Xola

Best live support I've ever seen. Great product. Easy to use.

Commentaires : Great 24/7 customer support for me. Easy interface for my guests. Makes setting up new products and automating my web bookings very simple.

Avantages :

The Xola sales system works fantastically well. Yes, it does take a little bit of time to familiarize yourself with all of the bells and whistles, but thankfully they have 24/7 live support that is actually there and are fantastic. Not only can they explain to my dumb ass what actions I need to accomplish in order to toggle product listings and calendar settings, they will do it for me when I am confused or lazy. I love XOLA.

Inconvénients :

Xola is made primarily for Tour Operator style businesses offering experiences and doesn't offer quite as much dynamic customizability for selling merch to the people buying tickets from you. Yes, your customers can "Add-on" an item like a T-shirt to their ticket purchase before checkout, but the Xola software doesn't give you the chance to (a) provide a product image for "Add-on" items and (b) retrieve preferential information - like Shirt Size and Color - for "Add-on" items. If your goal is to sell extra promotional merch to your clients, Xola may not be right for you. But if your goal is to make the online reservation process a breeze for your clients so that they can easily self-serve their own booking needs, Xola is HANDS DOWN the best and most intuitive I have seen.

Robust, intuitive, incredibly user-friendly – cannot recommend enough!

Commentaires : Phenomenal. I cannot recommend it enough.

Avantages :

This is a product that is gorgeous and accessible on the front end, and powerful on the back end. The onsite booking is aesthetic and easy for our customers, and the back end is incredibly user friendly for my staff to use, and chock-full of useful resources. It is clear that the people behind Xola had both design and functionality in mind when creating this software, and it really shows! Moreover, their customer service is phenomenal - very quick, responsive, and helpful. Cannot recommend it enough! Out of the many software services we use as a business, Xola is the one we are most impressed by.

Inconvénients :

The pricing model seems to be changing soon, to one where the cost may be passed on to customers. We will enjoy extra savings, but we are not entirely sold on whether we want to do this. There used to be several pricing models, but it looks like this will be the only one.

Disappointed with Xola

Avantages :

This platform is definitely affordable and in the beginning the customer service was great. From a clients prospective the interface is user friendly and visually appealing.

Inconvénients :

We started using Xola over 2 years ago and although a rough start, the service was on point and customer support was helpful and speeds when it came to fixing bugs and problems. Since then it seems as if they have restructured their company drastically. Getting customer support has become a challenge. In the beginning they assigned account managers, which was great. When you called Xola you could speak directly to your account manager who knew everything there was to know about your account. Fixing problems was straight forward and right to the point. Now, it's a bit different... You can either call a get an answering machine or someone who has little to no experience or you can chat online with an agent they have outsourced in a foreign country. Regardless of who you speak with you must first catch them up again on everything you're trying to accomplish. This part is the most frustrating, When speaking to the 4 person I found it easier to just copy and paste the previous chats we had rather than trying to explain. We have been having trouble with our buttons implemented by Xola over 1.5 weeks ago. Meanwhile our clients have not been able to book online. Through pages and pages of correspondence and having the luxury of catching at least 6 of their employees up to speed on my issue. They might "might" have it done by tomorrow. We're talking about simple buttons. I would definitely do my research before plunging into a commitment with Xola. Very frustrated so far with this experience. If it wasn't so time consuming setting up a whole new platform, I would have switched to Fare Harbor long ago.

Xola for sailing charter bookings

Commentaires : GREAT responsive customer service available via online chat. I've been using it for many years and they are constantly improving it.

Avantages :

Xola was the best option for booking a mix of trip types with a single vessel. With the software I can list both public and private options for both day and overnight offerings. When a trip gets booked it automatically stops listing options that could potentially double book the time slot.

Inconvénients :

The system has an option allowing you to send an invoice to the customer for full payment....I wish I could send an invoice for just the deposit or let the customer choose how much to pay over a minimum to reserve the trip.

Love this company

Commentaires : Xola's technical support is great. Every representative has been knowledgeable, timely, and friendly. I can't say enough good things about their support.

