Xola

Vorteile

I loved everything about the Xola reservation system. It made things easy and was not complicated to use.

Nachteile

There is nothing to speak on as a con about Xola.

Vorteile

Out of the three booking software platforms we currently use, Xola is my favorite.

There are many pros to Xola, but let me summarize by saying it is the combination of good-to-great design along with five-star customer service.

Nachteile

The uncertainty regarding subscription packages. We have a "Premium" subscription that is a flat rate, which serves our needs very well.

If we do not have option to continue this package in 2020, we will have to switch to another booking software platform. Which would be a shame because Xola is my preferred booking software.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Xola

Vorteile

Very disappointing, horrible customer service and support.

Nachteile

Very disappointing, horrible customer service and support.

Vorteile

Ease of use, we have been using this for some time now and have a great understanding of how to use the tool and get a lot of value from it. It has some great integrations, great text, email reminders for our guests and xola has invested in a lot of great improvements over the past 2 years that made our business better.

Nachteile

Lack of POS integration, our business is moving to sell more onsite with our guests, pre gratuity is huge in our space and XOLA lacks features for pre gratuity except to do an ADD on which auto charges taxes and the booking fee on gratuity. reporting is still lacking, and dashboards, for performance, are also lacking.

Vorteile

XOLA has incredible flexibility when compare to other escape room booking software I've compared it to in the 2+ years I've used it. I have comparison shopped all the other booking software out there and haven't found anything that compares to what you can do with XOLA. From the visual presentation to the customer, to creating coupons and discounts, to arranging pricing and schedules for rooms. Nothing comes close. XOLA is PACKED with integrations with other software and gives you access to data from your bookings that I haven't found anywhere else.

Nachteile

I will admit I'm not a fan of the 6% booking fee passed on to my customers. Our bookings actually increased when we implemented it, and it does give me access to all of XOLA's features. Yes, Americans are conditioned to tacked on taxes, fees and other charges for online transactions, but that doesn't mean I have to like passing on cost to my customers.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Xola

Vorteile

First thing I like is the willingness to listen to the customers for new changes and ideas. That makes both of us better. The support is always there to help.

Nachteile

Unable to quickly block of certain tours at specific times.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Xola

Vorteile

I love this software I use it every day for my Escape Room. It does everything I need all in one place to me it is exactly what I need for my booking software for escaperooms

Nachteile

nothing least about it but one thing is the ability to stop negative reviews from being posted that's the only thing everything else I love it.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Warum Xola gewählt wurde

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Xola

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

When it comes to ticketing, Xola offers great features
It makes online booking easy and has great calendar management features
Has also worked well for scheduling.

Nachteile

No bad experience as Xola has the features we need.

Vorteile

Very forward thinking company . Love the need updates and the easy access to customer service

Nachteile

Sometimes when business is slow it can be a bit financially but no really cons for a monthly transaction

Vorteile

Xola's streamlined booking is what I appreciate most.

Nachteile

What I like least about Xola is its limited customization options.

Vorteile

Xola has a ton of features that make it easy to keep everything a customer purchases all in one place. The gift card sales easily integrate with the reservation system so customers can redeem them themselves online, gift offers help us sell more of them, the CRM allows us to easily export customer info and send them targeted emails and global settings allow us to automatically send emails to customers asking for reviews or send a discount code for them to come back in. All around a great software, but many softwares have similar features. What sets Xola apart from other companies we've dealt with it their customer service. Someone is always available to answer questions in the online chat or you can easily schedule a call with a support person if you have more in-depth questions. I also appreciate that we receive emails when certain features might be down. We've used software companies in the past that don't let us know of potential issues until we are the ones reporting them! Xola pre-empts this and answers our questions before we run across any issues.

