Timely Booking and Client Management Software vs. vCita

I've researched a lot of salon software, and Timely was the top-of-the-line software that does it all compared to competitors. It has a friendly interface, offers easy ways to communicate with clients via text and emails, and provides insights and reports, so it indeed does everything you need for booking software. On top of that, it's cloud-based, so say goodbye to only accessing your appointment book through your computer at the salon.

Incentivized

It makes client communication extremely easy - we can message and schedule online appointments. Clients really like those options. We also like the online payment portal. That way clients can pay at their convenience, and we don't end up with credit card information that requires PCI compliance. It also helps with payments. It would also help with invoicing, but unfortunately, there are only 3 linked payment options (Square, Stripe, and PayPal). If you don't use one of those payment processors, you cannot link to billing.

Incentivized

• Integration with Google Calendar allows avoiding double ups
• Automatic appointment bookings with SMS reminders
• Xero integration and Automatic Invoicing, Payments and Partial Reconciliation
• Multiple Staff Members to be booked
• Facebook Integration, allows people to book from Facebook

Incentivized

• Great for online appointment bookings.
• Good for taking payments.
• Good for onboarding new clients.
• Integrates with your website.
• Integrates with Facebook Pages.

Incentivized

• UI/UX
• Cloud based system
• Has to be more customer friendly

Incentivized

• Payment collection: We want to have an option to allow clients to choose the amount they wish to pay.
• Improved ease of use with forms.

Incentivized

Overall - easy to use. There are some missing features (like fillable pdf forms), and it also requires using certain credit card processors to link billing (otherwise it doesn't work).

Incentivized

I do miss the days when I could easily call up a rep and talk to them about any issues I had with the service. But I still do hear back from the customer service rep during the week within 24 hours.

Incentivized

Timely is by far the most user-friendly and fun to use. It's got a great interface, works on iPads, and training is super easy for the team. Other software is clunky and takes too long to set up and train the team to use.

Incentivized

I liked vCita a lot more for my home services company mainly because it handled scheduling through the software which was terrific.

Incentivized

• Bragging rights, yes. Always cool to tell how automated your business is.
• ROI, no. In our case, it wasn't worth the time spent in integration into the website, system setup, plus subscription fee. However, take into account, that High-Value Professional Services is a wrong industry for this product.
• Convenience and confidence that there will be no double booking across G Suite and Timely was tested and were really handy at the times.
• No ability to use our own SMTP. If your server has Anti-Spoofing DKIM and etc., setting it up with Timely was a nightmare as support had no idea. So a lot of emails were going to Spam on the client's side.

Incentivized

• I have no clue
• I'm assuming that we would not have people making appointments with us if we didn't have this service

Incentivized