Avantages :

The software is very robust and satisfies all of my needs.

Inconvénients :

I wish they had more display options on the frame that shows on my website.

Pub Cruiser Bikes

Avantages :

I like everything about it and love the Bots that run specials. This has worked well with us. Also, I like the integrated waiver with Wherewolf.com..

Inconvénients :

Cost is high unless you do the one where it basically passes the % charge onto the customer. I wish it had the ability to assign more than 1 bike to a time slot so that both of my bikes could run the same schedules and we did not have to have a bike 1 and a bike 2 schedule.

Jousting over the Cliffs and the Ocean

Avantages :

Best customer service ever User Friendly In comparison to Fare Harbor and Peek Pro - Hands down best!! Love the Loading screen phrases. They always make me smile Rescues are the stuff

Inconvénients :

not being able to use same guest email twice not being able to delete guest emails affiliates are not alphabetized in settings not being able to have more than 1 code on a reservation

Everything I need and Quick Support

Commentaires : We need to have an online booking system for a variety of services and the program accommodates those needs. I have tried a few other programs prior to Xola but have not had the need to look elsewhere since using them.

Avantages :

Ease of use. Setting up the new listings is fairly easy, even if there is a lot of details to fill in each time. Customer service is top notch and usually always available on chat!

Inconvénients :

No option for more POS style bookings. We have a lot of walk in customers who combine different activities but when making a booking for those though Xola at the counter, we have to creatively enter the activities. We have an arcade setting with Escape Rooms. Our arcade are is Virtual Reality with booth space rentals with various time slots. It is too difficult to create a time slot for each time and booth.

Best in class

Commentaires : Saves a tremendous amount of time with this easy and simple user interface. Saving time equals more time for more important stuff.

Avantages :

Xola is the simplest booking software out there. I have tried several, and this is hands-down the best there is! Easy to understand and a breeze to navigate through. One of the strongest points is how easy it is to train your staff on.

Inconvénients :

I wish there was a way to customize things a little bit more than what is available.

Not happy , considering using another software

Commentaires : managed the bookings through this we are and escape room, we have 8 employees (we are not an accounting firm the system suggests below)

Avantages :

customer support, it is great that we get the software all set up and that there is a team to help any time. The software looking pretty.

Inconvénients :

if your client books 4 sessions, they get 4 confirmation, 4 reminder and 4 follow up emails, there is no option to just send them one email with all bookings listed there. in our confirmation email, you should not advertise yourself. it makes us look like we are using a free software. no. we pay a lot to use our software, so get your logo off and stop advertise yourself to out clients for free. or if advertise yourself to our clients, then you should pay us, so reduce your price. useless financial reports, useless invoicing . if a client has 4 bookings, you have to send 4 invoices only can be done from the back end. The templates are no good for the follow up emails, asking for reviews, and you cannot alter them Your mobile app is crashing all the time and doesnt give you the chance to put through coupon codes. It only can be used for checking if everyone has maded a new booking since you weren't looking. Only if you don't have your computer around. I am super disappointed

XOLA is amazing for many reasons, but they need to speed up their process for fixing bugs

Commentaires : XOLA excels in many ways at many things, especially customer service, helping you learn, and ease of use. However, when there are things that don't work well for you, it feels like you are up against a wall and you just have to deal with bugs, and they give the impression that these things won't be changed for a long time, and maybe never. You just have to love it for the awesome things it does and accept the frustrating things it doesn't do.

Avantages :

The best part about XOLA is their customer service. You can instantly chat with somebody at all times, and if you need to call and talk to a real person that is easy too. I cannot stress how amazing this is, as we have all spent hours going around in circles with customer service with other companies countless times. Sometimes for me to the point of frustrated tears. XOLA sets the standard for how reachable and friendly and helpful all customer service should be! XOLA also makes certain things incredibly fast and easy to do. You can tell a lot of thought has gone into functionality and usability, such as navigating through the site.