Nachteile

Because this software is very flexible and there are so many options, some of the back office features can be tricky to use. For example, when you need to process a refund for a customer, you have three options to select from (reduce booking value and refund, refund only etc.). They do a good job of labeling things with descriptions, but it can still take some getting used to and training. Also, the page that Xola takes customers to when they click Book Now on our website is all Xola-branded. It would be awesome to allow customization to this page to include our logo so that customers trust they are still on the correct website.

Finally, I'm not a fan of 6% fee they are charging every customer now. This is a recent transition from a paid monthly subscription from us to an additional fee paid by our customers. After some research, it seems like this is the industry standard now, but we hate that we have to charge our customers an additional fee to make a reservation with us online. We want to encourage our customers to make reservations online so our in-store staff isn't bogged down with taking reservations over the phone. Additionally, Xola is making quite a bit more money off of us and our customers by tacking on that percentage compared to the monthly fee we used to pay. This is one of the only cons to the software.

Vorteile

Ease of Use and Customer Support -- I looked at many companies and did demos prior to making my decision to go with Xola. Xola is, by far, the easiest to use of all the companies that I demoed. Inputting product, making changes, updating info is all easy and very intuitive to use. When I can't easily figure something out, Xola's 'chat' feature is AWESOME! There is always someone there to quickly guide me through with very little or no wait time. They walk me through the process via chat and once even offered to call me, instead, so they could more easily guide me through how to do something. If I have a need that Xola can't fulfill, they immediately send that to their development team and in most cases, I get an email or call saying the feature (or a similar one) is now available.
I've had offers from other companies that may be less expensive - but am so impressed by Xola's customer responsiveness, that it would take a LOT before I would make a change. VERY happy overall with my choice to go with Xola!

Nachteile

Calendar does not show multi-day events (only the first day shows). Also - only allows for 'group' or bulk discounts on same item. I would like a way to have the system give "Xth purchase free" - for example - so once someone has booked 2 items, it could prompt them with a "Buy one more and you get a free one". I saw other companies with this capacity, BUT then they had other things that I did not like. Overall - Xola has more Positives for me, than negatives.

Vorteile

I started with Xola back when the booking software genre was almost nonexistent. Back then there was Bookeo and that was about it. Now I get a sales call every week from competitors. Peek Pro seems to be the only software that is more feature rich but they are pushy and spam your customers if they get ahold of your data base so beware about them. Xola has an easy and beautiful interface. Non-pushy sales people. Help when you need it. Great ability to manage customers IF you never have to reschedule. The cost is lower than other companies if your doing volume greater than 5K a month. A good choice but you need a dedicated reservationist if you are offering an experience were rescheduling is common.

Nachteile

When pricing out a booking software company for your business consider the cost of an employee to manually have to reschedule your customers if your experience is prone to cancellation i.e. rain, wind, snow etc. and add it to the monthly cost of Xola to get an accurate idea of the true cost. The point of having a booking software is so you can concentrate on running your business and making it grow. Playing secretary is part of owning a small business but when it takes from R&D, marketing, quality of life it can kill you. Xola only allows your customer to book and reschedule themselves prior to their scheduled date. If you cancel the day of the adventure the customer has NO ability to reschedule if your experience is cancelled due to weather. If you are in a tourist area where you don't have an option to reschedule people because they are on vacation or the experience that you provide is indoor and cancellations rarely occur Xola is a great choice. If your experience is subject to weather and you take the entirety of the experience cost in advance, Xola has fallen behind severely compared to the the other big name in booking software. I provide Hot Air Balloon rides in an area that is prone to strong winds and rain during the season. My demographic is local and I sell my experience to customers that can and know that rescheduling is normal. I leave a recorded message the day of the flight and if the flight is cancelled there is no way in Xola to email the passengers a link to reschedule! Xola allows the customer to select another date prior to the experience and you can set those perimeters but after the customers first date choice, if it is cancelled, that is where you are left back in the 80's. In order to get your customers rescheduled on another date you need to do it over the phone and manually move them in Xola and online for it to move in real time. Xola has completely missed the boat for the experience provider that has to cancel for environmental reasons. I have submitted this feature request for two years now and it has shown no movement. They said it is not a common feature request and told us we could give the customer a "store credit". A credit sounded good until we realized that the customer would have to put al their personal detail starting with their name again to go that route. That is just not an appropriate thing to have your customers who are paying good money have to do and it looks unprofessional. I know for a fact two other operations left Xola for a booking company that offers a solution to the common problem of rescheduling for us outdoor providers. I think that they perhaps specialize in the hiking tours, or biking tour company that goes wind, rain, or shine and just refunds their customer if they cancel. Perhaps most of Xola's merchants operate in tourist areas where the customer does not reschedule because they are going home from vacation. The irony is that they offer our customers a great option to reschedule themselves prior to their first date. Why not extend that availability to after the date in case the experience is cancelled and the customer doesn't want a refund or via policy has to reschedule.

