Setmore Buyer's Checklist: 66 Checks Before You Upgrade

How to use this checklist

Work through it before you upgrade, or before you move your business onto Setmore. Most checks take a minute. Two take longer, and they are the ones that cannot be fixed later: the Setmore Health decision, made when the account is created, and SMS coverage, which decides whether Pro's main upgrade works for your customers at all. Do those two first. The rest are grouped by decision area, from what you will pay to what you test on launch day, so skip any area that does not apply to you.

Count calendars before you price anything

Setmore bills Pro per user, and "Each staff calendar counts as a user even if the owner/assignee does not have login permission." ^[1] That number, not your headcount, sets the bill. A spa with four therapists, two treatment rooms and a sauna set up as calendars has seven billed users, not four. It pays $420 a year on annual billing instead of $240, by our arithmetic, so the room calendars alone cost $180 a year. Often a service limit does the same job for free.

• List every person who takes bookings, then every room, chair or van you model as its own calendar. Each one is a billed user on Pro.
• Ask whether each room calendar needs to exist before you pay for it.
• Decide whether four users is enough. Free covers up to four team profiles, each with a login, calendar and Booking Page. If your count is four or fewer and you need no texts, start on Free.
• Price Pro on annual billing: $5 a user a month, or $60 a user a year. Six calendars cost $360 a year.

Pick the billing period and the place you pay

Monthly billing is where teams quietly overpay. Pro costs $12 a user on monthly billing, or $144 a user a year, which is 2.4 times the annual price. Over a year the gap is $84 per user, so a six-person team that stays on monthly billing out of habit pays $504 more than it needs to, enough to cover more than eight additional users on annual billing. Use monthly only while you test, or for a seasonal business. Where you upgrade matters just as much, because the refund only covers the web.

• Upgrade in the web app. The 30-day money-back guarantee covers only web upgrades, not App Store or Google Play purchases ^[2]. App-store subscriptions must be managed and refunded in the store.
• Know the app-store bands before you buy on a phone: Premium for one user at $11.99 a month, Pro for two to four at $34.99, Pro+ for five or six at $49.99 and Pro Max for seven to ten at $89.99. Bands only pay off at their top, and prices vary by region.
• Put the 30-day deadline in your calendar. To get the refund you must downgrade and ask by email within 30 days of signing up for Pro. Refunds take three to five business days.
• Set a reminder before each annual renewal. The Pro help article allows a refund on annual plans only when requested in the same month as the upgrade or renewal, with no partial refunds otherwise.
• Keep the confirmation email. The Terms of Use call subscription payments non-refundable, with exceptions case by case.

Nonprofits and Enterprise

Nonprofits with documentation can get special pricing on annual plans, but no percentage is published, so ask by chat and get the figure in writing. Enterprise brings a key account manager, one bill per account regardless of staff count, single sign-on across locations and setups built for GDPR and HIPAA. Ask for a quote if you have a dozen or more users or several sites. A business with forty staff calendars, which would cost $2,400 a year on annual Pro by our arithmetic, has a concrete number to bring to that call. Our Setmore pricing guide covers the plans in full.

Map services, classes and booking rules

Before you touch the Booking Page, write the business down: each service with its length, its price and the staff who deliver it. A service only becomes bookable once team members are assigned to it, so an unassigned service stays invisible to customers. Order services on the web or desktop, because the mobile app cannot reorder them. Then decide the rules that govern when and how people book. Two of the most useful, recurring appointments and per-service hours, sit on Pro.

• Classes run at fixed times with several seats, close when full, and are on both plans. The Zapier integration handles service appointments, not class bookings, and multi-service booking does not cover classes.
• Recurring appointments need Pro, and payment on a series is logged one appointment at a time. If most clients come weekly, this is a reason to upgrade.
• Lead time and cancellation windows control how far ahead customers can book and how late they can cancel. Decide both before you publish the page.
• Booking policy: custom policies are on both plans. Add a terms checkbox and write the no-show rule in plain words.
• Per-service availability is a Pro feature, set only by admins and staff with permission to manage services. Use it when a long treatment only runs on certain days.

