Running a soft play can be exhausting. You know that.

We hear that a lot from our customers. That's why we've made sure BookingNinja is the perfect tool to manage your soft play venue bookings. We've designed everything in mind to make the process as simple, affordable and enjoyable to use as possible.

Affordable

 Beyond all else, we're affordable. We know that the soft play industry often runs on tight margins, and we live and breathed hospitality for years. Take less than 150 bookings per month? You can continue using our free plan forever. Need more than that? Unless you have a peculiar use case, then you can almost certainly use the £41.63 + VAT plan, which offers unlimited bookings, no charges (except payment gateway fees) on deposits, and year round customer support. 

Charge Upfront

Don't take payment at the door - charge upfront and speed up the process of getting people into your venue. Children aren't known for enjoying queues or unpunctual entry times! With our payment gateway provider Stripe, you can take money directly into your Stripe account, and then right into your bank account. No waiting around, we don't ever touch the money - it goes straight from the customer to your own merchant account. 

To facilitate soft plays, we've got the ability to charge based on guest type. So if you've got a different price depending on ages, then that's no problem - the customer simply inputs what tickets they want to buy and completes the sale. Need to enforce at least one adult to the venue? That's just a tick box away.

Charging upfront reduces no-shows and increases revenue in the venue. People mentally detach payments they've already made from payments they're making on the day. Nearly every case of someone moving to upfront deposits & charges beholds an increase in spend at the venue. 

Different Areas

 Is your soft play operating on different areas? Perhaps you have a separate laser tag area or toddle area and bigger kids? No matter how you operate, you can set up sessions and areas with their own limits and charges. Need to limit the toddler area to 20 guests by the big kid area to 100? Easy. BookingNinja caters to diverse businesses, types, and therefor we can offer a wide range of features

Support & Setup

 We're a family owned and managed business so you'll not be speaking some distance call centre when you need help - we're just an email or LiveChat away. If you need help setting up, or want to be guided through the entire process, then we're delighted to do that. No extra cost. Just pop us a message on the chat function in the bottom right corner, and we'll start that process right away. 

You don't have to wait long lead times or go through loads of sales calls where we try to work out how much we can extract from you - instead you can get started right now for free, or try one of our two simple and upfront pricing plans. Almost all soft play venues that use us use our £41.63 + VAT a month plan - easily covered by the increase in bookings you'll receive

What Actually is Commission?

We've tried our best with BookingNinja to be clear about our pricing. We don't hide it behind sales calls, we don't try to judge how much we can extract from you before setting you a price - it's right there and instantly viewable for everyone to see. We started BookingNinja because we had our own hospitality venue and trying to break through the countless sales calls or weirdly complicated pricing structures was both stressful and costly. We clearly have 

No Commission on Deposits & Payments for Bookings. You will however pay a Payment Gateway fee to Stripe (a third party service, we don't earn *anything* from using them, they are just the best in the space) of around 1.5%. The majority of online payment gateways are around or more than this, and ultimately at the rates that the likes of Mastercard and Visa charge you won't find a huge difference in comparing rates 

As a side note: you may think "hey, I've got 0.8% in my venue that's a lot less", but you'll need to compare "Card Not Present" rates, which are often much higher - If your looking at a rate of less than 1% then you almost certainly are not looking at the right rate for online payments, as they'd be losing money every time you made a sale!)

So put plainly with BookingNinja when you take a booking payment you'll be paying just Stripe, and that will be around 1.5%. That's it. No fee applied by BookingNinja, no extra 'Payment Processing' fee. Zilch. 

Comparing Commission & Payment Rates

So it should be simple to compare how much you'll be paying across all the different booking platforms right? Well - no. Frankly speaking it's an incredibly frustrating minefield of misinformation, and obfuscation that makes comparison much harder. Let's take an example of one of our competitors and industry veteran - ResDiary. 

If you visit their home page right now you'll be presented with this lovely banner

1. Introduction

Welcome to BookingNinja ("we," "our," or "us"). We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy explains how we collect, use, store, and protect your information when you use our services.

This policy complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other applicable data protection laws.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Information You Provide

When you create an account with us, we collect:

• Your name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Any other details you choose to provide

2.2 Information We Collect Automatically

For security and service improvement purposes, we automatically collect:

• IP address
• Browser type and version
• Device information
• Operating system
• Browser fingerprinting data for security purposes
• Usage data through analytics platforms

3. How We Use Your Information

We use your personal data to:

• Provide and maintain our services
• Manage your account
• Communicate with you about our services
• Enhance security and prevent fraud
• Improve our services and user experience
• Comply with legal obligations

4. Legal Basis for Processing (GDPR)

Under GDPR, we process your personal data based on:

• Consent: When you create an account and agree to this policy
• Contract: To provide you with our services
• Legitimate interests: For security purposes and service improvements
• Legal obligations: To comply with applicable laws

5. Data Sharing and Third Parties

We do not sell your personal information to any third parties.

We may share your data with:

• Service providers who help us operate our business (under strict confidentiality agreements)
• Analytics providers such as Google Analytics to understand service usage
• Law enforcement or regulatory authorities when legally required

6. Analytics

We use Google Analytics and similar platforms to analyze how our services are used. These tools may collect information such as:

• How often you visit our service
• Pages you visit
• Time spent on pages
• General geographic location (country/city level)

You can opt-out of Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

7. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal data, including:

• Encryption of data in transit and at rest
• Regular security assessments
• Access controls and authentication
• Browser fingerprinting for fraud prevention

8. Your Rights Under GDPR

You have the right to:

• Access: Request a copy of your personal data
• Rectification: Correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• Erasure: Request deletion of your data ("right to be forgotten")
• Restriction: Limit how we process your data
• Portability: Receive your data in a machine-readable format
• Object: Oppose certain types of processing
• Withdraw consent: At any time, where processing is based on consent

9. Data Deletion

You can request deletion of your personal data at any time by: