Baluu

RATING:

4.9

(13)

About Baluu

The bookings-business digital revolution has started. Too many businesses settle for second best when it comes to building and managing their websites. Whether it's attempting to moonlight as a coder yourself or getting squeezed by website-building cowboys (and gals) - it's way harder than it needs to be to get a gorgeous bookings website that delights your customers, whilst being utterly effortless for your team to manage. So, the team behind Obby (a UK-wide class bookings marketplace) and MasterPeace (a rapidly growing bookings-business) co-founded a small-but-mighty brand that's going to give power to the people, letting them launch & manage their digital bookings business all-by-their-genius-selves, for a fraction of the cost. Whether ytaking bookings for cl...

Baluu Pricing

Our plans: Free: £0 p/m Lite: £9 p/m Standard: £24 p/m Growth: £39 p/m If you pay for a year in advance, you save 20% compared to paying per month. That means you get 12 months’ usage for the price of 10 months. If you're new to Baluu and want to get started without the commitment, we offer a 30-day free trial of *any* level of our software - so you can get to know Baluu's features and see how they work for your business. With hands-on support and onboarding as standard, Team Baluu will help you get started and make the most of its features.

Starting price: 

£11.00 per month

Free trial: 

Available

Free version: 

Available

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Baluu Reviews

Overall Rating

4.9

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

5

Customer Support

5

Value for money

5

Functionality

4.5

Most Helpful Reviews for Baluu

1 - 5 of 13 Reviews

Zena

Arts and Crafts, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed May 2022

Completely transformed our Art School business

We met the Baluu team at a critical turning point for our business. We were about to air on Dragons Den (where we got funding from [SENSITIVE CONTENT]) and we knew that the traffic to our website was going to go nuts. Our tiny team could have never managed the tsunami of engagement that happened on our old website. All those different systems that didn't talk to each other. All the manual work we used to do to fix people's bookings and orders for them behind the scenes. We'd have fallen over. Baluu made it possible for us to handle that huge moment in our business, totally seamlessly. And the team felt like they were by our side throughout: totally committed to our shared success. Grateful is an understatement.

PROS

1. FINALLY we can do it all in one place. We sell tickets to a daily schedule of in-person & virtual Art Classes, we sell Art Kits globally, we sell Gift Cards, and we send invoices out for bespoke private corporate events. We used to have different plug-ins for each of these things: Mindbody for classes, Etsy for kits, GiftUp for gift cards, Xero for manual invoices. Each of these have their own monthly costs, and each system needed to be taught to our admin team one by one. Now we use Baluu: one dashboard for our whole business: one monthly cost, one system for our admin team to learn to use, and one system for me to look at for our monthly bookkeeping! 2. SO much more affordable: Not only have we been able to consolidate lots of different subscriptions into one (Baluu), but it's a fraction of the cost. Mindbody was costing us £££s each month on its own, let alone the rest added in on top of that. 3. We can do it all ourselves: It's so easy to use, we can now manage our whole website without the need for a web developer at all. We used to spend a few hundred pounds getting someone to help us every time we needed to load up a new class, experience, product, or if our website broke - getting someone to fix it. Now we can manage absolutely everything ourselves through a super user-friendly interface, we don't spend any money on developers any more. The Baluu team feel like our in-house tech team!

CONS

Whilst you can customise each page with your own images, copy etc. you can't do things like change the page structure, change the size and shape of different components etc. But what we've lost in terms of customisation we have gained in terms of ease of use. And to be honest, the Baluu pages have been built a certain way for a reason: because they have optimised them for conversion. Sometimes less is more in that respect: just help your customer get to where they need to go: the check-out page, and keep it super simple for them to get there!

Reason for choosing Baluu

We considered building our own system using plug ins on Squarespace. But when I dug into how much this would cost in terms of getting a website developer to help us, and how limited the functionality would be in terms of giving us everything we need (tickets, products, gift cards, virtual, in person), the bill was wracking up fast. The other downside of building it yourself is, if it breaks, you need to pay someone each time to fix / maintain it. With Baluu, that's all done for you.

