Frequently asked questions
What Cardim is, what it costs and what it does — no waffle.
How much does Cardim cost?
Cardim costs €0.20 per person on every booking a customer makes through your link. A booking for one person costs €0.20; a table of five costs €1. There is no monthly fee, no minimum and no cap. It is free until 1 February 2027.
Do I have to pay a monthly fee?
No. Cardim has no monthly fee and no subscription. You only pay for the bookings your customers make themselves through your link, and in a month when nobody books you pay nothing.
What am I not charged for?
You are not charged for the bookings you put in yourself — the ones from the phone and the ones from people who walk in — nor for bookings that are cancelled, nor for bookings where you mark that the customer did not turn up.
Do I need a credit card to start?
No. Creating an account asks for no payment details, and Cardim is free until 1 February 2027.
What kind of business is it for?
Cardim is for businesses that work by booking or appointment: restaurants, barbers, hair and nail salons, beauty, massage and clinics. A restaurant books tables by number of people; everyone else books a time with a member of staff.
Do my customers have to create an account?
No. The customer picks a time, puts in their name, phone number and email, and that is it. There is no customer account and no password: every booking is identified by a link nobody could guess, which they receive by email and which lets them change the time or cancel on their own.
How long does it take to set up?
A few minutes. When you create your account, Cardim already sets up opening hours, a first service and a staff profile to match your type of business, and your booking page is online by the end of sign-up. You can change all of it afterwards.
Does it connect to Google Calendar or Outlook?
Yes, and in both directions. Cardim reads the busy periods from the calendar you connect, so it never offers a time when you already have something on, and it writes every booking it receives into that calendar. What the customer types in the notes field is not copied across.
What if I already take bookings through Instagram or over the phone?
You can carry on taking them, and those are not charged for. Cardim solves the opposite problem: it answers the person who wants to book at eleven at night, or while you are with someone else. Put the link in your Instagram bio and on your Google business profile.
What happens when somebody does not turn up?
You mark that booking as a no-show and it comes off your bill for that month. Cardim automatically sends an email reminder the day before, which is what cuts no-shows most.
Is there a waiting list?
Yes. When a day is full, the customer can join the waiting list and gets an automatic email the moment a cancellation frees up the time they wanted.
Can I cancel whenever I want?
Yes. There is no contract and no minimum term, and you can export your account data — customers, bookings, services, staff and billing — at any time in Settings.
Who owns my customers’ data?
The data is yours. Under data protection law you are the data controller and Cardim is the processor: we store and process that data only in order to provide you with the service. We do not sell it and we do not use it for advertising.
Will Cardim bring me new customers?
No, and that is an important difference. Cardim is not a marketplace: there is no catalogue where people go looking for a restaurant or a salon, so there is no commission for sending you customers. It is there to take the bookings of the customers you already have, without you having to answer the phone.
Can two people be booked at the same time?
No. A member of staff, a chair or a room can only hold one booking at a time, and that rule does not live in the website — it lives in the database: Postgres refuses a second overlapping booking even if two customers press confirm in the same second. The only way to have two at once on the same resource is for you to force one deliberately, from your own admin. In a restaurant the dining room has seats, so several tables at the same hour are normal, and what Cardim guarantees there is that the people booked never add up to more than the capacity you set. And the same customer never ends up holding two overlapping bookings: not even you can force that one.
What about customers with no email address?
Book them in yourself. A booking you enter needs only a phone number — the email address is optional — and it is always free, today and after 1 February 2027. What that customer does not get is the automatic emails: the confirmation, the reminder the day before and the waiting-list alert all go out by email, and Cardim sends no SMS. You still have their number on their customer record, with a WhatsApp button beside it for when you want to confirm by hand.
Can I put the booking button on my own website?
Yes, with one line. Settings has a snippet to copy: paste it into the page of your site where you want the button, and a booking button appears there. Whoever clicks it books without leaving your site, in a window over the page. No plugin and no developer needed, it works on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace or a hand-written page, and bookings that come in that way are marked as having come from your site.
Can I try it before creating an account?
Yes. There is a demo shop open to everybody — Estúdio Aurora, linked from the home page — where you book an appointment from start to finish exactly as a customer would: pick the service, pick the time, get the confirmation. It is a made-up salon and does not exist: no email is sent to anybody, nothing lands in anybody's diary, and the bookings you make there are deleted every night.