SuperSaaS review

 

SuperSaaS review: to tell it sweet and short 

SuperSaaS is different, very different, from the usual appointment scheduling apps. The key differentiator of SuperSaaS is how flexible and affordable they are, however at the cost of user experience. They follow IKEA’s philosophy: affordable products that everyone can use, and “assembled” according to their needs.  

When compared to the competing apps, you may not get pointers from the SuperSaaS UI about the creative ways of using the app. You have to read their help documentation or blogs like reading the IKEA manual.

Whatever you want to get bookings for, whether it is a thing like a cycle or a staff member, it is a resource in SuperSaaS. Every resource has its/their schedule and customers can book it.

In SuperSaaS, you can rent out a non-living thing like a room/cycle for a few days but keep bookings with living things, staff, only for a few hours, even though you set up schedule both both as resource schedule.

In that unique SuperSaaS way, there is no differentiation between customers and staff: all are users. Users can see your schedule, book appointments. They can even see other appointments which are not theirs, even update them. Don’t worry though, SuperSaaS allows you to set up permission level for users for each schedule. You can even promote some users as SuperUsers who have special permissions equivalent to Staff in other appointment scheduling apps.

They have the highest number of pricing plans that I have seen so far in an appointment scheduling app, and offer the entire feature set in their free plan except for calendar sync.

According to their CEO, they want to be as flexible and affordable as possible. Maybe the way they do things is part of that philosophy.

Who is it ideal for

SuperSaas is very generic and anyone with an appointment scheduling requirement can use it. This is a tool that has to be used creatively. You can do a lot with it if you have the time to work on it 🙂 Unlike other apps, SuperSaaS is stronger in resource scheduling also. For ex. If you rent out resources like your rooms/tennis courts/boats and charge based on duration of usage.

Who will find it limiting?  

If a great user experience and customer experience are your criteria, SuperSaaS has its limitations. Also, if you want to get you appointment scheduling app up and running in a few hours, it is hard to do with SuperSaaS. By not creating separate modules for resource rentals and services, the app makes it difficult for people to comprehend. Similarly, the lack of UI modules separating customers and staff adds to the unusual user experience offered by SuperSaaS. You might get some surprises because of this approach. For ex. if you allow customers to book a service without creating an account, they will not get the options to cancel or reschedule the appointment themselves. You have to do that for them.

What is their business model? 

By keeping SuperSaaS very generic, the team is able to attract customers with every scheduling requirement. The language and currency support, and the local market presence make them the default choice in Europe and countries where English is not common.

Viability of the company 

The company was founded by Jan M Faber in 2007. I saw a few websites which listed their annual revenue(2020) as 700K USD.

SuperSaaS review: how do they fare on the basic features of a scheduler? 

• Calendar sync: SuperSaaS allows two-way sync with Google Calendar, and one-way sync with O365 calendar. With Google Calendar, SuperSaaS can read the free and busy times, and also mark new appointments there. However, with O365/Outlook, it can only read the availability and not mark new appointments. It also allows you to send a feed to other iCal and Webcal protocol based calendars.
• Availability: In SuperSaaS, the availability is tied to a schedule. You can set your work hours, block time, beginning and end dates, and buffer time. However, there is no option to set up complex availability, for ex. Repeat every month on the 2nd Saturday.
• Appointment types: There are three types: Resource schedule, Capacity schedule, and Service schedule. When you want to get bookings for a person or an object, you can use resource schedule. By syncing it with an external calendar the person getting booked or the one responsible for the object will be notified of bookings. They will get emails also.
  • If you want to run a class with more than one participant, you can use a capacity schedule.
  • When you want to create a pooled availability or a collective availability of multiple resources like two or more staff, two staff and one object, or three objects, you can use Service schedule. When it is a service schedule, SuperSaaS will check schedule of all resources associated with it and present a pooled availability/collective availability depending on how you set it up. This can be used creatively to give more open slots, set different prices for the same resource depending on the audience, etc.
• Sharing: SuperSaaS give you default booking pages for your customer to book appointments with you. The layout of the booking page can be customized with text, images, videos and color scheme.
  • You can also add the booking page to one of the integrated website builders or CMSes.
  • You can add the permalink to your emails, use the built-in Book Now buttons on your website.
  • SuperSaaS also offers a Facebook Book Now button to collect appointments.
• Online Meeting: SuperSaaS does not have direct integration with online meeting tools. You need Zapier.

