Booking tools you rent by the month have a habit of owning the thing they were hired to help with: your availability lives in their system, your customer list lives in their system, and their branding sits in the middle of your page.
A booking system built into your own site does not. You set the hours, the capacity and the closures. What comes in is yours, and it sits alongside the bookings you took over the phone rather than in a separate list nobody remembers to check.
That last part is the one most systems get wrong. A staff member looking at the day needs the whole day, the online bookings and the ones taken at the counter both, or they will end up keeping a paper diary as well, and then the paper diary is the real system.
How it works
One sheet for the day
Bookings from the website and bookings taken on the phone in the same place, so what is in front of your staff is the whole room.
Your hours, your capacity
Opening hours per day, plus one-off changes for the dates you are closed or fully committed. Set by you, in a form, whenever.
Confirmation the customer trusts
An immediate confirmation with the details they gave, so nobody is left wondering whether the form went through.
No per-booking fee
It is part of your site. It does not charge you a slice of each booking, and it does not put someone else's brand in front of your customer at the moment they commit.
What it costs
Most studios want $5,000 to $15,000 before they start. I don't.
A custom-built website, hosted, looked after and kept working, for one monthly fee, with nothing to pay upfront.
Starter
from$249a month NZD + GST
under $60 a week
A site that explains your business and brings you enquiries.
A custom-built site, written for your business, usually five to eight pages
Hosting, your web address and the padlock in the address bar, all set up
Built for a phone first, because that is where your visitors are
An enquiry form that comes straight to you
Google Business Profile set up, so you turn up in the map results
Hours, prices, photos and anything else that changes, edited by you, from a phone
Up to ten content changes a month, done by me
Professional
from$449a month NZD + GST
under $110 a week
A site that runs part of your business.
Everything in Starter
An ordering or booking system on your own site, with no commission on anything
Unlimited content changes done by me: text, images, new sections, layout
Ongoing search work: the site tuned for what people near you type into Google
Your Google Business Profile looked after, not just set up
A short note each month on who visited and what they did
First in the queue when you need something
Nearly everyone pays exactly the figure above. "From" is there for the rare site that is genuinely bigger than the plan: a second language, a dozen extra pages, a second system. You'd know that in our first conversation, before anything is built.
No contract. Cancel any month. You stay because the site is working, not because you're locked in.
You pay nothing while the site is being built. The first payment is on the day it goes live, and each payment covers the month ahead, the same way Netflix or Spotify bills you.
After twelve months on a plan, the site itself is yours to take anywhere. Your words, photographs and customers' details are yours from day one.
Which one is yours depends on whether the site needs to do something, like take an order or hold a booking, or simply explain something. Most businesses know which they are. If you don't, that's the first thing we'd talk about.
You see a first version within two working days. The free mockup is exactly that. Most sites are live in around three to five weeks. Ordering, booking, anything that does more than show information takes longer, and I'll tell you which one yours is after our first conversation.
You need it live next week. Good work takes the time it takes, and I would rather say no than hand you something rushed with your name on it.
You want to pay once and never think about it again. This works because the site keeps being looked after. If you'd rather own a finished thing outright from day one, an agency is the better fit.
You would rather hand over a brief and not think about it again. This works because we talk, and if that sounds like overhead we will both find it frustrating.
See it working
Not a mockup and not a list of logos. The systems described above, running, and open for you to try.
The person who answers the phone is the person who builds the site.
Nothing is relayed, nothing is handed down to somebody you have not met, and there is no second person to re-explain your business to a fortnight later.
I've been building websites since my second-to-last year of high school, through three years of university and two in a corporate web team. Nuri Studio is the first time the name on the door is mine.
I work from Christchurch, in English and Korean, and almost entirely online. A video call to start, then email and messages while it's built, so where you are has never changed how it goes.
A small studio, one pair of hands, working directly with the person whose name is on the door.
Questions
Can staff add a phone booking?
Yes, and this is the point. Online and phone bookings go into the same day sheet. A system that only shows half the bookings gets replaced by a paper diary within a week.
Does it work for something other than a restaurant?
The demonstration above is a restaurant because that is what it was built for, but the shape is the same for a clinic, a salon or a workshop: hours, availability, one-off closures, and a confirmed booking on a sheet someone reads each morning.
Can I still use my existing booking tool?
If it works, keep it. This is for the case where the fees, the branding or the fact that your customer list is not yours have stopped being acceptable.
