A: Thank you for your feedback! Let me address the comparison:

SimplyBook.me’s Standard plan costs $298.80 + tax annually for 500 bookings, 8 custom features, and 15 employees. By contrast, Trafft’s Scaling plan offers **unlimited** bookings, **unlimited** custom features, and 15 employees for $276 + tax, with 10 SMS credits included monthly (however, I wouldn't focus on our Scaling plan as it's not a part of this AppSumo deal).

Vagaro works in a completely different way where you list your business among others, and it covers mainly the US, Canada, the UK, and some other countries (Trafft operates anywhere). While the platform supports businesses with multiple locations, its pricing model often requires separate subscriptions for each location (Trafft has an unlimited number of Locations in this AppSumo deal). Appointy, on the other hand, is very pricy looking at their website ($49.99/month for 5 users without the ability to customize your SMS templates for this plan - the SMS customization is available in the $79.99/month plan).

On AppSumo, our Tier 2 deal provides unlimited everything for life for just $139 (with only SMS credits being excluded from the deal) while Tiers 3 and up provide a lot more (multiple Tier 2 accounts within a single Agency plan, for multiple clients, so I definitely wouldn't compare our Agency plans with the pricing of competitors you listed).

Regarding SMS, I took a look at SimplyBook.me (as they are the only ones who actually list the SMS pricing) and their pricing can seem lower, but even their support doesn't provide clear details on per-message costs. For example, with 100 credits for $8, messages range from $0.04 to $0.08 depending on usage (0.5 - 1.5 credits per SMS - as per their documentation), so you're able to send out 100 - 200 messages based on this calculation.

We too can say that the price per SMS segment varies per country and the length of the message, but we'll be as transparent as we can so, in Canada, 1 segment (up to 160 characters) costs ~$0.012. With 10 credits (US$10 + tax), you can send ~800 messages if you keep them short and sweet. Going over 160 characters splits the message into more segments but even if you have 300 characters per SMS, that's only 2 segments, so you'd be able to send out around 400 messages with a purchase of 10 credits.

On bookings, SimplyBook.me’s Standard plan allows ~1 booking/day per employee for 15 employees (500 bookings monthly). Scaling that would require extra purchases, making it less practical compared to Trafft, which supports unlimited bookings for all employees.

We typically avoid comparing or undermining our competitors, but in this case, due to the way SMS credit costs are presented, it felt necessary. What may initially seem cheaper often ends up being more expensive in the long run. Their support mentions that SMS credits usually range from 1 to 2 segments, though their article states it could be anywhere from 0.5 to 1.5. I’m not sure exactly how much a single SMS costs, as they advised me to subscribe, purchase SMS credits, send out a message, and then check the cost, which I was reluctant to do. Either way, the cost calculation clearly puts Trafft ahead. The same goes for scalability—unlimited bookings versus limited bookings simply aren't competitive in comparison.

Sorry for the length of my response, but these "small" details are important to both you and us, so they require detailed clarification. If you have other info, based on your personal experience, please feel free to share it with us!