SuperSaaS review: the Differentiating features 

Here are some of the differentiating features:

• Pricing rules: You can set triggers and actions to set prices. For e.x. If a customer books on a Sunday, you can charge a different price than what you charge for a week day. This is a smart feature and gives you some room to play with price without duplicating a service just to set a different pricing.
• The option for customer to choose the length of the service: Most apps give you the option to charge for a fixed duration. However, there are services like consulting or equipment rentals that have to be billed for the number of hours. SuperSaaS gives you the option for allowing customers to choose the duration and you can bill for that.
• Promotions based on rules: You can set up coupon codes and rules for its use. The rules can be based on frequency, user types, duration, days, etc. In addition to these promotion rules, SuperSaaS also gives options to add a standing discount for your regular customers, provide free credits for new users etc.
• Search for availability with slots: This is a handy feature for those who book with you. Rather than scroll through your availability, customers can set a criteria to search for a slot that works the best for them.
• Credit System: If you want customers to use credits every time they utilize your service, you can activate Credits as your payment system. Customers can buy these credits early on. It is possible to operate in a hybrid mode between Credits and Payments.

SuperSaaS review: the Niche features? 

• Waitlist:  Enable this to collect bookings after the available slots are booked. The wait listed bookings can be confirmed a few minutes after the cancellation.
• Languages and Currencies: Collect payment in any of the 20-plus currencies available and switch to one of the many languages available.
• Form builder: You can create intake forms that can be mapped to the booking process or they can be stand alone. Such forms can be used for other needs, like embedding on your website for collecting contact details.

Mobile app 

SuperSaaS does not have a mobile app.

APIs 

SuperSaaS provides Webhooks and APIs. They expose these modules via APIs:

• User
• Appointments
• Forms
• Account information

SuperSaaS also provides client libraries for languages like Ruby, Phython, PHP and NodeJS.

Ease of use 

It takes a long time to set up SuperSaaS. There are competing apps on which you can go live faster but SuperSaaS gives you more flexibility especially in cases of rentals, pricing rules, and booking confirmation based on availability of multiple resources (people and objects).  Not just that, there are ways to achieve things that may not present itself in the product but that you discover if you think creatively with the product.

SuperSaaS review: booking experience for customer 

• Appearance:  the default booking page is spartan. It can be improved to match the look and feel of other apps. The default view is a calendar on which customers have to select a time slot. There are options to change the color and messaging on the page. However, there is no option to change the calendar layout for the availability.
• User experience: You can control many aspects of the user’s booking flow like how the services are listed, the URL redirection after a confirmed booking, and reminders. The confirmation emails and reminders can be customized either with the rich text editor or by importing html templates.

Help and support 

SuperSaaS has excellent help documentation. They also write blogs that describes how features can be used in many ways. SuperSaaS’ help documentation is good because:

• It tells you the context of the feature/ setting
• It tells you how to implement that feature
• It tells you how you can ‘exploit’ that feature
• There are visual ways of representing how a feature works

I did not have to contact their support team to know details of a feature.

Bugs spotted  

I did not come across any bugs or issues with the product. I have seen online reviews commending the reliability of SuperSaaS.

Privacy policy 

Read their privacy policy here.

SuperSaaS review: pricing model 

This is the most surprising aspect of SuperSaaS. They have 10 paid plans starting from $8 per month and topping with $186 in addition to the Free plan. There is no difference among any plans in terms of features. The plans differ only in terms of the maximum upcoming bookings and the number of past appointments you want to keep the record of. There is no cap on the number of staff, locations, services or schedules.

Total cost of ownership 

This will be your subscription cost plus subscription cost for any app that you want to integrate with including Zapier.

SuperSaaS review: what will you get for FREE, for $10, for $50? 

SuperSaaS offers the same features across plans except for limits on upcoming and past appointments. The Free plan shows ads and does not have external calendar sync.

When pitted against the segment leader – comparison page and table 

SuperSaaS’ closest competitor is Acuity Scheduling. Here is a comparison of SuperSaaS and Acuity.

Summary of other SuperSaaS reviews

SuperSaaS’ customers confirm what we already discussed about them. They are extremely customizable and supportive: email and help documentation.

People appreciate they are affordable and reliable. There were multiple comments about never facing an issue for more than 5 years, which is a unparalleled testimonial.

Everyone wishes that SuperSaaS looked better on its UI but even those who badly need it are fans of SuperSaaS for the other capabilities they have.

This comment summarizes SuperSaaS: “SuperSaaS is not pre-fab. If you want a cookie-cutter solution that is ready to go immediately, you’ll get frustrated with the amount of set-up SuperSaaS requires. If you’ve found cookie-cutters fall short of your particular needs, you’ll be delighted at the customization capabilities of SuperSaaS.”

Rating 

SuperSaaS is a dependable appointment scheduling app that works great for resource rentals and bookings with people. If you are looking for an affordable, flexible and reliable app, you can try SuperSaaS.

One-year review  

Often, you will find that the product that you started using with full conviction is not the one you need now, after a few years. The reasons could be that it is not able to scale, or the total cost of ownership goes enormous, the support is bad, there are no updates.

Our long term review is a way to observe how a product and the company behind it behaved in the last one year. This is an important read if you are buying the product for a longer term. Read our long term review about SuperSaaS.