ReserveBee or SimplyBook.me: flat fee or tiered plans?

SimplyBook.me is a broadly applicable booking system for service businesses, with a genuinely usable free plan and even a built-in feature to attach objects like rooms and equipment to services. That makes it functionally one of the closest competitors to ReserveBee in this overview. Its pricing model, though, differs fundamentally, with consequences as your organisation grows.

Three key differences at a glance

What SimplyBook.me does well

SimplyBook.me is functionally broad and, uniquely among the competitors in this overview, one of the few with a native object feature: "Related Resources" lets you attach equipment, rooms or seats to services, with double-booking protection through tracked availability. It also supports group bookings, recurring appointments, multiple locations, broad payment integrations (Stripe, PayPal, Square), gift cards, coupon codes, packages and memberships. Reminders run via WhatsApp, SMS and email, and there's even an AI Voice Booking feature. The free plan is genuinely usable: 50 bookings a month, no credit card required, plus a 14-day trial of premium features.

Where ReserveBee makes the difference

SimplyBook.me's pricing model combines two ceilings at once: a monthly booking-volume limit (from 50 to 2,000) and a limit on the number of providers (from 1 to 30). Grow past either one and you're forced onto the next, more expensive plan, even if you're still well under the other limit. On top of that, the number of "custom features" (feature modules) is capped at 1 on the free plan, rising to unlimited on Premium. That means you may need to pay specifically for the object feature that sets SimplyBook.me apart, depending on how it counts as a module. ReserveBee has neither ceiling: you pay per reservation, with unlimited providers and objects on every plan, with no separate modules to unlock. Extras like SMS credits and a custom domain are also billed separately on top of the subscription at SimplyBook.me, and the 14-day trial explicitly excludes some features (including gift cards, customer import, HIPAA compliance and the point-of-sale system), so you don't test the full product before you have to decide.

A worked pricing example

Say you have 8 staff members (providers) and 300 bookings a month.

At 300 bookings you're still just inside SimplyBook.me's Standard plan; grow to 501 bookings and you jump straight to Premium (€49.90-59.90 a month). At ReserveBee, the bill grows gradually, reservation by reservation, with no sudden jumps. Grow your team to 16 providers in the meantime, and SimplyBook.me forces you onto Premium too, even if your booking volume still comfortably fits Standard.

Personal contact, not just a system

As a Dutch company, ReserveBee keeps its lines short: you talk directly to the team that builds the system, and questions, feature requests and bug reports go straight to the people actually building the next version. ReserveBee also runs on European infrastructure, aiming for full GDPR compliance, and accepts iDEAL by default via Stripe. For a Dutch organisation that doesn't want to run into unexpected plan jumps the moment it grows a little, that matters just as much as the price difference itself.

Switching from SimplyBook.me to ReserveBee

Switching from SimplyBook.me mainly comes down to migrating your services, providers and any linked resources. We're happy to help you do that for free: we turn your "Related Resources" links into objects and bundles within ReserveBee, and bring along your customer data and upcoming bookings, so nothing changes for your customers. Prefer to start yourself right away? You can: start a free trial and you're live within minutes.

Who should choose ReserveBee?

Do you consistently stay within a fixed, predictable combination of booking volume and provider count, and don't mind separate modules per feature? SimplyBook.me, with its broad feature set and native object linking, is a strong choice. Does your organisation grow unevenly, do you want to avoid a sudden plan jump from a few extra bookings or providers, and do you want every feature included with no module limit? Then ReserveBee is the better choice. Sitting just under a SimplyBook.me ceiling right now? It pays to look ahead: one extra provider or a busy month can trigger a full plan jump, while at ReserveBee you'd simply pay a bit more for those extra reservations. Both systems genuinely treat physical objects as bookable, setting them apart from pure calendar tools. The real difference is how predictable the bill stays as you grow.

Also worth a look: ReserveBee vs Reservio or ReserveBee vs SuperSaaS.