Plan the Booking Page and the channels that feed it

The Booking Page shows services, availability, team and prices, and it can stand alone as a website with a custom URL. Each team member gets a personal booking link too, so decide which link goes on your business card. Free keeps the Setmore name on the page, and removing it needs Pro. For a clinic or law office that sends the link to every client, that can be worth one Pro user. The channels below are on both plans, so they cost nothing but setup time.

• Branded app and QR code: customers can save your Booking Page to their home screen like an app, and a custom QR code opens it in one scan. Print the code for the front desk.
• Reserve with Google adds a Book button to your Google Business Profile in more than 80 countries. Retail cannot use it, financial services only in the US and Canada, and the connection cannot be made from Android.
• Book Now buttons work on Facebook, Instagram and websites.
• The website widget works with Wix, Weebly and WordPress. Google Analytics does not record events from an embedded widget, because the iframe is third-party.
• Staff logins and permissions: create logins before launch. Levels run from full admin to a standard role that sees only its own calendar, or no access at all. Give the minimum each person needs.
• Multiple locations under one login is a Pro feature in early release that support has to enable, and HIPAA accounts are not supported yet. Chains should ask about Enterprise instead.

Reminders and texts: check the countries first

Free sends one reminder email per booking and Pro sends two, and customers can reschedule or cancel from their emails. The day before suits most services. Texts are the bigger decision. SMS reminders are Pro only, and each Pro team member gets 500 SMS credits a month, with more for sale in the app. If your customers ignore email, texts are the main reason to pay. If a no-show costs a salon $60, a four-person team needs to prevent only four no-shows a year for Pro's $240 annual bill to pay for itself, by our arithmetic.

The catch is geography. Texts cannot be sent to many countries, including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, India, Mexico and Ireland, and customers there get email instead ^[3]. A business in Ireland or Germany would be paying for Pro's main upgrade without being able to use it. Run these checks before you pay for texts:

• Test a text to a local number during the 30-day refund window, and downgrade if the message never arrives.
• Ask which credit rule applies. The pricing page gives 500 credits per team member a month, while the fair-use article says there is no fixed limit and usage is monitored.
• Write reminders without a URL. Links are not allowed in SMS reminders, and texts may only be appointment reminders, never marketing.
• Check class reminders. SMS reminders for classes are only available to Pro customers in the US, Australia, the UK and Canada; studios elsewhere rely on email.

Payments: processor, deposits and payouts

Square, Stripe, PayPal and LawPay all connect on both plans, and Setmore takes no cut. Pick by where you take money: Square or Stripe for the counter, LawPay for a law office. Then run your average ticket through each rate. Stripe charges 2.9% plus 30 cents in the US, and LawPay 2.95% plus $0.20 for Mastercard, Visa and Discover. On a $300 legal consultation that is $9.05 against $9.00, by our arithmetic, so a law office should pick its processor for how it handles client funds rather than for the headline rate.

Deposits are Pro only, as a fixed amount or a percentage, and one setting covers every service. Setmore does not refund deposits automatically after a cancellation, so decide your refund rule in advance. The single setting forces a trade-off. A salon offering a $25 trim and a $250 color treatment must pick a percentage, which may be small, or a fixed amount, which may be too much for the trim. Full prepayment often works better. Free can take it at booking through any processor.

• Tap to Pay turns a phone into a contactless terminal through Stripe, with no extra fee from Setmore, Apple or Google, in certain countries only.
• Cash goes through the cash register with receipts, so every cash or card payment appears in one history.
• Payment links need Pro and Stripe, only one can be active per appointment, and they cannot be emailed from Setmore directly.
• Promo codes are Pro only, need a payment provider and can be created only by admins. One code fits a booking, and it cannot be tied to one service or customer.
• Payouts from Stripe arrive every Monday at no charge. Instant Payouts cost 1.5% in the US: $75 on $5,000 of weekly takings, or $3,900 a year if you pull instantly every week, by our arithmetic.

