Setmore alternative with no per-team-member surcharge

Setmore is a US appointment tool with a genuinely usable free plan: no time limit, up to 4 users and 200 appointments a month. For a very small team, that can be appealing. But once your team grows, or you need more than standalone appointments, the limits of the free plan and Setmore's pricing model come into view.

Three key differences at a glance

What Setmore does well

Setmore's free plan is genuinely usable, not just a trial: no time limit, your own booking page, mobile apps, email reminders and confirmations, team collaboration and payment acceptance are all included by default, up to 4 users and 200 appointments a month. From the Pro plan, SMS reminders, video integration (Zoom, Google Meet), two-way calendar sync, recurring appointments and group bookings (with seat reservations for events like training sessions or webinars) are added, each with its own participant limit you set yourself. Payments run through Stripe, Square and PayPal. For US customers there's also a "Live Receptionist" add-on ($99/month) that answers appointment calls for you, though it's explicitly not available outside the US.

Where ReserveBee makes the difference

Once your organisation grows past 4 users or handles more than 200 appointments a month, you hit the walls of Setmore's free plan. And with per-user pricing on the Pro plan ($5 to $12 per user/month), the bill rises with every team member you add, regardless of how much actually gets booked. ReserveBee has no user limit and no per-team-member surcharge: statistics and priority support are already included with the Professional plan at €18 per month, with 100 reservations included. Setmore also remains a per-staff calendar tool at its core; even the only example of "room booking" on its site (library study rooms) is functionally just a relabeled appointment, not a separate object system. ReserveBee's objects and bundles make it just as easy to make a room or piece of equipment bookable as a staff member.

A worked pricing example

Say your team grows to 6 staff members who all need to be separately bookable, with 80 appointments a month.

Even at the cheapest rate ($5 per user/month billed annually), that's €30 a month at Setmore for 6 staff, versus €18 at ReserveBee for the same volume, regardless of headcount. Grow your team past Setmore's 4 free users, and you pay per extra team member, regardless of your booking volume. With ReserveBee, the price stays tied to your reservations, not your headcount.

Switching from Setmore to ReserveBee

Switching from Setmore to ReserveBee mainly comes down to migrating your services, calendar settings and customer data. We're happy to help you do that for free, so ongoing appointments aren't lost. If you used multiple staff members each with their own calendar at Setmore, we carry that over into objects within ReserveBee, with no per-team-member surcharge attached. Need to book rooms or equipment alongside appointments? We set those up as separate objects right from the start. Prefer to start yourself right away? You can: start a free trial and you're live within minutes.

Built for the European market

Beyond price and user limits, there's a difference no comparison table quite captures: as a Dutch company, ReserveBee keeps its lines short. You talk to the small team that builds the system, not a US support desk. Questions, feature requests and bug reports go straight to the people actually building the next version, with Dutch-language support available if that's more comfortable. ReserveBee also runs on European infrastructure, aiming for full GDPR compliance: your data and your customers' data stay within the EU. And where Setmore charges exclusively in US dollars with no VAT stated, ReserveBee tells you upfront exactly what you'll pay in euros, excluding VAT, with iDEAL as a trusted payment method for your Dutch customers. For organisations in healthcare, education or the public sector, where data protection is a hard requirement, that matters just as much as the price itself.

Who should choose ReserveBee?

Do you consistently stay under 4 users and 200 appointments a month, with no need for objects alongside appointments? Setmore's free plan is a fine starting point. Is your team growing, do you want a price that doesn't rise with every extra team member, or do you want to make rooms and equipment bookable alongside appointments? Then ReserveBee is the better choice. For good measure, count your expected team in a year and multiply it by Setmore's per-user price: that shows straight away how the cost climbs. We help you migrate your services, calendar and customers for free.

Also worth a look: ReserveBee vs Calendly or ReserveBee vs YouCanBook.me.