Inconvénients :

My biggest complaint is also about customer service. You can easily talk to somebody and they will help you figure something out or teach you how to do something. However, sometimes I need to do things that XOLA is not capable of, and I feel that being able to do them is extremely important. In this case they simply say they will forward your request to their development team, and maybe someday there will be a meeting about it and it might get changed in the future. Sometimes when you tell them what you need to be able to do they disagree with you, which is odd, because they are not the ones actually using the software to run a business! One example is I need to be able to remove credit card numbers attached to people's accounts. This is very important for many reason, one of which is sometimes they belong to an ex-spouse, have been cancelled due to fraud, are cards they don't want you to charge any more, etc etc, and when collecting a balance it adds tons of time and correspondence with clients to figure this out. This is one example of many things that you can DO on XOLA, but you can't UNDO. Like when you accidentally enter a person on the questionnaire, you can't delete that person. I just think when you tell them things like this that seem really logical and practical they should be able to change them, or at least make you believe they understand it is important to your daily functioning and that they will try to change it.

Extremely easy and streamlined interface.

Commentaires : Our experience has been tremendous. We tried researching a few other options and none of them compared. Just based on customer service availability alone!

Avantages :

I had use this product when I was an employee of another company. When I started my own company, I searched at other booking solutions and none of them compared to Xola. The interface, the booking fees, the ease of setting things up. The walk-throughs and most importantly the customer service chat feature that’s available around the clock is invaluable!

Inconvénients :

NO GROUPON INTEGRATION… and to be able to get more in-depth through the iPhone app

Generally good - but not the very best

Commentaires : -- Online Ticket Booking Platform
-- Online Scheduling System

Avantages :

-- 24 hour customer support available by chat -- Clients stay on my website while booking tickets for my escape rooms using Xola -- Automated reminder e-mails -- Ability to customize questionnaire and booking requirements -- A salesperson quoted me a price and stuck to it -- Report Features -- Great Credit Card processing rate (through Stripe) -- Ability to integrate with Google Cal so staff can see when they are scheduled to work -- Instigation with Smartwaiver (limited, would like more)

Inconvénients :

LIMITED CLOSING OPT: You can set sessions to have cut off times. This is important but when I used FareHarbor it allowed me to keep sessions open if the session was partially sold. I would like this feature on Xola. Currently there has to be a hard cut off time -- or I have to keep the session open until it's start time. LIMITED INTEGRATIONS//NO CRM CAPABILITIES: The system doesn't integrate with MailChimp, it integrates with Smartwaiver but on a limited basis. For example if Joe books 6 tickets Xola captures Joes information. His 5 friends information is added on Smartwaiver but then I have to dig into Smartwaiver to find their info. I doesn't turn them into a customer profile even through Smartwaiver waiver is connected to Xola. It doesn't integrate with Trip Advisor Review Express -- so I have to manually enter each customer e-mail between Smartwaiver and Xola. BUGS & UPDATES: They are constantly making changes. Sometimes I log on and have to look for something in a new place (updates are always accompanied by e-mails) however, I would prefer to choose if I want to update features or not. Sometimes these updates and improvements cause bugs -- At one point a bug was impacting my settings. It took them over a week to solve the problem and I didn't get any kind of update. I always had to ask for it. I feel like complaints and requests go into a long report that no one reads. They have come out with lots of updates but none that I have requested.

Great software - Paints a Clear Picture

Commentaires : Great, we've been using it for a few years and now we're roughly 50% online sales/50 over-the-phone sales.

Avantages :

The ease of use is high. The dashboard makes it easy to know what's going on with a quick glance. Online bookings are straightforward for customers and allows easy communication of vital information (i.e. confirmation emails, waivers, etc.)

Inconvénients :

There is not an easy way to change minimum booking quantity without changing the product listing itself - it would be nice to have a quick override for this.

Great Product, Superior Customer Service

Commentaires : I started a small tour company this year and I needed a professional-looking solution to manage reservations, communications, and payment. I did not want to spend a lot of time learning and implementing. I checked around with a few vendors and picked Xola. I am delighted I did!

