ResDiary is well built. And priced for volume.
First the honest part: ResDiary is not a bad product. It is UK-built, it genuinely runs zero per-cover commission (rare in this category alongside OpenTable and TheFork), it offers 60+ EPOS and PMS integrations, and its yield management couples cleanly with deposits to push no-shows down. For a fine-dining address doing 1,000 bookings a month and wired into a hotel PMS, ResDiary is probably a good choice.
But ResDiary is priced for volume most Belgian cafés and one-owner venues never reach. The entry Connect tier (£89, around €105 per month) covers 150 bookings — above that you move to Express or Pro. Add-ons for SMS, Event Manager and Pre-orders run £10–£35 per month each. You drift toward €200 per month without ever having totalled the yearly bill.
The cost stack you do not see up front
ResDiary publishes its tiers — credit where it is due. Connect ~£89 (€105) for 150 bookings per month. Express ~£119 for 450. Pro ~£169 for 1,000. Ultimate ~£245 for unlimited. On top: setup fee between £300 and £500 (waived on annual), SMS add-on, Event Manager add-on at £35 per month, Pre-orders add-on at £35 per month. No free trial, demo only. Implementation takes one to two weeks per their own blog.
At SuperShift the reservation widget is free up to 20 staff, €15 per month for Pro up to 100 staff, €29 per month for Ultra with multi-venue. No setup fee, no add-on stack, monthly cancellable. No yield management algorithm and no 60-integration library — that is true — but the price has no footnotes.
What SuperShift deliberately leaves out
No yield management routing tables intelligently based on expected spend. No Dish Cult discovery marketplace. No 60+ EPOS and PMS integrations. No Event Manager for private dining. No pre-orders arriving before service. For a fine-dining restaurant doing 80+ covers with its own cellar those gaps matter.
What you do get: an embeddable widget on your own domain, branded confirmation emails from your own from-address, double opt-in, simple table management, party-size configuration and manager notifications. For a neighbourhood café or a 40-seat brasserie that does not need a yield algorithm, that covers what they actually touch every evening.
Pricing comparison, no asterisks
Pricing pulled straight from their public pricing page (verified May 2026).
| What you get | ResDiary | SuperShift |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | €105/mo | €0 (up to 20 staff) · Pro €15/mo · Ultra €29/mo |
| Free tier | ||
| Setup fee | €350 | None |
| Contract | Annual contract | Monthly or annual |
| Demo required for pricing | ||
| Online reservations | Commission-free direct bookings. No per-cover charge. | |
| Table map / management | ||
| Waitlist | ||
| SMS confirmations | SMS as a paid add-on, roughly £10–£35 per month. | |
| Branded confirmation emails | ||
| Guest CRM | ||
| Multi-venue | ||
| Pay at the table | Pre-payments and deposits with a 1.2% surcharge. | |
| Embeddable widget |
Questions we get a lot
Can I move my ResDiary data across?
You export your guest file from ResDiary as CSV and import it into SuperShift. ResDiary offers a data export on contract termination — ask for it explicitly in your cancellation letter. We do not move historical reservations across; they stop being useful after a few months anyway. Start clean from the week you switch.
Is the ResDiary setup fee really £500?
Per reservaii.com and ResDiary’s own pricing blog the setup fee runs £300–£500 for full onboarding. On an annual contract it is usually waived. That is a fair trade for a venue that knows it is staying, but for a new business still evaluating it is a real threshold — especially because there is no free trial to test against.
Does SuperShift send SMS confirmations?
No. Only email confirmations from your own from-address with double opt-in. SMS is deliberately out: it costs per message and email solves the problem fine for normal café volume. With ResDiary SMS is a paid add-on on top of the tier anyway, so it is never genuinely "included".
Same time as a ResDiary demo: 30 minutes. Difference: no setup fee, no annual contract, no add-on stack growing on top of your tier each month. Make an account, paste the widget on your site, take your first online booking this week. Decide after a month whether you need to upgrade.
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