phone.
Bookr runs offline. We use SwiftData so your bookings sync even if the WiFi drops out. We use iCloud KV for usage limits, which means reinstalling the app doesn't reset your plan. Small detail. Massive for someone running a business from their mobile phone.
Walk-in mode came from a real moment too. A barber said: 'I get walk-ins every day. Why do I need to pull up a website and add them manually?' So we built it into Bookr. One tap. Client in. Done. Setmore doesn't have that.
Pricing that matches the business, not the other way around
Setmore's free tier caps at 1 service and forces their branding on your booking page. You can upgrade, but their pricing scales differently. More complexity, more cost.
Bookr's free tier gives you 20 bookings a month and 5 services. Real usage. Our Pro tier is £8.99 a month. That includes automated reminders (24 hours before, then 1 hour before), Google Calendar sync, analytics that show your revenue and your top services, and custom branding so it's actually yours. Our Business tier at £14.99 a month handles small teams, client notes, and no-show protection with card on file.
We price for indie service pros, not for SaaS ambition. A solo stylist shouldn't need to think about tiers or feel like they're leaving money on the table by not upgrading.
What we deliberately left out
Setmore has email marketing, SMS campaigns, staff payroll tracking, and client video consultations. Those are useful if you're running a franchise with 50 staff and a marketing budget.
We don't have any of that. Bookr is for booking. Google Calendar syncs your schedule. Stripe handles payments and deposits (if you're on Business tier). Email reminders keep people from no-showing. That's the stack.
Leaving things out isn't a weakness. It's clarity. Every feature we add slows down the app, complicates the interface, and adds maintenance burden. For a barber or a tutors, that complexity isn't value. It's noise.
The analytics that matter
Setmore offers reports on appointment history, client cards, and marketing performance. Useful if you're tracking 20 metrics a day.
In Bookr Pro and above, you see what actually matters: revenue (how much you've taken), your top services (what clients book most), and retention (who's coming back). We built this because a trainer told us: 'I don't need a marketing dashboard. I need to know if I'm making money and which services people actually want.'
That's insight without busywork.
The trade-off we're comfortable with
Setmore is more established. They have integrations we don't. They're a bigger company, so if you need enterprise support, they have that.
Bookr is newer, faster to iterate, and built by people who still remember what it's like to run a service business on your phone. We release updates often. We listen to feedback and we build things that actually matter to stylists and trainers, not just what sounds good in a product roadmap.
If you're managing a team of 10 stylists across three locations, Setmore might make sense. If you're solo or you're working with 2 to 5 people you know well, Bookr exists because we got tired of watching good people use bloated software.
The real question isn't Bookr or Setmore. It's whether you want a booking system that disappears into the background, or one that asks you to learn it. Which one matters more to your business?