VibeReserve Booking Light vs Yatoon Salon Booking & Appointments

VibeReserve Booking Light is a free, fully-functional appointment booking plugin built for beauty salons, spas, barbershops, wellness centres, clinics, and any service-based business. It ships with a clean admin dashboard and a multi-step booking form for your customers. Let customers book 24/7 from your website and manage everything from one modern dashboard. Everything included (free, unlimited) Multi-step booking form — embedded via shortcode or Gutenberg block Admin dashboard — real-time stats, booking charts and upcoming appointments Unlimited services — add as many services as you need with images, descriptions, pricing, duration and sale prices Unlimited staff — add team members with profiles and weekly schedules Unlimited categories — organise services with custom colours Unlimited locations — manage multiple business locations/branches Booking calendar — interactive calendar view of all appointments Email notifications — automated confirmation emails to customer and admin on every booking Booking management — view, confirm, complete, or cancel bookings Staff roles & access control — assign Admin, Manager, or Staff roles Gutenberg blocks — booking form, services grid, and staff grid blocks Fully responsive — looks great on desktop, tablet and mobile Translation ready — compatible with WPML and Loco Translate Optional premium add-on An optional, separately-distributed premium add-on is available from the author’s website at luminaith.com/vibereserve-booking. The premium add-on adds features that this free plugin does not include (such as online payment gateways, WhatsApp notifications, Google Calendar sync, automated email reminders, blocked dates, customer self-service portal, reviews, revenue reports, iCal export and REST API access). The premium add-on is not required. The free plugin is complete and has no time limits, usage limits, or feature locks. Shortcodes [vibereserve_booking] — full multi-step booking form [vibereserve_services] — services showcase grid (supports category, limit, featured attributes) [vibereserve_staff] — team grid External services This plugin does not connect to any external service by default. All bookings, services, staff and schedules are stored locally in your WordPress database. Emails are sent through your own WordPress site using wp_mail(). The plugin also does not load any JavaScript or CSS from remote CDNs — Chart.js, FullCalendar and Cropper.js are bundled with the plugin and served from your own site.

Run your salon’s bookings, schedules, payments, and customer relationships from WordPress. Yatoon gives salons a polished booking experience for clients and a practical local booking toolkit for the team. Clients choose services, add-ons, professionals, dates, and times on mobile; staff manage the day from WordPress. Try the live booking demo – no account or installation required. Watch the complete mobile booking demo: Built for nail salons, hair salons, barbershops, spas, beauty studios, and other appointment-based businesses. Yatoon has also been used for daily bookings at a real nail salon for more than a year. Local-first workflow: Free keeps scheduling, availability, customer records, and bookings inside WordPress. External payment, calendar, messaging, and platform connections are Pro features. What Free includes Local WordPress scheduling, availability checks, customer records, notifications, and booking management Mobile booking for services, options, professionals, dates, times, customer details, and confirmation Customer self-service for reviewing, rescheduling, cancelling, and rebooking appointments Staff calendar workflows with mobile rescheduling, temporary breaks, shared-resource checks, and capability-based Yatoon roles Services, categories, images, variations, add-ons, pricing, staff qualifications, schedules, breaks, and closed dates Waitlist, service menu, customer portal, staff portal, booking blocks, Elementor, and shortcode integrations Customer-facing AI Chat when WordPress AI Client and a provider are connected and Chat is enabled by an administrator Third-party integrations are optional and require their own accounts, credentials, supported regions, and provider terms. Local mode continues to work inside WordPress when an external provider is unavailable. What customers experience A mobile booking flow for services, variations, add-ons, professionals, date, time, customer details, and confirmation Several services or guests in one booking journey, with separate staff choices and reference photos where enabled Clear service durations, prices, appointment summaries, directions, and calendar actions Secure self-service for viewing, rescheduling, cancelling, rebooking, and eligible service changes A branded service menu, discovery storefront, portfolio, favorites, quick rebooking, and lightweight installable customer app What your team manages Services, categories, images, variations, add-ons, pricing, staff qualifications, and schedules Business hours, staff schedules, breaks, time off, closed dates, and availability rules Appointment calendar, client records, notes, reports, notifications, and waitlist Mobile-friendly rescheduling, temporary break controls, shared-resource checks, and role-specific staff workspaces Before a booking or sensitive change is saved, Yatoon rechecks staff qualification, schedules, breaks, closed dates, existing appointments, shared resources, and relevant external availability. If a time is taken during checkout, the customer keeps their details and gets a clear recovery path. Add it to any WordPress page Use the native block, Elementor widget, or one of these shortcodes: [yatoon_booking] – complete booking form [yatoon_service_menu] – visual service menu with Book buttons [yatoon_customer_portal] – customer self-service portal [yatoon_staff_portal] – mobile staff schedule portal [yatoon_discovery] – discovery storefront and booking entry points External Services and Privacy Google Maps – www.google.com/maps. The confirmation page displays a lazy-loaded map when a business address is configured. The preview sends the public business address and normal browser connection information to Google; it does not include customer names, email, appointment details, or manage tokens. Clicking the map opens Google Maps directions to that address. See Google Privacy and Google Terms. Free Local mode performs booking and availability inside WordPress and does not require Square, Vagaro, Stripe, PayPal, Twilio, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, or Meta WhatsApp. Every external service Yatoon can contact is listed below with what is sent, when it is sent, and the provider’s own policies. Nothing in this list is contacted unless the corresponding feature is switched on by an administrator. Fonts. Yatoon does not download fonts from any remote host, and does not bundle font files either. Choosing a font family under Brand & Colors only adds that family name to the CSS font stack; otherwise the system font is used. Yatoon push relay (Cloudflare Worker) – https://yatoon-api.yatoon.workers.dev. Optional and disabled by default. When explicitly enabled, Yatoon sends a signed, pseudonymous browser push subscription endpoint and a generic event type to this Cloudflare Worker. Customer names, contact details, services, appointment times, and notes are never sent. See Yatoon and the Cloudflare Privacy Policy. Freemius – https://api.freemius.com. Used for optional account connection, licensing, plugin updates, and upgrade screens. It is contacted only when an administrator opts in or uses one of those features. See Freemius Privacy Policy and Freemius Terms. Provider integrations. Each service below is contacted only when an administrator has configured its credentials and switched the corresponding feature on, and only while performing the action that needs it. Provider credentials are stored encrypted in WordPress; Yatoon diagnostics must not include them. Free package providers. Free can use the following optional services when the site owner enables them: Google Maps – www.google.com/maps (confirmation-page directions map) OpenAI – api.openai.com (optional AI assistant) Anthropic – api.anthropic.com (optional AI assistant) Google Gemini – generativelanguage.googleapis.com (optional AI assistant) Cloudflare Turnstile – challenges.cloudflare.com (optional booking-form bot check) Before any customer text can reach an AI provider, an administrator must enable the relevant AI feature, and Yatoon requires explicit one-time customer consent and screens the message for sensitive data. Customer-facing AI is off by default on new installations, and connecting a provider alone does not publish it. Site owners are responsible for obtaining required consent, publishing an accurate privacy notice, configuring retention, and complying with the rules of their region and chosen providers.