For customers booking online, selecting a date and paying is seamless. The merchant can customize a checklist for the customer i.e. what to bring, what's included, a map the meeting point. We receive just the odd phone call asking for clarification and payment is quick. On the other hand we need to hire staff to answer the phones just to rebook our customers on days it is raining or too windy to fly. On average another 40 hours of phone calls and talk time is added to our expense because of the lack of a customizable reschedule link we could send our customers so they could reschedule themselves. Customers like not having to leave voicemails if we are on the other line and %95 of customers would rather NOT wait to speak to a reservationist to go over dates that may or may not be filled. It's really frustrating and I do not believe we are the only one or one of the few merchants that need or would find a simple reschedule feature useful as they have implied to us.

The only other con is that they now leave the price on the gift certificates when a customer buys one. This was not always the case. Xola has a mailable and printable gift certificate option which we utilize heavily and you can now offer experiences at a discount but they for some reason notify the recipient of the price. We have been told and agree with several of our customers that leaving the price on the gift certificate is tacky. It has not always been that way, just with the recent update. I understand if you are giving a cash card to someone, you would need and want the recipient to know the price to avoid an embarrassing moment at a store or restaurant but who leaves the price tag on a gift? Xola gives the recipient a code so the recipient can book only and that process is easy but it's clear how much nanny spent and loves them the moment they get the printed gift certificate or email.

We went from chasing a couple hundred bucks a week to help pay for a hobby we love and turned it in to a serious 2 person small business with gross income in the six digits, well 3 person and income in the 5 digits because we need someone to handle all the manual reschedules. Feature requests do get noticed but at about 1.5 year turn around. It's been two years since we have been asking for this. We have grown and enjoyed Xola, we just for their sake since the booking software market is so competitive now want to see them be #1 and have the client base Peek Pro does as they are a lot more ethical but we fear they won't if this feature isn't added and if the feature turnaround isn't quicker.

Our review may appear negative even though we enjoy most of Xola. We understand all businesses have their little intricacies but we have been an experience provider for over ten years now and have offered many activities, rescheduling is a part of booking management no matter what adventure you provide, we and we are certain most other experience providers agree, just understand you will NOT have that option with Xola. Xola could be the best by far with just a couple more features.

Vorteile

We love the different dashboards and views. It's versatile but very user-friendly.

Nachteile

There is no SMS feature for employees. The scheduling is outdated (have to schedule one activity at a time). Xola Kiosk is only available for admin use which is a big security risk. Can't use for brick and mortar AND mobile.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Xola

Vorteile

Xola has really streamlined the booking process. It has made it easier for us, in the office, to manage bookings coming in and see when trips and courses are happening. If we are booking private trips or courses that are not listed on our website, we have built our backend system to allow for us to do this quickly. Xola keeps our customers credit card numbers on file in a safe and secure manor making it easy for us to take deposits and final payments prior to a trip or course. Our customers seem to find the booking process easy and user friendly. We have also integrated the use of Smartwaiver with Xola which has made tracking waivers much easier and taken the need of our guides to do it away. Our guides are still learning Xola but Xola has made it so the guides can quickly access the client information without having to send it in a seperate email.

