Sling schedules your staff. It cannot book a single customer.
Sling is good at the staff side: shifts, swaps, a time clock, team messaging. What it does not do is let your customers book an appointment, so you bolt on Acuity or Calendly. Harbor does the customer booking and the staff schedule in one place, for one flat price.
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The front desk and the back office.
Customer booking, deposits, and reminders on one side. Staff scheduling, time clock, and PTO on the other. Same login, one bill.
SMS reminders
Twenty-four hour and one-hour text reminders fire automatically. Clients can reschedule from the link in the text. Carrier-registered for reliable delivery.
Deposits via Stripe
Charge a percentage of the service price at booking. Money lands directly in your Stripe account. Per-org refund rules for cancels and reschedules.
Intake questions
Ask what you need at booking. Answers go straight to your inbox. Harbor never writes them to a database. Marketable as a real privacy promise.
Embeddable widget
Drop a single iframe snippet on Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, or plain HTML. Your customers book without leaving your site.
Auto-waitlist
Slot fills up? Clients join the waitlist with one tap. When someone cancels, the next match gets a book-now link. No staff time required.
Recurring appointments
Weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Up to 26 occurrences booked in one click with automatic conflict detection. Cancel one or cancel the whole series.
Co-branded everything
Your logo and business name appear on the booking page, the admin dashboard, the confirmation emails, and the reschedule pages. Harbor sits underneath as "powered by".
Prices, deposits, buffer time
Per-service pricing and deposit percentage. Buffer minutes before and after each appointment so back-to-back slots stop wrecking your day.
Staff scheduling
Shift templates, time tracking, PTO, shift marketplace, internal messaging. Most booking tools make you pay extra. We don't.
Sling is half a stack. Harbor is the whole thing.
Sling handles the staff side, the schedule and the time clock. But customers cannot book through it, so teams bolt on Acuity, Calendly, or a paper book. Two logins, two bills, and customer data spread across both.
Harbor runs the customer-facing booking page and the back-office schedule from the same account. One subscription, one place your data lives, no per-seat math.
- Customers book online and staff get scheduled, in one app
- Deposits, SMS reminders, and pass-through intake on the booking side
- Shifts, time clock, PTO, and shift swaps on the staff side
- Flat $5.99/mo, unlimited employees, no per-seat pricing
Booking and back office.
Sling covers your staff. Harbor covers your staff and your customers, in one tool.
| Feature | Harbor Booking | Sling |
|---|---|---|
| Customer online booking | Included | Not offered |
| Appointment deposits (Stripe) | 2% platform fee, plus Stripe fees | Not offered |
| Customer SMS reminders | Included | Not offered |
| Embeddable booking widget | One iframe snippet | Not offered |
| Employee shift scheduling | Included | Included |
| Employee time clock and PTO | Included | Included |
| One tool, front desk and back office | Yes | Staff side only |
| Pricing | $5.99/mo flat, unlimited staff | Free tier, then per user |
Two prices. No surprises.
Free covers a solo operator taking bookings. Pro adds SMS and unlimited staff for the back office.
One bill, not two. Staff-scheduling tools charge per employee, then you pay again for a booking app. Harbor is one flat price for both, with no per-seat charges.
Free
For solo operators and small teams.
- Unlimited bookings
- Email reminders
- Embeddable widget
- Pass-through intake
- Waitlist and self-serve reschedule
Pro
Multi-stylist shops and growing businesses.
- Everything in Free
- SMS reminders included
- Stripe deposits (2% platform fee, plus Stripe fees)
- Waitlist, recurring, buffer time
- Unlimited providers and employees
- Staff scheduling, PTO, time tracking
One login.
The whole operation.
Keep the shift scheduling you like and finally let customers book themselves, from the same tool. One subscription instead of two.