Reasons for switching to Baluu

1. Mindbody was insanely expensive 2. Mindbody was really tricky for my admin team to use: it's trying to be all things to all people, and give you absolute 100% control, but the result of that is something that our admin staff really struggled to get to grips with, even after 6 months of trying 3. Mindbody was really tricky for my customers to use: it forces customers to create a whole account and log in with us to buy, which is not necessary for something like ordering a Kit where we want to help our guests get in and out quickly and easily. You couldn't do things like book for yourself and your plus one, your guest would have to book themselves in separately. It looked really dated, and really separate to our core website. All in all - I'm really baffled they continue to be as huge as they are.

Vendor Response

Thank you so much Zena for the kind words. We are thrilled to work so closely with such an exciting business and hope we can continue to build products that drive meaningful change for your business and customers!

Replied May 2022

Silvie

Arts and Crafts, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed May 2022

Really intuitive booking system - saves me a huge amount of time in admin!

We have used Paypal buttons and had to create events for each event on our website. Using the software has saved us at least 15 hours weekly in admin time to manage bookings and has grown our business steadily.

PROS

I used to spend hours managing bookings on a spreadsheet, now everything is one place - including all my payments. It works like a dream!

CONS

More calendar integration features please!

Reason for choosing Baluu

ease of use and amazing customer service from a team that is always interested in optimisation and feedback

Reasons for switching to Baluu

The service has enabled us to have a fully functional back to front end experience, easily to teach anyone in our team

Vendor Response

This is so great to hear. We love hearing this feedback and so pleased we save you so much time. We love seeing you grow and keen to see how that continues!

Replied May 2022

Pam

Food Production, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed June 2022

Just what we needed.

Very happy with the support we receive.

PROS

We were at a stage where we needed help managing our growing bookings and Obby came at just the right time. We are hoping it will grow with us and eventually we will be able to use Obby to also manage our website etc.

CONS

We are quite a niche business so sometimes it doesn't do exactly what we want it to. Having said that, most of our suggestions have been implemented when we have asked. I would prefer the classes to integrate into our website, rather than being re-directed, but it does work well as it is.

Reasons for switching to Baluu

Any support from Wix was very time consuming.

Vendor Response

Thanks so much Pam for your lovely review. We certainly want to grow with you too and add the functionality you need to full move away from Wix for good!

Replied June 2022

Sian Van Beek

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 1 employee

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed January 2024

A service that helps my small business thrive!

Some of the best customer service I've received anywhere! Ever! The team truly care and are here to help - which is just the service and support I need as a single-person start-up business. Stress and hassle-free help. Love the product for end-user. Can't rave about this service enough.

PROS

Baluu has created a sleek, accessible and easy-to-follow interface for my clients so that booking classes and events is effortless. I love the quick set up of events and how they look to my end user. There are so many features of baluu that help to make my job easy, such as optional private payment links so clients can have option to pay in instalments, gift vouchers and discount codes. I'm a small start-up business with no experience, support or investment - and baluu has been such immense help in my first 12 months and has provided opportunity for business growth. I love the service so much and the customer service has been exceptional whenever I've needed it - fast replies and meaningful interaction (not just a bot!) which really takes stresses out of issues that arise. Can't recommend the service enough. In a year I've gone from Baluu's basic plan all the way to their Growth service - and it's really helping my business to thrive.

CONS

I don't have anything worth noting - in just under 12 months of using the platform I've had no major issues.

Claire

Food & Beverages, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed June 2023

New user review

Easy booking system and good calendar.

PROS

The system is really easy to use and add events, edit etc. All of the team we have been in contact with have responded speedily and been great at assisting with all issues that have come up. The site itself is really easy for our customers to use, which we hope will increase sales!

CONS

So far no complaints.

Reason for choosing Baluu

Price was more favourable

Reasons for switching to Baluu

Our previous site was difficult to manage and complicated for customers to place orders.

Vendor Response

Thank you so much - great to hear that you like our functionality and unrivalled customer support!

Replied June 2023