Nachteile

The biggest thing that we wish was different was that on the calendar, during booking and on the backend, that Xola showed the length of our courses. It only shows the start date, and although this hasn't been a problem, it would be something that would be a nice addition to make life a bit easier. Along the same lines we have courses (single courses) that run Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday & Sunday and would like to be able to show the custom schedule of that course in some capacity, even just on our backend calendar to see the overlap with other trips.

Vorteile

It's intuitive for basic, everyday needs: making reservations, taking payment online or at the door, making coupons, rescheduling reservations, etc. Most of the functions are self-explanatory. To refund someone, you click the "refund" button. To make an additional charge, you click the "charge" button. Nothing too complicated and nothing too difficult to find.

Nachteile

Behind-the-scenes stuff can be difficult to access. For example, I can't see all the people who were originally scheduled for a specific date in order to determine how many people reschedule away from that date. I also can't filter my tag searches. I want to be able to search for "all bookings with [X tag] between [Y date] and [Z date]." To do that, I would need to download a full report (which is NOT an intuitive process) and then manually search for these tags.
There is also not an intuitive way to split payments! If the reservation has a coupon or a non-standard ticket price and they want to split payments at the door, we need to have a calculator on hand and god help us if someone on a reservation with a coupon wants to pay for more than one ticket.
When a customer's card doesn't work on a payment, it won't tell me why. Which means we can't tell the customers why and there are five extra steps they need to take which is inconvenient for all.
Also: it's buggy as hell. I can't refresh the page because it will log me out. I can't click the back button because that takes me to the first Dashboard (where only the dates and times show up and not the reservation names) no matter what page I am on. Two computers cannot take payment at the same time. The capacity changes don't always take. Sometimes, the website won't scroll.

Vorteile

Allows for tours that have minimums - Our tours require 8 person to sign up in order for a tour to go (minimum). Xola handles this portion far far better than any of the other competitors and I have met with a number of them. If you do minimums, and care about customer communication, this is a must use.

Software works with many options
Very strong amount of features
Very strong customer support
Reasonable competitive pricing
Great analytics
They will listen to and often times implement feature requests
Good integration with booking site (Yelp / Google / TA)

Highly recommended!

Nachteile

App on Android can be a bit buggy and frustrating - not a deal breaker. Sometimes you may have to click buttons a bunch before it responds or have to shut it down and reload it. Won't allow you to take a call and check the app when roaming (this does work if you have active internet).

Would like to see further integration with hotel and other booking companies

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Vorteile

System is user friendly, clean and easy for backend users

Nachteile

Partner fees are costly. Unable to tire pricing in one listing for separate days

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Vorteile

-I love that with my tours I can just go onto the app and check without having to keep track myself of what days I work.
-The app is intuitive, clean, and easy to use.
-I like that I can see my bookings on the desktop site and sync the calendar with my gmail calendar.
-I like that when I get booked a tour it sends an email to me.

Nachteile

Improvements that can be made:

-The desktop site does not allow me to see see the Questionnaire. I have to reference the app to see what the customer wrote.
-I don't have the need for a credit card reader, yet the app asks me every time I open it. Once I accidentally said "yes" while wearing headphones and thought I may have gone deaf when I high pitch tone assaulted my eardrums.
-I can't confirm a tour through the app. Its inconvenient because then I have to find the specific email and then enter my login thru a web browser. In-app tour confirmation would be much less hassle.

Vorteile

The strength of this company is the fantastic support it provides for its clients. This is both at the set-up stage, and also after implementation has started. It is available 24/7, and if the on-line platform is not sufficient to solve the technical issue or the user-end challenge, a telephone conversation can be easily scheduled.
This was even the case at the beginning of my using the platform: I was unfamiliar with the product and needed a lot of help to navigate the site initially. This is natural, of course, but what surprised me was when I had not used a particular function after a period of time (and so I had forgotten how to perform a specific function), the support team was extremely patient with me and with my rather elementary question.

