The rulebook, not the calendar
Salon scheduling software that knows what a long appointment is worth
Most booking tools know two things about a time: free or busy. That is not enough to protect a four-hour colour. Chairwarden runs on three settings and one rule, and this page is the whole of it: what a block is, when a short service may touch one, and what happens at the end of the day.
Free to try, up to 15 bookings/month · calendar protection included on every plan
300+ people have joined Chairwarden
Set booking rules that protect your longest services.
There is no buffer-time setting, because nothing is padded. These three controls are the whole rulebook.
Free or busy is not the question that costs you money
A calendar is very good at answering one question. The expensive one is the next one along.
What a calendar decides
Is this slot free?
At 11:30 on an empty Thursday the answer is yes. So the 30-minute clipper cut goes in, and the four-hour colour you could have sold into that afternoon is now two unusable stubs.
What the rule decides
Is this slot free, and worth taking?
At 11:30 the answer is no, because a 30-minute service there breaks a block that can hold something worth several times more. The client never sees 11:30 at all.
Four decisions, in this order
Every time a client opens your booking link, these run in sequence. Nothing here is a preference you have to remember to switch on per booking.
What counts as a long block
Every service has a Protect switch, and a protected service's booking becomes a block. For a one-off appointment with a typed-in duration, the block starts at your long threshold: 2 hours by default, and you can move it between 1 and 5 hours.
The 15-minute grid
Start times are laid on a 15-minute grid inside that day's opening hours. A service is only offered a time if the whole service fits before you close, so the grid quietly shortens at the end of the day.
What a short service is allowed to take
In Strict mode a short service never sees a time inside a protected block. In Relaxed mode a service at or under your quick threshold (30 minutes by default) may sit inside one, on the assumption it fits the processing time.
What nothing is allowed to take
An event synced from your connected Google Calendar is a hard block in both modes. The dentist at 2 PM is never bookable, and no threshold talks the rule out of it.
Worked example
A 90-minute colour, when you close at 6 PM
The grid runs in 15-minute steps, so the last bookable start is the one where the whole service still fits before closing. In Relaxed mode the same arithmetic applies to the quick threshold: a 30-minute trim may sit inside a protected block, and a 45-minute one may not, if your quick threshold is 30.
Where the rulebook stops
Five things this does not do, so you are not hunting for them later.
Nothing is padded around a booking. If you want a cushion after a colour, the honest way is a longer service duration.
Quick and long are set for the whole calendar. Per service you get one Protect switch, nothing finer.
Close the day in your opening hours, or put the time in your Google Calendar: a synced event blocks online booking in both modes.
No staff accounts and no second calendar. The rules protect one chair, which is the chair this was built for.
Deposits are taken online, before the appointment, into your own Stripe account. There is no card terminal.
Your public booking link, email and SMS reminders, CSV client import, two-way Google Calendar sync and monthly stats.
The rules are on every plan
$29 a month, or $23 a month billed annually, for unlimited bookings. Calendar protection is not the paid part.
Starter
$0
no credit card, enough bookings to prove the protection works
- Up to 15 bookings/month
- Calendar protection, Strict & Relaxed modes
- Public booking link, your own URL
- Email reminders
- Deposit & no-show protection via Stripe
- Google Calendar sync
No credit card needed to start.
Get startedIndividual
$29/mo
or $23/mo billed annually
Everything in Starter, plus:
- Unlimited bookings
- SMS + email reminders (500 SMS/mo included)
- Import wizard: bring your client list from Vagaro, Square & more
- Full stats dashboard: revenue, utilization, top services
Cancel anytime from your dashboard.
Get startedThe free tier is 15 bookings a month. It is a way to test the rule against your own calendar, not a permanent free plan.
Questions about the rules
No, and that is a real limit. There is one quick threshold and one long threshold for the whole calendar, plus a Protect switch on each service. A 20-minute beard trim and a 45-minute cut are not treated differently by the rule unless you keep the quick threshold at 45, in which case both can move inside a block in relaxed mode.
No. Chairwarden does not pad appointments. A buffer adds minutes around a booking that is already there; the block rule refuses the booking that would break a long one in the first place. There is no buffer number to configure, because the protection is a refusal rather than a padding.
The last start time offered is 4:30 PM, because the whole service has to fit inside your opening hours. 4:45 is not offered, and neither is 5:00. The client sees fewer times at the end of the day, which is the rule working rather than a slot going missing.
No. Candidate times are laid on a 15-minute grid inside the hours you set for that day, and any time already in the past is hidden. A day you have closed simply offers nothing.
Yes, always. You are the one holding the scissors, so a manual booking is never blocked. It is saved as an override, so you can see later that it broke a protected block on purpose.
Still comparing? The side-by-side comparisons carry a source and a date for every number.
Set your three numbers, then forget about them
Quick, long, strict or relaxed. The rule runs on every booking from then on, including the ones that arrive at 9:40 on a Sunday night.
Start freeNo card required. Cancel from the dashboard, not by email.
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