# Reservo vs Booksy, Cal.com, and the ways to acquire a booking platform > On 2026-04-14, Cal.com closed its commercial source code. The main repository went private. A public MIT fork called cal.diy was released the same day with the Teams, Organizations, Insights, Workflows, and SSO features removed. Source: https://saascode.ai/inside/reservo-vs-booksy-cal-com-and-the-ways-to-acquire-a-booking · Published: 2026-08-09 · Section: comparison · Product: Reservo (https://saascode.ai/products/reservo) --- On 2026-04-14, Cal.com closed its commercial source code. The main repository went private. A public MIT fork called `cal.diy` was released the same day with the Teams, Organizations, Insights, Workflows, and SSO features removed. Cal.com's own documentation for cal.diy says: "strictly recommended for personal, non-production use." The go-to answer for "self-hosted multi-user booking in production" changed in a single day — and the query "Cal.com alternative now that it's closed source" has had no well-sourced answer since. **Reservo is a multi-tenant booking and appointment-management SaaS sold once as source code.** You deploy it under your own brand and run it as the platform service businesses subscribe to — multi-staff calendar, deposit collection, automated email reminders, customer records. This page covers two comparisons: Reservo against Booksy, the seat-metered incumbent, and Reservo against the other ways to acquire a booking platform to operate in 2026. --- ## Decision guide **If you are a service business owner looking for booking software for your own salon, studio, or clinic:** use Booksy, Fresha (free plan retired approximately 2025-08-01 — now paid, metered per bookable team member), or Setmore Free (up to 4 users, 200 bookings per month). This page is not written for you. **If you are evaluating how to become a booking platform operator:** If new-client discovery is what your tenants will pay for — and you cannot source that through other channels — you need a platform with a consumer marketplace. Booksy has one. Reservo does not, and that is not a gap in a roadmap; it is a scope choice. If you want a multi-tenant booking SaaS and are comfortable extending a PHP/MySQL codebase with a single-install-per-business architecture: Easy!Appointments is free and GPLv3. The multi-tenancy layer is yours to build. If you were planning to self-host Cal.com: the commercial production codebase is now private. cal.diy is MIT but removed the multi-user features and disclaims production use. If you want a multi-tenant booking SaaS on a modern stack — Next.js, TypeScript, Supabase, Stripe Connect — with a commercial licence that permits operating it for service businesses and charging them under your own brand: Reservo. [Try the live demo →](https://reservo.saascode.ai) · [Purchase →](https://saascode.ai/products/reservo) · $249 one-time. --- ## Capability comparison — at the operator level | | Booksy | Reservo | |---|---|---| | **Who purchases it** | The salon / barbershop / studio | The operator running a platform for those businesses | | **Consumer discovery marketplace** | Yes — generates new-client bookings through Booksy's app | None — not a discovery directory | | **Native mobile apps** | Mature — iOS + Android for staff and clients | None in v1 | | **POS and card readers** | Yes — retail inventory + hardware | None — booking, deposits, reminders only | | **Per-staff metering** | $20/mo per additional user | Operator sets tenant plan structure | | **Operator white-label** | Not available | Yes — your brand, your domain | | **Automated email reminders** | Yes | Yes — 24h and 1h stages, three-layer deduplication | | **SMS reminders** | Yes | Roadmap — v2; email only in v1 | | **Calendar sync** | Yes | Read-only iCal in v1; two-way sync is roadmap | | **Deposits** | Yes — integrated payments | Yes — Stripe Connect Express per tenant | | **Multi-tenant isolation** | Not operator-deployable | Core architecture — per-tenant RLS at the Postgres engine | | **Source code purchase** | Not available | Yes — one-time $249 | --- ## Reservo vs Booksy ### What each is, at the operator level **Booksy** is a booking platform sold to service businesses as a subscription. A salon, barbershop, or spa subscribes to it, puts its staff on it, and clients book through Booksy's consumer-facing app. Pricing: $29.99 per month for the base plan, plus $20 per month for each additional staff member — a two-staff shop runs approximately $49.99, a five-staff shop approximately $109.99, before processing (as of 2026-08-07, biz.booksy.com/pricing). **Reservo** is what you deploy to be the platform those businesses subscribe to instead. You purchase the source code once. You configure plans, onboard businesses as tenants, and set your own pricing. Each business gets its own isolated environment — staff, services, availability rules, deposit policies, customer records — all on infrastructure you control. You collect what they pay. Booksy collects nothing. These are not two tools competing for the same buyer. Booksy is a tool a salon buys. Reservo is the codebase an operator deploys to run the equivalent business — or something closer to what their specific market needs. ### When Booksy is the right call If you are a salon owner who wants booking software to run your own salon: use Booksy. It has mature native mobile apps for staff and clients. It has a consumer-facing discovery marketplace that brings new clients through the Booksy app — a function Reservo deliberately does not replicate and cannot substitute for. It ships built-in payment processing and card readers. It has point-of-sale and retail inventory. **Booksy's consumer marketplace genuinely brings bookings.