The support continued as I made non-standard bookings for my bicycle tours - each time I contacted them, the support team walked me through the necessary steps. They were helpful, polite, and understanding. Sometimes I felt embarrassed by my requests (oh, of course - duh!) “I’m sorry for bothering you” I would say afterwards, but they never made me feel the question was unjustified.

In sum, I have only good things to say about the interpersonal contact I had with Xola. I would rate them 11/10 for this aspect.

The platform itself is a good one, although there are some minor limitations for my purposes that I experienced. A few little tweaks for payments and bookings would be good.
8/10 in this category.

Nachteile

No difficulties, just a couple of limitations for payments and parameters for booking.

Vorteile

Is easy to use, my customers find it useful and the best feature for our business is to get Google Analytics data and the new Xola custom reports.

Nachteile

We really need to show more info in the booking detail not just day picker. Maybe some custom fields like a map, conditional inputs, description, etc. I know we can get this info in the questionnaire after booking, but we believe that displaying questions like "you need pick up?" "are you arriving in airplane or cruiser?"

Vorteile

-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

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

-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.

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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!

Vorteile

Tours and calendars were easy to setup in a new platform.

Nachteile

Limited connections to other tools, making it harder to sync calls with appointments

Vorteile

The support is great. Every time I have needed help I was able to live chat with someone.

Nachteile

The calendar display for my customers is not as user friendly as some of the other programs I have seen.

Vorteile

I really appreciate how easily you can customize and set specific details of listings. I believe it allows more different types of businesses to use Xola pretty easily.

Nachteile

Being able to edit bookings which use the split payment option would be SO ideal. I often times have to cancel the booking and rebook, which makes any refunds more complicated down the road.

I would really also appreciate the feature to type the number of guests into a booking made manually, instead of having to click increase/decrease for each guest.

In the purchases tab, the order it comes up seems pretty random. It would be incredibly helpful if all purchases/cancellations/guestlists/etc would appear in chronological order. It would also be helpful if you could filter it via cancellations, etc.

There's a random glitch I'm noticing recently where the guest will input their email and phone number, but when looking at their booking through the dashboard, their email shows up twice. When I go into the customer's profile, their phone number shows.

Vorteile

This is the most user friendly software I have ever used for escape room management! You can easily adjust bookings, search guests, and see how your business is doing at a glance! My favorite thing: Live chat support!!

Nachteile

I said this on the other page, but being able to auto notify preassigned guides as soon as a booking came through would be amazing!!

Vorteile

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!

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

Without a doubt this is a smooth app that knows what silk feels like. The UI has gone through some great improvements that have improved the silkiness to a degree even silkworms would be jealous of, but it's clear that they're taking the time to listen to their users in the development process and that's important. Performance is more than just good, it's Tony-the-tiger great. Smooth and well executed interface. It's missing features - some of them might be important to you, it's hard to say - but the devs do a great job of listening to feature requests and we've seen real, significant improvements all around. That's the sign of a maturing application.

Is it best-of-breed? Hard to say, and I'm sure there's arguments for and against, but I'll give them this: their support is out-freaking-standing. That alone is worth a few awkwardly implemented features or some gaps in how things are executed. If there's a problem, you connect to a staff that takes their support work seriously. I'm surprised they don't hop in a plane and come to your computer and help you out - they legitimately take every step just shy of that in an effort to find a solution. It's impressive and it outshines any downsides you might find in the app itself. Is there always a solution? No, that's unrealistic. But they often find a workaround and if they can't they'll make sure the devs know there's a gap that's been discovered and that needs to be looked at. Great, great support team.