Avantages :

First, while not important in the long run, the interface is elegant and clean. They actually thought about the design. Most important, it was super easy to implement. How easy, you say? Well, they have an option to spend something like $200 to get someone to walk you through the set-up. I thought this was a great option so I signed up for it. But as I was toying around with it, I realized that it was so super-easy that I actually had done the set-up. After set-up, it is easy to use and intuitive in managing my reservations for my tour company. What else?? When I don't understand something immediately, there are CS agents always at hand via chat. They are smart. Unlike some companies who hire someone to read through a flowchart of problem solving and often get stumped, these people simply know how the platform works from beginning to end. I have never had an occasion when I contacted support and did not have my problem solved immediately.

Inconvénients :

Nothing! They are the best!! HAHA -- I have to write a longer review than the first line! Okay -- Really, they are the best! ;)

Customers need to reschedule? Better hire a designated scheduler because Xola camt handle it.

Commentaires : Online purchases, quick payout.

Avantages :

I started with Xola. Used to have one on one support. It's pretty enough. You can find work arounds for most problems.

Inconvénients :

If your in a business where weather can cause trip cancellations? Xola STILL isn't powerful enough to allow customers to reschedule on their own?!? So a reservation system where you NEED a human to reschedule customers over the phone. It's ridiculous. Xola has no desire to fix this giant hole and it's frustrating. They seem to cater to small guides and tours. My small business has theirvanilities taxed. The outsourced their help which is fine but I have no more ability to speak to anyone of consequence that can understand that it's insane to not allow customers to be able to reschedule them self's after a cancelled trip. I've spoken to several vendors who went back to peek pro over this feature and go for gift card software that does not have the amount put on it regardless if you like it or not.

Great service until they changed

Avantages :

Great booking software with wonderful tools like invoicing, analytics, and customization. Customer service is also wonderful and prompt.

Inconvénients :

It was about 4x the cost as my previous software but totally worth the cost until they changed their plan to get 6% of my customers money with their fees. I now pay “nothing” per month but my clients have to pay and I have to now switch companies since I don’t want to pass fees onto them.

Almost perfect! - But missing a crucial functionality.

Commentaires : It's been great - Xola is the clear choice for escape room scheduling and online booking payments.

Avantages :

Xola's has pretty much thought of everything and makes it very easy to manage checkouts and payments for a modern escape room. Their support is always there and willing to go the extra mile. I've been in online business since before Google was a search engine - and Xola is flat out impressive!

Inconvénients :

The only thing I can see that Xola can do better, is to allow the company (business owner) to redirect a customer to a specific page after the purchase has been made. That one feature would allow us to directly track all of of our Google AdWords and Facebook Conversions. ...Yes, I know that Xola has a "conversion tracking" setting... but it is not BULLSEYE accurate like when you are able to track your conversions DIRECTLY inside of your Google and Facebook Campaigns. I need to know "What ad triggered the conversion - what keyword did they click on - and then I know what is working inside of my ad campaigns." Pushing conversion tracking to Google Analytics (as Xola does now) does not allow me to do that. Let us redirect the user/purchaser to a specific page on our site - you'll give your clients insight into their advertising and they'll end up pushing more money back into Xola.

Have been with Xola for 3 years - Happy to recommend!

Avantages :

We're a TO in Europe and have more or less had a good experience with Xola with no plans to jump ship. They began working with outward bound service providers in the US and when we arrived with dozens of complicated walking tours, we tested them. Xola have listened to us and made some improvements, but several are still pending and have been for 3 years. Their CEO has been notified about these service limitations (how to price private tours, how to store age banded price ranges for future time periods with 100% flexibility, and others...) and we hope he'll get on it. In general though, Xola is a big thumbs up against the weaker providers like Rezdy and Trekksoft which are both inferior to Xola. Chat support is first class (Milos, in particular).