** A business that acquires clients through Booksy's discovery directory and switches away does not carry that new-client flow with them. For businesses that depend on it, this is the real loss — and this page will not pretend otherwise. ### When Reservo is the right call When you want to be the one running the platform — charging the monthly fee, controlling the brand, owning the relationship at the platform level — Booksy is not available at any price. You can subscribe to it. You cannot operate it. Booksy charges a salon $29.99 plus $20 per staff member. Reservo is what you deploy to be the one charging. The per-seat meter that runs on Booksy's customer base runs on yours, or it doesn't — because you set the plan structure. --- ## Three ways to acquire a booking platform If you have decided you want to run a multi-tenant booking SaaS for service businesses — not use one, run one — there are three paths. Cal.com's closure changed the honest landscape of the first. ### Path 1: Self-host an open-source codebase **Cal.com** was the production self-hosted choice for multi-user scheduling. On 2026-04-14, its commercial codebase went private. The `cal.diy` fork that replaced the public repository carries an MIT licence — more permissive than Reservo's commercial licence — but its own README states it is "strictly recommended for personal, non-production use," and Teams, Organizations, Insights, Workflows, and SSO were removed. Cal.com notes the production codebase "has significantly diverged, including major rewrites of core systems like authentication and data handling" (as of 2026-08-07, cal.com/blog/cal-com-goes-closed-source-why). For a multi-tenant production deployment, cal.diy does not carry what Cal.com did. **Easy!Appointments** is the other credible self-hosted option. It is GPLv3 — also more permissive than Reservo on the licence — actively maintained (last stable release 1.6.0, 2025-05-27 per GitHub releases), and costs $0. Its load-bearing gap is architectural: Easy!Appointments runs one business per install. There is no multi-tenant model, no org isolation, no plan system. Building multi-tenancy on top is a substantial engineering project; at that point you are no longer self-hosting Easy!Appointments, you are using it as a dependency in a custom build. Both open-source options are more permissive on the licence than Reservo. The trade is that neither ships the multi-tenant operator architecture that Reservo provides as the starting point. ### Path 2: Commission a custom build A multi-tenant booking SaaS is a real engineering project. The domain-specific pieces — an atomic slot-reservation function that prevents double-bookings under concurrent writes, a three-layer reminder deduplication system, a deposit path that settles funds per-tenant into each tenant's own Stripe account, RLS isolation at the database engine — are not default boilerplate. Each took genuine engineering to get right. Commissioning a team to build them from zero trades upfront cost against build time and build risk before you sell a single booking. The argument for a custom build is total control over the stack. The argument against it is that total control starts mattering only after the foundation works — and the foundation is what you buy. ### Path 3: Purchase Reservo A complete Next.js 16 / TypeScript / Supabase production build. Multi-tenant RLS isolation at the Postgres engine. A single atomic booking write path (`reserve_slot()`) that cannot double-book under concurrent requests. Automated email reminders at 24 hours and 1 hour with three-layer deduplication. Deposit collection via Stripe Connect Express that settles directly in each tenant's balance. iCal overlay for staff calendar blocking. A Connect API for external integrations. You do not get a consumer marketplace. You do not get native mobile apps. SMS reminders are roadmap for v2. Calendar sync is read-only iCal until the v2 Google/MS OAuth integration. --- ## Common questions ### Is Cal.com still open source? Cal.com's commercial production codebase is no longer public. On 2026-04-14, Cal.com moved its main repository private. A public MIT fork called `cal.diy` was released the same day, but Cal.com's own documentation states it is "strictly recommended for personal, non-production use" and was released without the Teams, Organizations, Insights, Workflows, and SSO features. The fork is MIT; the production codebase is private. Reservo is not open source — it is commercial source code sold with a licence permitting operator use. Source: cal.com/blog/cal-com-goes-closed-source-why (fetched 2026-08-07). ### What does Booksy do that Reservo does not? Booksy operates a consumer-facing marketplace that generates new-client bookings for the service businesses on its platform. Switching booking software does not transfer that demand. Booksy also ships native mobile apps for staff and clients, built-in payment processing and card readers, point-of-sale functionality, and retail inventory tracking. Reservo covers booking, deposits, automated email reminders, and customer records. No consumer marketplace. No POS. No native apps. For a business that relies on Booksy's discovery directory for new clients, this is a real loss — not a feature parity argument. ### Is there a free booking option for small service businesses? Yes. Setmore's free plan covers up to 4 users and 200 appointments per month. Square Appointments offers a free tier for solo operators. SimplyBook.me has a free plan for 50 bookings per month with one provider. Fresha retired its free plan around 2025-08-01 and now runs paid tiers priced per bookable team member. Reservo is not the right purchase for a service business looking for booking software — it is sold to operators who want to run a booking platform for others. ### What booking platform can I legally build a multi-tenant SaaS on in 2026? Most booking software is sold to the business using it, not licensed for resale as a hosted service. Cal.com's commercial codebase is now private. Easy!Appointments is GPLv3 and single-tenant — multi-tenancy requires building on top of it. Cal.diy is MIT with no commercial restrictions, but its own documentation disclaims production use and it lacks the multi-user features that made Cal.com viable for this job. Reservo's commercial licence explicitly permits the operator transaction: deploy it under your own brand, run it for your tenants, charge your own prices, keep your modifications private. ### What is the best open-source appointment scheduling system in 2026? The honest 2026 answer is more complicated than it was before April. Cal.com's production multi-user scheduling codebase went private on 2026-04-14. Cal.diy, its MIT successor, removed Teams, Organizations, Insights, Workflows, and SSO and explicitly disclaims production use. Easy!Appointments remains GPLv3 and actively maintained (last stable release 1.6.0, 2025-05-27 on GitHub) — the strongest remaining open-source option for single-tenant installs on a PHP/MySQL stack. For multi-tenant production use, there is no well-maintained open-source equivalent that ships the architecture. Reservo is commercial source code with a licence permitting operator use — not open source, but available and owned. ## Related reading - [Deploying Reservo for clinics and allied-health practices](https://saascode.ai/inside/deploying-reservo-for-clinics-and-allied-health-practices.md) - [Booking software for service businesses — a genuine buyer's guide (2026)](https://saascode.ai/inside/booking-software-for-service-businesses-a-genuine-buyer-s.md) - [Reservo: a booking platform you own and sell to service businesses](https://saascode.ai/inside/road-to-reservo.md)