Skedda alternatives for studios

When Skedda is still the right choice

Skedda describes itself as space booking for workplaces: people in an organisation book desks, rooms and parking for themselves, with interactive floor plans, two-way Google and Outlook sync and apps for Microsoft Teams and Slack. For an office, a campus or a coworking space that is what it is built for, and Ruumio has no floor plans, desk booking or single sign-on.

A studio's case is different: its clients are outside customers who pay for each booking. On Skedda's pricing page its plans cover booking, while payments, invoicing and memberships are part of AllBooked by Skedda. That is why studios looking for an alternative usually start by comparing AllBooked.

What a studio renting to clients needs

Before comparing tools, list what your bookings actually involve. These are the questions that separate the options below:

• Do clients find you and book on your own website, or through someone else's?
• Do they pay by card at booking, and is the time held while they pay?
• Are cancellations refunded by a policy, and do refunds get credit notes?
• Do you need invoices with VAT for every payment?
• Do prices change by time of day, or for a half or a whole day?
• Do regulars buy hours in advance or on a monthly plan?
• Do clients let themselves in when nobody is there?
• Which languages do your clients book in?

AllBooked: Skedda's option for paid venues

AllBooked by Skedda is aimed at venues such as sports facilities, community spaces and music studios. Its pages list payments through Stripe Connect, upfront or later, single and batch invoices, off-peak and dynamic pricing, promo codes and memberships with allowances. Each venue gets a hosted booking page with its logo and colours, and embedding booking on your own site is listed at an additional fee.

It connects bookings to smart locks through Seam, and its integrations include Zapier. Its plans are billed annually, and its pricing page asks customers in Europe to talk to sales. A venue that wants those integrations and a hosted booking page will find AllBooked the closest step from Skedda.

Tools built for studios

Ruumio is built for rooms rented by the hour: each studio gets a whole website with booking on it, card payments to its own Stripe account, an invoice for every payment and a credit note for every refund, with VAT, peak and day rates, member plans and hour packs, door codes through UniFi Access and visitor pages in 26 languages. It is billed monthly or yearly.

Podyx is built for podcast studios: rooms are sold as setups with services and add-ons, and it handles podcast guests, file delivery and payments through Stripe or Square. Sonido's pricing page presents it for recording, podcast and rehearsal studios, with quotes and invoices on every plan and Stripe payments and deposits on its Studio plan. Each has its own comparison page.

General options: a scheduler or a marketplace

A scheduler such as Calendly is built around event types on a person's booking page. On paid plans it takes Stripe or PayPal payments with a price per event type. It suits a fixed session with one person more than a room with several prices and regulars.

A marketplace such as Peerspace or Tagvenue lists your space next to many others and takes a commission on each booking that comes through it. It brings people who would not have found you otherwise, while the client books and pays on the marketplace. A studio can use one alongside its own booking site.

How to choose

If your own people book shared space, stay with Skedda. If you run a venue and want Skedda's ecosystem with payments, look at AllBooked. If you run a podcast studio built around setups, guests and file delivery, compare Podyx; if your work starts with a quote and a deposit, compare Sonido. If you rent rooms by the hour to clients who book and pay on your own site, often outside staffed hours, compare Ruumio.

Whichever you shortlist, set up one real room with its hours, prices and cancellation policy during the trial, then make a test booking, pay, cancel and look at the refund and the invoice. That tells you more than any feature list.

Questions