An online booking system in Ireland is a subscription you rent, a plugin on your own website, or software built for your business. Rent one if you sell fixed slots at a fixed price. Build your own once a platform takes commission on every booking, or once your pricing, billing or customer data no longer fits its settings. Our custom software development in Ireland page covers how a build is scoped and priced.
What types of online booking system can an Irish business use?
There are three routes. Each price is the vendor’s published price as of September 2026.
Scroll the table sideways for the full detail
| Route | Examples | Published price | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Square Appointments, Fresha, Calendly | Square: €0, €19 or €49 + VAT a month per location. Fresha: €14.95 a month for one person, €9.95 per team member, plus VAT. Calendly: free, or from $10 per seat a month | Appointments, classes and calls at a fixed price |
| Plugin on your own site | WooCommerce Bookings | About €220 a year, on a WordPress and WooCommerce site you already run | Bookings sold beside products, on your own domain |
| Custom build | A booking engine written for your business | Custom software projects at Loco start from €10,000 ex VAT | Commission-heavy volumes, unusual pricing, more than one company or currency |
A subscription is live in a day and the vendor maintains it. A plugin keeps the booking on your own website, with slots, staff or rooms, and Google Calendar sync configured in WordPress. A custom build follows your own rules, and you own the code and the booking data.
How much does an online booking system cost in Ireland?
An online booking system costs three things: the subscription, any commission or ticket fee, and card processing. The subscription is usually the smallest of the three.
Commission. Marketplace platforms charge for the customers they send you. Fresha lists a 20% one-time commission on each new client who finds you through its marketplace, with a minimum of €5 per client (as of September 2026). A new client booking a €60 treatment costs €12. Ticketing platforms charge the organiser a fee on each paid ticket.
Card processing. You pay this on every route, including your own build. Stripe’s Irish pricing is 1.5% + €0.25 for standard EEA cards and 2.5% + €0.25 for UK cards, as of September 2026. A €100 booking paid with a standard Irish card costs €1.75 to process. Fresha lists its own payment processing at 1.29% + €0.20 per transaction.
The build. A custom system replaces the commission with a one-off price and a running cost for hosting and maintenance. Divide the build price by the fees you pay per booking to find the break-even point. As an illustration, a €10,000 build pays for itself after 2,500 bookings if platform fees come to €4 a booking, and after 1,000 bookings at €10. Our guide to what a website costs in Ireland sets out where booking systems sit among the other price bands.
When is a booking subscription enough?
A subscription is enough when your booking is a slot, a person and a price. Stay on one if:
- you sell appointments, classes or calls with one price each;
- one company takes the money, in one currency;
- the platform’s marketplace brings you customers you would not otherwise reach;
- the monthly fee is a small share of what you take in bookings.
A physiotherapist, a salon or a consultant selling paid calls is well served here. Calendly, for example, collects payment at booking through Stripe or PayPal on its Standard plan and above (as of September 2026).
When should you build your own booking system?
Build your own when the fees or the limits of a rented system cost more than the software would. Four signs point that way.
- Commission grows with every booking. A percentage of each sale is cheap at low volume and expensive once the business is established.
- Your pricing has rules. Group rates, early-bird periods, per-person and per-day options, or VAT that changes with the country of the event.
- Booking is one step in a longer process. Customers search availability on a map, log in to an account, or book several people at once.
- The data has to go somewhere. Orders need to reach your accounts package, your CRM or a report, without someone re-typing them.
A plugin often covers the second sign. A custom build covers all four, because the rules are written for one business. Associations face the same choice for sign-up and renewals, which membership websites in Ireland covers.
How do deposits and card payments work with Stripe?
Card payments for a booking go through a payment provider such as Stripe, and the money settles into your own Stripe account. A deposit is a part payment taken at booking, with the balance collected later or on arrival. Payment gateways for Irish websites compares Stripe’s fees with Global Payments, Elavon and Shopify Payments.
On a subscription, the vendor decides which payment providers and deposit rules you can use. On your own build, you set the deposit amount, the cancellation window and the refund rule, and the booking record and the payment record sit in one place. That makes refunds and month-end reconciliation quicker, because the order and the money match line for line.
How Loco builds a booking system
We start with the booking flow on paper: who books, what they choose, who is billed, and where the order goes afterwards. The price and timeline are fixed from that plan before any code is written.
Loco Digital built the booking and payments engine for Lumenia Consulting’s ERP HEADtoHEAD events in 2026. The Dublin and Birmingham events are run by separate companies, each with its own currency, VAT regime and Stripe account. Ticketing platforms take a cut of every seat, and standard plugins assume one merchant account per site. The engine we built on WooCommerce and Stripe does the following:
- takes a booking in four steps: places, the buyer’s details, attendees, then review and pay;
- applies group rates automatically and shows the net price and VAT up front;
- is set up to bill each booking from the right company, in its own currency;
- records every booking as a WooCommerce order that Lumenia can report on and refund.
Lumenia pays no third-party ticketing fees.
Read the ERP HEADtoHEAD case study
For Trident Holiday Homes in 2024 we designed and built a holiday-home website with map-and-filter search, and availability and reserving on the property page from Trident’s existing reservation system, delivered through our partner Altitude. Trident sells its cottages, lodges and apartments on its own site.
Read the Trident Holiday Homes case study
Can a grant pay for a booking system?
A grant can part-fund a new booking subscription, and it cannot fund a custom build. The Local Enterprise Office Grow Digital Voucher pays 50% of eligible costs, from €500 to €5,000, towards software subscriptions that are new to the business, for up to one year. Custom or bespoke software is excluded (as of September 2026). Our Grow Digital Voucher guide has the eligibility rules.
