One booking engine, two flows: appointments for studios and salons, rooms for guest houses. Drop a shortcode on a page and your site starts taking bookings.
Services, staff, availability and customers are separate parts of one system. You set them once in the admin; the booking form assembles itself from them.
Every one of these is a real failure of a paper diary or a message thread. The first three the free plugin already solves.
Working hours, service duration, buffer time and existing bookings are all checked before a slot is offered. A time that cannot work is never shown, so it cannot be picked.
The booking page runs while you are with a client, or asleep. The customer picks from what is genuinely free and gets an email confirming it.
What does it cost, and how long does it take? Both sit on every service card, before anyone commits to anything.
Services are assigned per person, so customers only see staff who do that service. Pro adds week and day views with a column each, plus vacation and time-off blackouts.
Every booking emails you the moment it lands. Pro pushes it to your phone and lets you manage bookings from a mobile app.
A room sold on Airbnb and on your own site is a double booking waiting to happen. Pro syncs availability with Airbnb, Booking.com and iCal.
Unlimited bookings, no caps, and nobody else’s name on your booking form. That is the free plugin, not a trial of it. Pro is a separate add-on for businesses that take money online, sync rooms across channels, or schedule more than one person.
Stripe payment with the customer choosing online or on site, automatic localized PDF invoices, and coupons with per-service targeting, usage limits and expiry. Solves no-shows and chasing payment afterwards.
Owner mode in the mobile app, owner login with push alerts, and a push notification on every new booking. Solves being away from the desk when a booking lands.
Week and day calendar views with a column per staff member, vacation and time-off blackouts, and booking rules for advance notice and blackout dates. Solves a multi-staff operation outgrowing a month grid.
Channel sync with Airbnb, Booking.com and iCal. Narrow but decisive: it is the one reason a guest house buys Pro rather than staying on Free, because Google Calendar covers appointments only.
Ask about licensing several sites, whether Bookvatio fits how your business runs, or anything the comparison did not answer.
Bug reports and general support are better on the WordPress.org forum, where the answer helps the next person too.