Inconvénients :

Xola have hired some poor account managers in the past. They need to improve on this although I am referring to former staff who were at Xola in 2016. Now gone and all ok). Xola have a free account for start ups with only a few tours. This is only available for US customers and it's unfair. They must offer this to customers in all countries.

Xola works fine, but is kinda clunky

Avantages :

It works to get people booked. It takes money and signs them up.

Inconvénients :

Difficult to make changes and there isn't a good help or tutorial button. I also have trouble getting all the roster data exported correctly sometimes. Inputting roster questions is not user friendly, because once inputted I cannot drag and drop the order

A great investment for online reservations & ticketing.

Commentaires : Exceptional service & support.

Avantages :

Solid, very well thought out, very few issues and outstanding support.

Inconvénients :

Xola lacks Fraud control tools. Basic things like black lisiting customers & cards.

Goldilocks Booking Software

Commentaires : After using a half dozen alternatives, I settled on Xola because they offer the features I need at an affordable, flat monthly price. Hence, Goldilocks. They haven't succumbed to the money-grab of taking a percentage of operators sales like other companies. Overall, my experience with Xola for the past four years have been excellent. I highly recommend them for tours and activities businesses.

Avantages :

-Reasonable fixed pricing per location rather than pass-through costs to customer -Responsive support -New features regularly -Great back end functionality and ease of use

Inconvénients :

-Still missing some features specific to my industry (robust resource management and better guide assignment)

In a crowded field, Xola stands out

Commentaires : Kern River Outfitters has demoed, installed, and sampled four other online adventure booking software companies in the past year and a half. Xola is the best out there. Here is where Xola stands out:
1. They're not going anywhere. They have funding, this is not a "side" project. Screwing in booking software is serious business. Once in, it's a pain to undo. A pain for you, your business and worst of all, your guests. The Xola team is committed to the long term, and are not going to disappear anytime soon.
2. They update their product. Two other booking companies that we examined had decent prices, nice sales reps and the companies using their software seemed happy enough. Except one problem, they never issued updates or improvements. They coded it a year or two ago, considered it done, and have just sold it since then. Not Xola. Every month, there's something new. And we love that. Mobile booking, yes. Gift cards, yes. Multiple bookings per guest, done! This is just a sampling of what they've rolled out in the last year.
3. Dedicated, friendly support. I've called Del at 8pm on a Friday, he answered and helped me out. Despite me often asking questions that can be found in their helpdesk, I get personalized answers every time. (Sorry about that, by the way). If I have a suggestion, they'll examine it and get back to me on what they think. Sometimes my suggestions are crap, but they'll still listen to me.
4. Affordable for every outfitter. Small guys, big guys, they have pricing options.

Avantages :

-Pricing options for every size company -Constant improvements/updates to their software -Friendly, fast support. (A Middle Fork guide on staff.) -Decent funding. Extremely committed to the long term.

Inconvénients :

-Twice I came across minor bugs. I reported them, and they were fixed in a few days.

Xola for Escape Rooms

Commentaires : We use Xola for our escape rooms and it's a complete breeze. We haven't come across any buggy software issues or things of that nature that prevent us from managing a business, especially one that's very dependent on a booking software. We like the new split-payment function and overall the investment that the team makes to continually upgrade and develop Xola. Several other competitor booking softwares have reached out to us trying get us to switch but really, if it ain't broke why fix it. We're very happy with Xola and look forward to future developments from its team! Thank you for helping us run our escape rooms!

Avantages :

I believe the best feature about Xola is its customer support. Their chat function is extremely handy when you've got a last minute question or need a quick tutorial on a feature. Plus the staff is very friendly and will always guide you through any difficulties you may encounter.

Inconvénients :

The thing I liked least about Xola is just learning a new software but that comes with anything worth doing. At first it seems as it may be a daunting task to learn new software for your business but the ease of use is beyond amazing and again, customer support is second to none. Got questions? They've got answers!

Useful tool for those needing ticketing management

Avantages :

Intuitive software that allows for admin users to build events.

Inconvénients :

Calendar features are sometimes a little clunky to use and not quite as easy to implement.