Indie scale, without the enterprise onboarding.

Yes. You can run Covered in parallel during your notice period — many independents do, routing new bookings to Covered while the ResDiary contract winds down. When the term ends, you turn ResDiary off. If you'd like help timing the cut-over (or reading the termination clauses), email us.

Honest answer: ResDiary has the broader integrations library — their API-first architecture and years of partnerships put them ahead on connector breadth. Covered integrates with Stripe, Google Reserve, WhatsApp and raw CSV/JSON export; beyond that we build on request. If you rely on a specific POS, loyalty or marketing tool, email us before you commit — we'll tell you straight whether we have it, when we could ship it, or whether ResDiary remains the better fit.

For a fresh signup: an afternoon. You register, set your floor plan, paste the widget embed, and you're taking bookings. For a migration from ResDiary: budget a week so we can map your export properly and you can test the widget on a staging link before flipping the Google Reserve link across. No mandatory onboarding fee, no consultant day-rate, no 6-week project.

Less than you’d expect. The operational grammar (floor plan, pacing, covers, pre-orders, deposits) is the same language ResDiary uses — moving across is closer to switching from one iPhone to another than learning Android. Most FoH teams are comfortable within a single service. We provide short looms for the pieces that differ.

It can, and several multi-site indies run on Covered today — but this is the point where we'll give you the clearest version of the truth: if you're a 5+ site group with a central ops team and you rely on ResDiary's API depth to push data into BI, loyalty and marketing stacks, ResDiary's price tag is justified. Covered is purpose-built for 1–2 site independents. If you're in between (say, 3 sites run by owner-operators), book a call and we'll walk through it with you, no pitch.

Under UK GDPR, any platform holding personal data on your guests must give you a machine-readable copy on request. That includes bookings, guest contact details, notes, tags and preferences. If a provider delays or refuses, you can escalate to the ICO — but in practice a polite written request usually unblocks it within a week.

Because we’re scoped differently. ResDiary funds a deep API, a large integrations team, enterprise support desks and an onboarding org — things a 40-site group needs. Covered funds a focused product that a 1–2 site indie actually uses every service, and we pass the lower overhead on in the price. Neither approach is wrong; pick the one that fits your operation.