Guide · Online Booking
Several locations? Booking tools split into three billing camps — and the gap is wide
Square Appointments bills you again for every location, while seat-based and staff-login tools charge for people instead — so the cheapest answer depends on how your shops are shaped, not how many you have.
If you run more than one location, the first thing to know about booking software is that “how much is it?” has three different answers depending on which billing camp a vendor sits in. Booking tools don’t meter calls or minutes the way a phone receptionist does — they charge per location, per seat (per user/staff member), or flat per account. With one shop those three look interchangeable. With three or five shops they diverge sharply, and the vendor that’s cheapest for a tight solo operation can be the most expensive for a chain.
Here’s the same multi-location buyer priced against each camp.
Camp one: per location — Square Appointments
Square Appointments is the clearest per-location case in this market. Its Free tier covers a single location at $0; Plus is $49/mo per location and Premium is $149/mo per location. The price isn’t for your business — it’s for each storefront, billed again every time you add one. So three locations on Plus is 3 × $49 = $147/mo, and three on Premium is 3 × $149 = $447/mo. Five Premium locations clears $745/mo. The number scales with your real-estate footprint, not your headcount, which is great if each site is lean and bad if you’ve consolidated a lot of staff under a few roofs.
Camp two: per seat — vcita and Booksy
Seat-based tools ignore your address count entirely and charge for people. vcita lists three self-serve tiers at the annual-billed rate — Kickstart $35, Business $54, and Platinum $93 per seat per month — and its Platinum card carries a team selector that scales to 50+ seats with no hidden enterprise wall. There’s a catch the per-location camp doesn’t have: a $150 setup-and-installation session fee (Kickstart includes none free; Business one; Platinum two). Booksy takes the simplest seat shape of all — a single all-inclusive plan at $29.99/mo for the first user, then $20/mo per additional team member. For a 10-person operation spread across three locations, Booksy is $29.99 + 9 × $20 = $209.99/mo no matter how those ten people are distributed.
Camp three: flat by staff logins or flat per account — Bookeo and GlossGenius
A third group charges a flat fee with no per-location and no per-seat multiplication — you buy a bucket. Bookeo sizes that bucket by staff logins: Solo $14.95 (1 login), Small $29.95 (3), Standard $39.95 (20), Large $79.95 (40), up to X-Large at $119.95/mo for 60 staff logins and 3,000 bookings a month. That single $119.95 figure covers 60 people regardless of how many buildings they work in. GlossGenius is flat per account too, capping by team size rather than location: its Platinum plan is $148/mo (annual) for unlimited users, teams of 10+.
| Vendor | Billing model | What scales the bill | Headline figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Square Appointments | Per location | Number of locations | $49 / $149 per location/mo |
| vcita | Per seat | Number of staff seats | $35 / $54 / $93 per seat/mo (+$150 setup) |
| Booksy | Per seat | Team members | $29.99 + $20 per extra member/mo |
| Bookeo | Flat (by staff logins) | Login tier, not locations | $14.95 → $119.95/mo (1 → 60 logins) |
| GlossGenius | Flat per account | Team-size tier | Platinum $148/mo (annual), unlimited users |
How to read this for your own footprint
The decision isn’t “which is cheapest” — it’s “which billing axis matches how my business actually grows.” If you’re opening more storefronts, each lean, Square’s per-location model is honest and predictable, but it compounds: every Premium site is another $149. If you’re adding people faster than addresses, a per-seat tool like vcita or Booksy ignores your floorplan and only charges for staff — though vcita’s per-seat rate plus a $150 setup session makes it the pricier seat option, while Booksy’s $20-per-extra-member keeps a mid-size team flat and simple. And if you have a lot of staff under a few roofs, the flat camp wins outright: Bookeo’s X-Large covers 60 logins for $119.95 and GlossGenius Platinum covers unlimited users for $148, both untouched by how many locations those people span.
Run the multiplication before you sign. Three Square Premium locations ($447/mo) costs more than three times what Bookeo’s top tier ($119.95/mo) asks for the same 60 possible staff — but Bookeo bills nothing per location and Square bills nothing per seat, so the “right” answer flips the moment your shape does. We publish the model, the per-unit price, and the source behind every figure so you can run it against your own count.