Nachteile

There's feature gaps. Depending on any number of factors the software just doesn't quite fit - but it's close. Usually close enough - there's often a workaround that is... well, good enough. And you hope the devs close up the gap or shore it up and it won't get any worse. For the most part that happens, but when there's a 'feature release' you hold your breath and a lot of times you're left thinking to yourself "what? there's so much better things to have spent man-hours on than that..." To be fair, I've often found the implemented features to be useful once I've worked with them but there's still features - things I would consider fundamentally necessary - that haven't been implemented. It's a fail, but a relatively minor one. At least, for us - ymmv.

Vorteile

Easy to train staff on. If you can work an iPhone you can work on Xola.
Good mobile access for staff

Nachteile

- Very little customization available for unique businesses
- Limited accounting reports that take heavy editing in Excel to get the needed information
- Organizes by customer email instead of name, can create major problems.
- Europe based support team so finding a time to connect with them can be tough
- No ability for Admin accounts to make edits or corrections to individual sales, especially frustrating on the accounting side.
- No archiving feature for product listings. So old products remain on all active inventory lists, becoming very cumbersome to search through.
- Easy software for small/medium sized companies, not good for larger companies
- Limited marketing features and hard to customize
- The biggest issue for us is limited reporting especially on the accounting side. For database software, that is a huge drawback. I should be able to create and run custom reports on all of the info in the system but your stuck with a rigid structure that you then have to edit and narrow down in Excel, taking lots of extra time. We won't be able to stay with Xola as we grow unless this feature improves.

Vorteile

-- 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)

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

I like the 24/7 support. They are very knowledgable and helpful in problem solving as I just jumped into the program without looking at the support documents. This software is very user friendly and if something stumps me, I contact support and in minutes my problem is solved. We've been able to streamline our system with XOLA, eliminating wasted time, making the system easy for season staff to run the back office without a ton of training. XOLA just makes our business lives so much easier! Thank you for existing!

Nachteile

Not much. They are continually improving. I would like to see the ability to schedule staff when they aren't with a group though.

Vorteile

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.)

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

Easy to use, higher level GUI that makes it easy for non-computer savvy users. Customer support has always been great, quick chat feature allows me to work in Xola and resolve simple and complex problems. Web based cloud service works great in real-time bookings, availability.

System is fully able to handle online bookings, agent bookings, all within the scope of our services. It automates the confirmation emails, processes payments and sends reminders

Nachteile

We offer kayaking, super simple but we need 3 options. Single Kayak, Double Kayak and a seat in a Double kayak. To fix this we constantly have to check and double check. If we we're able to offer seats and still use shared inventory correctly we could offer cheaper rate options for budget concerned customers.

We use coupon campaigns to represent 3rd party tickets / vendors. I really wish we had a backup database in case a campaign accidentally gets deleted or corrupt.

Heavy RAM usage and can cause delays when we have a robust calendar and multiple tours / shared inventory

System crashes when pricing is updated. Users need to log off and back on to resolve this issue.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

The software is easy to use and mostly intuitive. Over the past few years a number of features have been added to make it more user friendly. Customer service is very responsive. Site has very few "down" times and only the occasional issue with international customers having interface issues. Overall, we are pleased.

Nachteile

There is still room for improvement. The two most annoying issues are: occasionally clients make errors entering contact email information. I cannot edit the email to help customer if they are a return client (we have a 70% return rate). System will not allow edit to a preexisting email address. Second, have have 40+ guides. There is no way to alphabetize the list of my guides when assigning them to tours. They are listed in order of joining my team. This ends up making guide assignment cumbersome. Finally, Xola is expensive. I am reluctant to have customers pay a 6% additional fee and absorb cost myself. That cost is significant and concerning.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

Nothing! They are the best!!

HAHA -- I have to write a longer review than the first line! Okay -- Really, they are the best! ;)

Vorteile

My favorite thing about Xola has been the extremely knowledgeable and speedy support staff always being at the ready via email, phone or 24hrs a dang day via chat. I can not tell you how key it is to understand that hours of need to not happen between 9-5 somestandardtime but can happen at anytime. To me, having someone there to bounce questions and issues or even just log a feature request is key compared to the many other software companies that offer lame "help/knowledge bases" or "video tutorials" you can search forever and still not find what you need.