Calendars, video and integrations

Free syncs one way to Google, Office 365 or Apple, while Pro's 2-way sync imports outside events so they block the Booking Page. On Free, a stylist who adds a dentist appointment to Google Calendar still looks available at that hour. Block the time inside Setmore too, or plan for Pro. Before you switch on 2-way sync, make sure Setmore and Google share a time zone; only appointments booked after activation export. Office 365 2-way sync skips classes and recurring events.

Video needs a check of its own. Setmore retired Teleport, so choose Google Meet or Zoom; each team member needs a Zoom ID for Zoom. The Teleport notice says Google Meet is now free, with Zoom on Pro, but the pricing grid marks video appointments as Pro only. Ask support which applies before promising video to clients on Free.

• CRMs: Setmore sends new contacts to Salesforce, Keap, Zoho CRM, Insightly and Clio. Only Zoho CRM offers an optional two-way sync, so treat the rest as feeds.
• Mailchimp receives only default fields such as name, email, phone and address, not custom fields.
• Zapier is listed on both plans, but appointment triggers need Pro, and zaps fire on service appointments, not class bookings.
• The API needs Pro, uses OAuth 2.0 and is requested by email. There is no sandbox, so use a separate test account. Most small businesses never need it.

Decide on Setmore Health before you create the account

Setmore Health must be chosen when the account is created, and an existing account cannot be converted ^[4]. It requires Pro. A clinic that opens a regular account to try Setmore and then decides it needs a BAA has to start again with a new Setmore Health account, re-entering services, staff and customers. That is why this check comes before any setup work. Setmore Health includes a standard Business Associate Agreement, but the Terms of Use say Setmore is "not currently HIPAA compliant". Get the signed BAA and its scope before booking patients.

Then map what it switches off. Setmore Health turns off classes and customer reviews, strips personal details from notifications and removes cancel and reschedule links. Setmore says Zoom is not HIPAA compliant, and multiple locations are not supported for HIPAA accounts. Plan around each gap before launch. Our Setmore for healthcare guide walks through the clinic setup.

Reviews and account security

Setmore reviews switch on at sign-up, and new accounts auto-publish them; owners can unpublish offensive ones. Automatic Google review requests after each appointment need Pro. For a salon or clinic that lives on Google ratings, this alone can justify one Pro user. On security, switch on two-factor authentication from desktop or web, and it then applies on all devices. New accounts that signed up by email after 23 February 2026 must verify the address, Pro users too. Do it on day one.

Launch day: import, test and know the limits

Customers import from Google or a CSV file in the web app, so clean duplicates first. Customer export produces a CSV sent to the owner's email, and reports download as XLS from the browser only. Before going live, book, reschedule and cancel once as a customer, following the help center's test checklist. Then call or chat at an odd hour. Support is human, around the clock, on every plan, and Pro adds priority and in-app video support. Know the response time before you need it.

Live Receptionist puts people on your phones around the clock in English or Spanish, booking into Setmore. It is listed at $99 a month, US only, with no contract. That is $1,188 a year, by our arithmetic, as much as nearly twenty Pro users on annual billing. Extra minutes cost $2.25 each, and the pages we read do not state the package size. Ask before you sign.

Finally, check what Setmore does not do. There is no waitlist, no packages or memberships, no round-robin assignment and no built-in AI; the Any Team Member option assigns the first available person in your staff ranking instead. PayPal's help says subscriptions and recurring payments are not available. A massage studio that sells ten-session packages or monthly memberships would have to track balances outside Setmore, which is the main reason to compare Setmore alternatives such as Acuity Scheduling or Calendly first.

One last habit protects you later. Older Setmore pages still describe Pro for one or two users, a Team plan and a $9 monthly price, while the pricing page lists only Free and Pro, with unlimited Pro users. When a page disagrees with the pricing page, ask support and save the answer. Those older pages are still live and still indexed.

The bottom line

Most buyers need only five answers: how many calendars, whether texts reach their customers, which processor, whether they need Setmore Health, and whether to pay annually. Get those right and Setmore's Free plan or $5 annual Pro seat will do the rest. Settle Setmore Health and SMS coverage first, then upgrade on the web so the 30-day refund covers your test.