Frequently asked questions. Before you switch.

Covered is one plan at £49/month per venue, with every feature included, no per-cover fees and no contract: you can cancel anytime. It is not a marketplace: your guests book directly with you, your customer data stays yours, and you can export it at any time. Our comparison page sets out what each provider publishes about monthly price, per-cover fees and contract length, with the address of their own page and the date we read it.Compare what each provider publishes →

Yes. Every new venue gets 14 days free, starting on the day it goes live. No card needed to start. We set up your account with you, and during the trial you have the full platform: bookings, floor plan, pre-orders, CRM, reports. When the 14 days end, add a card in Settings → Billing to carry on at £49/month. If you don't, we may pause your online booking until you do.

We set up your account with you and agree the day you go live. After that you run it yourself from the dashboard, including your floor plan, opening hours and booking policies. You don't need a consultant, and there is no setup fee.

Yes. The importer in Settings → Migrate takes a CSV of past and future bookings, and recognises OpenTable, Resy and ResDiary exports; for any other CSV you match the columns yourself. Guest names, contact details and notes come across too, so you are not starting from zero on day one.

You own your data. At any time you can download your bookings as a CSV from the Bookings page, or all your bookings, guests and pre-orders as one JSON file from Settings → Danger Zone. If you cancel, your data stays available to export for 30 days after your paid period ends, after which we may delete it, as our Terms and Data Processing Agreement set out. We never sell or market to your guests.

No. Covered runs in any modern web browser — Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox — on a laptop, tablet or phone. Front-of-house typically runs on an iPad and the back office on a laptop. We do not sell or require proprietary hardware.

Yes. Covered provides an embeddable booking widget for your own website and a hosted booking page you can link from Instagram "Book Now" buttons. All bookings flow into a single inbox with no cross-channel double-bookings. Reserve with Google is not included. It is a partner programme, and we are not an approved partner yet.

Stripe is our default processor for deposits, saved cards and no-show fees. It is the fastest to set up and works in the UK out of the box. Square is supported for venues already on the Square ecosystem. Card fees are charged by Stripe or Square at their normal rates; Covered does not take a cut.

Yes. You can require a deposit, a full pre-payment, or a saved card per booking type (for example: a saved card for Friday dinner, no deposit for weekday lunch). A saved card is not charged or held at booking. If a guest does not turn up, your staff can choose to charge the no-show fee from the dashboard, up to the amount the guest was quoted. Nothing is charged automatically.

It means exactly what it says: Covered never charges a per-cover fee. You pay £49/month whether you do 100 covers or 10,000 covers. The only money your payment processor (Stripe or Square) takes is the standard card processing fee when you actually charge a guest — and that goes straight to them, not to us.

Covered runs in the cloud, so guests can still book online while your venue's WiFi is down. On your device, today's bookings and tables that were already loaded stay readable. A few changes are saved on the device and sent automatically when the connection returns: moving a booking to another table or time by dragging it on the schedule, and changes made on a booking's own page, such as marking it arrived or a no-show, assigning a table or editing the party size. Other changes, including seating and course updates on the schedule, payments and messages, need a connection. If one does not go through, Covered tells you and puts the booking back as it was, so nothing changes without you knowing. Mobile data on the host stand's device is a good backup.

We release changes most weeks. If a change materially reduces what your plan includes, we give you at least 30 days' notice, as our Terms set out.