Why we charge 0% booking fees
And who really pays when booking software is “free.” Usually your guests — at the checkout, on every booking.
A flat monthly price. 0% fees — to you and your guests. Built in New Zealand.
“Free” software is never free. It's funded.
A booking platform has to make money somewhere. When there's no monthly price, the money comes from one of these instead — on every booking you take.
A fee on your guest
FareHarbor typically adds a booking fee of around 6–8% to your guest's checkout total — the rate isn't published, it's set per agreement. Xola charges guests a flat 6% on its guest-pays plan. Peek runs a similar range, with its own payments as the default, strongly pushed option.
A cut of every sale
Rezdy and Checkfront take about 3% of each online booking, on top of a monthly plan. Marketplaces take far more — ClassBento takes 20% on orders through its website, and deal channels like Bookme take 20% or more in commission.
Held funds & forced processors
Some platforms route your money through their own payments and pay you out on their schedule. Operator reviews report held funds and delayed payouts. With your own Stripe account, your money is yours from the moment it's paid.
Competitor fees are indicative, based on each vendor's publicly listed pricing and terms (checked Jul 2026); FareHarbor's rate is not published and is set per agreement. Check each provider for current rates. Sources are linked on our fee calculator.
Kiwis expect the price on the label
New Zealand runs on GST-inclusive pricing. When a guest sees $100, they expect to pay $100 — not $100 plus a service fee they've never heard of, revealed at the last step of checkout.
A surprise fee at the final click is one of the oldest causes of abandoned carts there is. Every guest who bails is a booking you did the marketing for and didn't get to keep.
0% fees means the price you advertise is the price your guest pays. No asterisk, no last-minute surcharge, no lost booking.
On a $100 session
Illustrative, using a typical 6–8% guest fee. Card processing (Stripe) is charged separately by your payment provider on any platform.
Percentages are small until the month is big
A few percent sounds like nothing. Multiply it by a good summer and it's a part-time wage.
Guest-fee platform
NZ$600–800
taken from your guests at a typical 6–8%
3% + a plan
NZ$300+
per-booking fee, on top of the monthly subscription
GoodKeen
NZ$0
in booking fees — you pay only your flat plan
On NZ$10,000 of bookings in a busy month. That's a NZ$300–800 swing every strong month — and an analysis by rival platform CaptainBook puts the all-in cost of a guest-fee model north of 10% at volume once processing is included.
Figures are indicative and based on publicly listed rates; the ~10% effective-cost estimate is from an analysis by rival booking platform CaptainBook (captainbook.io). Check each provider for current rates.
So how does GoodKeen make money?
No mystery, no fine print. Just a flat monthly price when you outgrow the free tier.
Free, genuinely
Up to 25 bookings a month, every feature included, 0% fees. We bet that when you grow, you'll happily pay a flat price — not that we'll skim your guests in the meantime.
A flat plan when you grow
NZ$39 or NZ$79 a month, no lock-in. That's it. It doesn't move when you have a big month, and it never touches your guest's total.
Your Stripe, your money
You connect your own Stripe account. Card processing is Stripe's standard fee, paid to Stripe. We never sit between you and your payout.
Where 0% isn't the whole story: a couple of platforms — Bookeo and SimplyBook — also charge no per-booking fee. Against those, the difference isn't fees; it's price, no booking caps, waivers included, and NZD billing. We'd rather tell you that than pretend 0% wins every argument.
See it against a specific platform
Honest, sourced comparisons — including where each one genuinely beats us.
Frequently asked questions
Keep the whole ticket price
Free forever up to 25 bookings a month. 0% booking fees, on every plan. No credit card required.