It’s the early days of 2024, and you’re getting back to the grind of running your coworking space. The problem is you’re not keeping your New Year’s resolution. You know, the one where you resolved to work smarter, not harder.
Unfortunately, you’re still managing your coworking space’s operations using a mix of Google Sheets coupled with a pen and paper. You’re the first to admit that this approach could be improved.
Luckily, you’ve arrived at the right place. We love reviewing coworking space booking software, so we’ve done the hard work for you.
In this article, we share our top three coworking space booking software.
Why You Need Booking Software For Your Coworking Space
Assigning desks, offices, and meeting rooms, in addition to managing memberships, are major tasks you’ll need to complete flawlessly. Why not use booking software that does all this?
Reason #1: Booking Software Does More
Most booking software performs other functions, too. It can also take payments, manage your bookkeeping, produce analytics reports, and much much more. Investing in booking software will make your job easier and free up time so you can focus on getting more customers through the door and keeping them happy.
Reason #2: The Kids Love It
Many people who use coworking spaces are Millennials and Generation Z. This crowd prefers online comms instead of talking on the phone. They’ll be more likely to use coworking spaces that leverage booking software, too. If you don’t use booking software, you won’t appeal to this lot and potentially miss out.
How We Picked Our Top Three Platforms
A major problem with finding booking software is pinpointing the one that fits your coworking business. But a Google search makes this a time-consuming ordeal, as you’ll find dozens of coworking space booking software options with different functions.
We kept the following three functions in mind when narrowing down our list:
- Simple Booking and Scheduling: Good coworking booking software must assign desks, offices, and meeting rooms with unmatched ease.
Scheduling and booking are arguably the most important tasks a coworking space must perform. So, we selected booking software options that have top-notch booking and scheduling tools.
- Payments Processing: Many customers will prefer to pay for a desk or office directly online. We selected booking software that is integrated with popular payment systems like Stripe, Square, and PayPal.
Customers will love the convenience of paying on your booking app. Cash is out, cards are in.
- Ease of Use: Your booking software must be user-friendly. Complex and frustrating software will slow your operations down and irritate your team. The booking software we chose has a low learning curve, so your team can focus on working with customers instead of trying to figure out the new tech.
Our Top Three Platforms
- Adalo, for custom building your own coworking space’s app to your specifications and needs
- Archie, for meeting the challenges of medium to large coworking spaces
- Optix, for a comprehensive all-in-one solution to streamline all operations of a coworking space
#1 Adalo
Adalo is an app builder that gives you maximum design freedom to create your own booking app. Hold on, you say - don’t you need to know programming and coding and have technical capabilities to create your own app? Not with Adalo.
Featuring an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, Adalo lets you craft your coworking space booking app to your exact needs. Add or remove features and functions as you go. With Adalo, you’ll have the power to tailor a booking app for your coworking space that reflects your brand perfectly. Your customers will be impressed with how sleek your app looks.
How Adalo Will Benefit Your Coworking Space
- When you build your booking system with Adalo, you’ll get much more than just a booking system. Adalo has over 5,500 integrations. For instance, you can connect your app to your Quickbooks account to simplify your bookkeeping or why not build out a messaging system to relay important information to your customers with Adalo’s Twilio integration?
Adalo’s integrations allow you to add an almost endless number of tools to your booking system. These will help you easily run operations beyond booking.
- Don’t worry about getting stuck building out your app. Adalo has a massive community of users who will be more than happy to help you out. Get into contact with seasoned app builders on Adalo’s Community Forum.
To date, over one million apps have been built using Adalo. Why not contribute to the massive community of makers?
- After you finish building your app, Adalo lets you publish it in the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and on your very own website. Such easy access gives you the ability to onboard customers in no time.
Pricing
Adalo’s pricing starts at $36/month.
#2 Archie
If you’re a large coworking company with multiple locations, Archie is a great choice. Archie automates many tasks that take over large organizations, like invoicing, renewal notifications, and other time-consuming jobs.
By executing tasks like this, your team will have more free time to attend to more important matters, like getting to know your customers and creating a warm community.
How Archie Will Benefit Your Coworking Space
- Archie comes with the standout ability to access control systems through its app. When your customers log in, they can unlock doors, immediately connect to wifi, access printers, and much more.
This feature simplifies the basic controls found in every coworking space. Your customers will find printing off documents without assistance and accessing the office for their 10 o’clock meeting super convenient.
- The booking system works like a community-building application. Customers can see who is using certain offices and desks at specific periods of time. This feature helps prevent head-butting over spaces. Who doesn’t want a peaceful working environment?
Archie’s booking system also works as a social network, as customers can create profiles that showcase skills, careers, and interests. Your customers can use this to network, make friends, and advance their careers.
- Rest assured about any sensitive information you upload or transmit through Archie. Archie boasts robust security, as it’s hosted on the ultra-safe Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and is ISO 27001, the international standard for keeping data safe from theft. When you store any data with Archie, it will be in good hands.
Pricing
Archie’s coworking plan starts at $159/month, covering one location and 100 active users. If you have more than one location and over 100 active users, make sure to contact Archie for pricing.
#3 Optix
Optix is a comprehensive and streamlined coworking management system. Your staff will also love the super user-friendly, low-learning curve interface that comes with it. It also includes several integrations to apps like Kisi and Salto for access control, allowing you to manage your coworking business remotely.
How Optix Will Benefit Your Coworking Space
- Want to know your most popular membership types, the most busy hours of your day, and the most popular meeting rooms? Optix’s robust analytics feature will organize, analyze, and interpret your business's operational and financial data.
Use the results to make informed decisions about expanding your space or offering discount periods. This feature can enable you to make solid business choices.
- If your coworking space rents out more than rooms and desks, Optix might be a great solution. Lend customers tools like microphones, 3D printers, and projectors using Opitx’s Assignment feature.
Customers will love the convenience that comes with being able to rent that expensive video recorder for one-time use directly from you. You’ll love the extra revenue stream that comes with this feature, too.
- Optix provides a marketplace platform for selling virtually anything to your customers. Offer them branded merchandise and even food and beverages right from your Optix account.
Being able to purchase a cup of coffee straight from your app at a price cheaper than the cafe down the street is a major selling point for any business.
Pricing
If you’re a small coworking business with only 50 users, Optix offers an Essentials Plan for $159/month. Coworking businesses with up to 100 users need to fork out $239/month for the Pro Plan.
When you get over 100 users, contact Optix directly for pricing.
Conclusion
After you pick your booking software, let all your customers know you’re using a new system. They’ll most likely need to download the app to their phone and get in the habit of using a system. This might take a little bit of time, but your customers will appreciate the ease booking software brings to their experience. You’ll appreciate the simplicity it brings to managing your coworking space.
When you use booking software, you’ll have more time to work on expanding your business or enhancing your coworking space to give it a high-tech edge over the competition. Using a coworking space booking system can change your operations for the better!