I also appreciate that they are not resting on their laurels when it comes to updates and feature additions. Since I have been using Xola since Jan 2017 they have released many updates that actually have workflow function compared to "Wow.. we made it so you can add emoji's to your email signature" type of stuff I have suffered through as "function upgrades" on other platforms.

Lastly I really like that the software has the ability to be cross platform and mobile and you can still have full functionality. It is helpful that they are working towards upgrading the app as they go so more actions can be tackled through there as well.

Nachteile

The mobile app for android at least could really use a "refresh" feature like on the web so I can swap between company accounts easier than restarting the app.

The guide management is a growing feature so I hope more develops there sooner than later which is more about my personal workflow needs than anything else.

Lastly, it is not something that has as much to do with Xola as it does with Google in that the subscribed calendar feature Xola offers does not work well with the way google imports them so I would love to see a push style calendar notification instead so those not on apple products are not left with inaccurate calendars. Again more a Google screw up than Xola but I really really want xola to rework the calendar notification option so it can integrate better cross-platform.

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

Xola has put a lot of thought into making the transaction process quick and simple. Therefore, it has a very high "ease of use" rating for both our staff and our customers. Nevertheless, it is feature-rich and carries a lot of power "under the hood", giving the admin team a number of different ways to setup listings and sales flows. The tech support is also OUTSTANDING.

Nachteile

The reporting is sufficient but not robust. They have some custom reporting options, and you can export to excel, but sometimes that can be problematic, especially if you have a lot of listings or demographics. Very cumbersome to do any type of "deep dive" into large data sets.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Warum Xola gewählt wurde

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Xola

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

The set up and user interface is really easy for the most part. The customer service is fast and responsive, anytime I have a problem it’s answer d in minutes over the phone. The pricing option are really good for small business/new start ups and the booking fees are very reasonable. The best part is Xola is geared towards the outdoor industry and the software easily integrates into your existing website. It also has automated features like abaindon cart as well as custom coupons and discounts which I really like. We use this software for our SUP/Kayak rental business and it has been fantastic so far.

Nachteile

There could be more customization on the backend of the booking parameters, for instance selecting availability dates for a rental unit takes some time. I think it would be nice if Xola offered it’s own credit card terminal. It is difficult to add two separate “experiences” to one purchase, meaning if a customer of mine wanted to rent one kayak and one SUP they would have to do separate transactions.

Vorteile

The chat feature is indispensable, questions answered/problems solved on the spot. If the tech on chat can't fix or answer a question I get connected with someone who can solve the problem within 24 hours.

The updates are pretty much instant, if I make a change, its on my site immediately.

Nachteile

I would like to be able to add more review links than just one on follow up emails.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Xola

Vorteile

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!

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

I love the platform's ease of use, for both the customer and the user. When using previous platforms, we had customers calling continually because they were unable to complete transactions because they were confused with the setup. And, for the back-end user, it is a breeze! In fact, we never even had to train our employees to use Xola. The backend is extremely intuitive.

And, I can't say enough about Xola's customer support. It's the best of any platform I've used. If I have a problem, Xola's chat is ALWAYS available. I also appreciate the backend functionality of being able to refund customers with store credit. The system automatically emails the customer a promo code for future use and stores the information within our system. Rebooking previous customers is also a breeze!

And, what's BEST for me, is Xola's pricing model. We live in an area with a very high sales tax and I did not want to have to charge our customers an additional 6%. With Xola, we get an incredible platform (that more than pays for itself with the "abandoned shopping cart" feature) for a flat monthly rate.

Xola is also continually tweaking the platform, making it better. The most recent backend mobile update is incredible -- giving me near full functionality from the ease of my iPad.

Nachteile

As for cons, yikes. I really can't think of anything. When I do come across functionality features that I would like to see, I have easy access to suggest my solutions. What's even better? Xola actually listens.