The Setora alternative for shops that outgrow the calendar

Per location or per business, and where the difference lands

Setora's model has a real virtue. A single site with ten barbers pays the same £39 a month as a single site with two, because seats are not charged. Anyone who has watched a per seat product punish them for hiring will recognise how much that is worth. Their site notes that prices shown exclude VAT where applicable, so budget £46.80 rather than £39 once VAT lands.

Ours moves with the team, and on a single site that is the expensive direction. A shop with six people cannot use Essentials at £19 at all, because it carries one user. That shop is on Growth at £59. A shop that needs the cap lifted entirely is on Scale at £109. Set either against £46.80 including VAT and Setora is the cheaper subscription, by a margin that widens the more people you employ. There is no reading of the numbers that makes us cheaper for a single site with a real team, and it would be easier to leave that out than to write it down.

The model turns at the second site. Multi location is charged per site, so two shops is £78 a month before VAT and three is £117. Youzse adds locations from £15 a month without a plan upgrade, so the gap narrows as sites multiply and can close depending on which tier your team size puts you on.

So the honest rule is this. One site, however big the team, is where Setora is priced better than us and usually by a lot. Several sites, or one site that needs quotes, invoices, memberships or VAT returns alongside the bookings, is where a tiered subscription starts to earn its difference. Work it out on your own team size rather than on either headline.

Card processing, where Setora is more transparent than us

Setora does not mark up card processing. Their pricing page states that Stripe processing is charged at Stripe's rate with no Setora markup when you use Setora payment tools, and their booking protection page goes further, saying they add no platform fee and no markup on top of Stripe, that you pay Stripe's standard processing fee at cost and that you pay it only when a card is actually charged. They publish no rate figure of their own, so the number to hold them to is whatever Stripe charges you. That is more transparent than what Youzse does and it deserves saying out loud rather than skipping past.

Youzse charges 2.5% plus 35p with our platform fee built into that one number. Our reasoning is that a single rate is easier to forecast than a processor rate plus a platform charge you reconcile later, and it is the rate that funds 0% commission on new clients who arrive through Youzse. That reasoning does not change the arithmetic. Look up Stripe's current published rate for the card types you actually take, set it against our 2.5% plus 35p and multiply the gap by your monthly transaction count before you decide anything. Setora will come out cheaper on cards, because we add to the processor rate and they do not.

One thing to add to the Setora side of the ledger when you compare. Their text messaging is billed separately, either pay as you go or on an optional subscription, so a busy shop sending reminders should add that to the £39 before calling it a flat fee.