Calendly and Stripe, or a booking system for rooms

What Calendly does

Calendly is built around event types on a person's booking page. Its help center lists buffers before and after meetings, minimum notice, how far ahead people can book, limits per day, week or month, and start time increments. On paid plans you can connect Stripe or PayPal and charge per event type; the money goes straight to your account.

It also sells meeting packages (prepaid bundles of one-on-one or group meetings, on personal event types and with Stripe only), payment links for anything without a meeting, and simple invoices with an optional tax rate and discount. Refunds are made by the account holder in Stripe or PayPal, not in Calendly.

A room is not a person's calendar

A studio sells time in a room, not time with someone. In Ruumio each room has its own opening periods, closures, booking step, shortest and longest booking, how far ahead people can book, a cancellation deadline and a buffer. Clients choose their own start and end time inside those limits, and the system refuses overlaps per room, also when two people try for the same time at once.

Rooms can be grouped by location, each with its own address in the e-mails, and booking questions can ask how many people are coming, capped at the room's capacity, and show the room's equipment.

Prices that follow the clock

Calendly's help center describes a price per event type. Studios often charge more on evenings and weekends and less for a half or a whole day. Ruumio's peak and day rates do that per room and pick the cheaper of hourly rates or a block, and the invoice shows each part on its own line.

Extras such as a sound engineer or a camera are priced per hour or per booking, can be limited to how many you have across all rooms, and can need your approval on chosen weekdays. The time is held while the client pays, and an unpaid hold frees the slot again.

Regulars, refunds and invoices

Calendly's meeting packages count meetings. Ruumio counts hours: hour packs are spent minute by minute at booking, member plans give hours per room every month on the studio's own Stripe account, and gift cards and discount codes come off the price automatically.

When a client cancels, Ruumio refunds by your policy (in full before a deadline, part of it later) and gives back the matching share of plan or pack hours. Every payment gets an invoice and every refund a credit note, with VAT, and companies that book every month can get one invoice with a reference number.

The door

Calendly's public pages don't mention door access. With Ruumio's UniFi Access add-on every booking gets its own PIN, sent with the confirmation and again in the reminder, and it works only during the booking plus the buffer, so an unstaffed studio opens on time.

When Calendly is enough

If you run one room, sell fixed sessions where your own time is the product (a lesson, a mixing session with you) and already use Calendly with your calendar, adding payments there may be all you need. Once you have several rooms, prices by time of day, regulars with hours or a door to open, a system that knows about rooms saves you the workarounds.

Questions