Setmore vs Acuity: Plans, Limits and Cost at 1 to 10 Staff

What do Setmore and Acuity cost at 1 to 10 staff?

With text reminders on monthly billing, Setmore Pro at $12 per user is cheaper at one or two staff, and Acuity Standard at $34 is cheaper from three, on prices read October 5, 2026. Acuity Premium costs $61 for up to 36 calendars.

If email reminders are enough, Setmore Free costs nothing for up to four users. Acuity Starter is $20 a month for one calendar, and Standard is $34 for two to six. From the fifth user, Setmore needs Pro for every user, so a five-person team pays $60 a month on Setmore against $34 on Acuity, or $25 against $27 billed annually.

Table 2. Price per month for the cheapest plan that covers each staff count, billed monthly, with annual billing per month in parentheses. Setmore counts each staff calendar as a user; Acuity uses one calendar per staff member here. Arithmetic from both pricing pages, read October 5, 2026; Acuity's prices exclude tax.

The monthly crossover sits at the third staff member: three Setmore Pro users at $12 each cost $36, against Acuity Standard's flat $34. Each added user widens the gap until Acuity's seventh calendar forces Premium at $61, still below Setmore's $84 for seven users.

Annual billing cuts the per-user price far more than the tier price: Setmore Pro falls from $12 to $5 per user, while Acuity Standard falls from $34 to $27. Setmore leads through five users, and Acuity leads at six, $27 against $30. Premium's $49 hands the lead back to Setmore at seven to nine, and Acuity leads again at 10 by $1. Over a year, annual billing saves $84 on Acuity Standard and $252 on three Setmore Pro users.

Which features sit on which plan?

Setmore keeps text reminders, deposits, recurring appointments, two-way calendar sync and application programming interface (API) access for Pro, on the plan grids read October 5, 2026. Acuity includes deposits and video meetings on every plan, adds text reminders on Standard and opens API access on Premium.

Table 3. Yes, No or Not stated, as each vendor's own pricing page shows it on October 5, 2026. Not stated means that page does not say; Acuity's calendar page describes two-way sync without naming a plan.

Setmore

Setmore Free includes unlimited appointments, a team booking page and group classes, on the Setmore pricing page read October 5, 2026. It includes Reserve with Google, contact import and export, and payments through Square, Stripe, PayPal or LawPay. Free sends one email reminder per booking. Pro adds a second reminder and text message (SMS) reminders, with 500 credits a month for each Pro team member. Pro also adds recurring appointments, two-way calendar sync, video appointments, deposits, Google review requests, API access and an unbranded booking page. Setmore suits a team of up to four that is happy with email reminders, or one or two staff who want texts at the lowest monthly price.

Acuity Scheduling

Every Acuity plan includes payments and deposits through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo, on the Acuity pricing page read October 5, 2026. Every plan also has custom client forms, email reminders, Google Meet, Zoom and GoToMeeting links, and automatic time zone conversion for clients. Standard adds text reminders, a waitlist, packages, memberships, subscriptions and gift certificates. Premium adds an AI booking assistant, hides the Acuity logo, sets time zones per staff member or location, and opens a custom API and CSS. Acuity's calendar page describes two-way sync with Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, iCloud Calendar and Office 365. Its payments page says that stored card details or prepayments let you charge cancellation or no-show fees. Acuity suits a business that sells packages or gift certificates, collects client forms before a visit, or runs three to six staff on monthly billing with texts.

Card payments: neither adds a fee of its own

Neither Setmore nor Acuity adds its own charge to card payments, according to their payments pages read October 5, 2026. You pay the rate of the processor you connect.

Setmore's payments page, read the same day, lists Stripe at 2.9% plus $0.30 and Square at 2.9% plus $0.30 online or 2.6% plus $0.15 in person. It lists PayPal at 3.49% plus $0.49 and LawPay at 2.99% plus $0.30, and notes that rates may vary by country. Acuity's payments page lists no rates and says that each processor sets its own. Neither vendor's pages tie the card rate to a plan, so no upgrade is shown to pay for itself through lower card fees.

Table 4. Worked example: the payment count and amount are examples. The rate is Stripe's as Setmore's payments page lists it, read October 5, 2026; check the rate on your own Stripe account, because rates may vary by country.

In this example, the card fees are more than four times Acuity Standard's $34 plan price, and they would be the same on either tool through the same Stripe account. At three staff with text reminders on monthly billing, the plan prices differ by $2 a month, so the processor and the features matter more than the subscription.

Which plan fits which business?

The cheapest plan that fits depends on staff count, billing term and the features you need, such as text reminders, deposits, packages, client forms or an unbranded booking page.

Table 5. Each row names the cheapest plan in this guide that meets every need in the profile, checked against Tables 2 and 3. Acuity's prices exclude tax.

If neither tool fits, our guides to Setmore alternatives and Acuity Scheduling alternatives price other booking tools at the same team sizes. For Acuity against two other tools, see Square Appointments vs Acuity and Vagaro vs Acuity Scheduling.

Where Twizzlo fits

Twizzlo is web-based online booking and appointment scheduling software for appointment-based service businesses, and it bills per business rather than per user or calendar.

Free is $0 a month for up to 150 bookings a month, with no SMS, and it is free forever, not a trial. Business Pro is $29.99 a month per business for unlimited bookings, with 50 SMS a month included and $0.03 for each one after that. Business Pro comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Both plans include unlimited staff and locations, and online payments carry your Stripe processing rate plus a 1.5% Twizzlo platform fee. Details are on Twizzlo pricing.

A hypothetical solo stylist with six bookings a day for 22 working days books 132 a month, inside Free's 150, so Free covers the bookings, with email reminders. Now take the seven-staff row of Table 2, with a hypothetical four bookings per staff member a day. Seven staff working 22 days make 616 bookings a month, above Free's cap, so this team needs Business Pro.

With one text per booking, 566 of the 616 texts go past the 50 included, at $0.03 each, which adds $16.98. Business Pro then comes to $29.99 plus $16.98, or $46.97 a month. Before the 1.5% Twizzlo platform fee on online payments, that is less than both seven-staff monthly prices in Table 2 and more than the cheapest annual price in that row. With email reminders alone, it stays at $29.99 plus that fee on online payments, whatever the staff count.

Staff calendars, client records, prepaid bookings at the full service price and tips through Stripe are listed on Twizzlo's features page. So is Employee Shifts, for multi-location staff shifts and schedules. The same page does not list packages, gift certificates, intake forms or calendar sync, so a business that needs those can compare them in Table 3 above.

To test Twizzlo with your own team, you can start on the Free plan and move to Business Pro when bookings pass 150 a month or you want text reminders.

Frequently asked questions