Long sets have the highest no-show cost in your book
A polish change is twenty minutes. A full set of sculpted acrylics, a gel-X application, or an intricate nail-art appointment can run two hours or more. Those long blocks are exactly the ones that get ghosted most, and they are the hardest to refill on short notice because almost nobody walks in needing two free hours of your time right then.
Deposits are already normal in the nail world, so your clients will not blink. Keptbookings lets you require one on long sets while keeping quick services on simple card-on-file. The deposit applies to the service, so a real client pays nothing extra, and a flaky one has skin in the game before they ever hold your afternoon.
- Deposit on full sets, sculpted nails, gel-X, and nail art.
- Card-on-file for polish changes, fills, and regulars.
- Protection scaled to the length of the appointment.
The math of three no-shows a week
Say your average service is $60 and you lose three appointments a week to no-shows. That is $180 a week, roughly $720 a month, and close to $9,000 a year of work you did everything to earn and never got paid for. The booking software did not cause that, but the wrong booking software does nothing to stop it.
A validated card on file changes the conversation. The forgetful client gets a reminder and shows up. The chronic flake either commits with a deposit or you find out before you have blocked off the chair. Either way the empty two-hour hole stops being free for them and expensive for you.
Closing the fake-card and deleted-card loopholes
A deposit policy is only as good as the card behind it. A lot of booking tools accept whatever number a client types and never check it, so a fake card sails through and the no-show fee bounces. Others save a real card but let the client quietly remove it after booking, so your protection vanishes without warning.
Keptbookings validates the card with Stripe the instant the booking is made, rejecting dead or invalid cards before the slot is confirmed. If a client deletes their card before the appointment, you get an alert in time to ask for a new one or open the slot back up. That is the difference between a policy you can enforce and a policy you only hope works.
- Invalid and expired cards are rejected at booking.
- You are alerted when a card is removed before the appointment.
- Deposits and fees collect through Stripe and pay out next day.
Book from Instagram without a receptionist
Nail clients find you on Instagram and TikTok, scroll your work, and want to book the set they just saw. Keptbookings gives you a branded booking page and a link-in-bio so they can pick the design, leave a deposit, and lock the time without DMing back and forth while you are mid-set on someone else.
Guest checkout means no account, no password, no friction. A client taps your link, chooses the service and time, drops a card, and they are booked. You stop playing receptionist in your DMs and your evenings fill themselves.
Keep your clients and keep your money
Your regulars are your business. Marketplace apps treat your client list as a lead source they can rent to other techs, and they take a percentage of every fill from people who were already yours. Keptbookings has no marketplace and no discovery feed, so nobody is poaching your clients, and there is zero commission on a single booking.
You pay one flat price: around $19 a month solo, a flat $49 for up to six techs on Team, and a free tier of 20 appointments a month to start. If you ever leave, one click exports your full client list and history, and importing your current book is free.