The booking system for UK Indian restaurants.
Direct online bookings on your own website. No per-cover fees, no marketplace cut, and a smooth alternative for Quandoo restaurants ahead of the September 2026 shutdown.
Why Indian restaurants need direct bookings
Family meals, celebration dinners, group bookings of eight or more — these are the bookings Indian restaurants take most. They are also the bookings per-cover platforms tax most aggressively, because the per-head charge scales with every seat.
In the cities and towns we've visited so far, Quandoo keeps coming up as the booking platform for Indian restaurants. Quandoo announced it will close its platform on 30 September 2026, so every Quandoo restaurant needs a replacement before then.
For restaurants without any online booking, the alternative is not a competitor platform — it is the phone. Older diners still prefer to call. Younger diners increasingly do not, and a website without a booking widget loses them to the next restaurant on Google.
Built for the way Indian restaurants run
- 01. White-label widget on your own site. The booking flow stays on your domain, in your brand colours, with your restaurant name. No Quandoo or TheFork logo, no redirect to a marketplace.*
- 02. Group and private dining management on the Business tier (£129/month). Take larger parties through a dedicated flow with their own capacity and rules — handy for family celebrations and event hire.
- 03. Customer profiles with notes and preferences from the Professional tier (£89/month). Record dietary preferences, allergies, or regular orders against each customer so the front-of-house team has the context before the table even arrives.
- 04. SMS reminders included on every tier — 200 on Starter, 400 on Professional, 1,200 on Business (pooled across all sites). Cuts no-shows on large group bookings without bolting on a third-party reminder service.
- 05. UK GDPR compliant, London data residency. Customer data lives in London, the restaurant owns it, and export and erasure are one-click operations from the admin dashboard.
Seatly vs Quandoo vs phone-only
Quandoo figures are sourced from Quandoo's UK partner pricing page (April 2026). Per-cover fees apply to bookings made through Quandoo's marketplace; bookings via your own widget or Google Reserve are commission-free on Quandoo. Always verify current pricing directly with the provider.
| Seatly | Quandoo Pro | Phone only | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly subscription | £59 to £129 flat | £39 | £0 |
| Per-cover fee | £0 at every tier | £3.90 per marketplace cover | n/a |
| Setup fee | £0 | £249 | £0 |
| Contract | Monthly rolling, cancel anytime | Per individual agreement | n/a |
| Widget branding | Your brand by default | Quandoo-branded | n/a |
| Booking flow | Stays on your website | Redirects to Quandoo | n/a |
| Double-booking prevention | Atomic, slot-locked | Managed by Quandoo | Staff-dependent |
| September 2026 fate | Still here | Shutting down 30 September 2026 | n/a |
The maths on a 100-cover Indian restaurant
An independent Indian restaurant taking 100 covers a month through Quandoo's marketplace, on the Pro tier. Here is how the monthly cost lines up against Seatly Starter.
Quandoo Pro
£429
per month
Subscription: £39
100 marketplace covers × £3.90: £390
Seatly Starter
£59
per month
Subscription: £59
Per-cover fees: £0
Annual difference at 100 covers
£4,440
Every year. Staying with you, not with a booking platform.
Figures use Quandoo's UK partner pricing page (Pro tier, April 2026). Quandoo also charges a one-off £249 setup fee on Pro and £749 on Premium, not included in the figures above. The 100-cover figure is illustrative — many independents run higher volumes through the marketplace, which widens the gap. Always verify current pricing directly with your provider.
Want to run it on your own numbers? The TCO calculator on the homepage lets you plug in your own cover volume and current platform.
What you keep when you switch
- 01. Your customers. Every diner who books becomes a record in your database, not Quandoo's. Names, contact details, dietary preferences, booking history — yours to keep, export, or delete.
- 02. Your brand. The booking widget shows your colours and your restaurant name. No marketplace branding in the flow.*
- 03. Your traffic. The booking flow stays on your website. No redirect to a marketplace that lists three other Indian restaurants on the same page.
- 04. Your margins. Per-cover fees stop. Group bookings stop carrying a per-head tax. The savings compound every month.
When a marketplace platform is still the right choice
We are not trying to talk every Indian restaurant out of marketplace platforms. There are situations where the per-cover fee genuinely is marketing spend, not a tax:
- • City-centre lunch trade driven by app discovery — if you can prove a meaningful share of your weekday covers originate from a marketplace app rather than your own Google listing, the per-cover fee is acquiring customers you would otherwise miss.
- • Multi-site brands with central marketing where the marketplace funnels diners between sister venues. Independent venues rarely benefit from this.
For most UK independent Indian restaurants — especially the ones whose Quandoo bookings are mostly from people who Googled the restaurant name first — the maths does not work, and Quandoo is shutting down regardless.
Switching from Quandoo before September 2026
- 01. Export your customer and booking history from Quandoo. Request a full export from Quandoo support — keep it as a CSV for your own records, well before the 30 September shutdown.
- 02. Paste one line of code into your website. The Seatly widget works on WordPress, Wix, Shopify, Squarespace, and custom sites (all tested in May 2026).
- 03. Point Quandoo's "Reserve" button at Seatly for the remaining months. Existing Quandoo bookings honour through to the last service before 30 September; new ones come straight through Seatly.
We are pre-launch and onboarding the first cohort of UK independents one at a time. If you are on Quandoo and want to plan the handover, get in touch and we will walk through it personally.
Common questions
- Does Seatly handle large family group bookings?
- Yes. The Business tier (£129/month) includes group and private dining management, which lets you take and manage larger party bookings with their own rules and capacity. Smaller groups are supported on every tier through the standard booking flow.
- Can we record customer dietary preferences and allergies?
- Yes. From the Professional tier (£89/month) upwards, every customer record has a notes and preferences field where staff can record dietary preferences, allergies, regular orders, or any other detail.
- Does the widget support multi-language menus?
- The widget itself is currently English-only. Multi-language is a planned future feature, not a shipped one today. If a multi-language booking flow is essential, this might not be the right time to switch — let us know and we can flag when it lands.
- How quickly can we be live before Quandoo shuts down?
- Embedding the widget on your existing website is a one-line script tag, usually done in under ten minutes. Embedding is tested on WordPress, Wix, Shopify, Squarespace, and custom-built sites. The longer step is exporting your customer and booking history from Quandoo before the shutdown.
- What happens to my Quandoo customer data?
- You should request a full customer and booking export from Quandoo directly, ideally well before 30 September 2026 when new bookings stop. Seatly does not handle the migration from Quandoo on your behalf, but once you have the export you can keep it for your records or load it into a spreadsheet.
Looking at the wider market? The full Seatly vs Quandoo comparison covers the shutdown timeline, pricing maths, and migration plan in more detail.
Not an Indian restaurant? See our page for Mediterranean and Turkish restaurants or the page for independent UK restaurants . Our buyer's guide compares nine platforms against the same six criteria.
Ready to switch from Quandoo before September?
We are onboarding UK independents into the first cohort now. Tell us about your venue and we will walk you through the handover from Quandoo end-to-end.
* A note on Seatly branding. Seatly branding is optional and entirely your choice. A single toggle in your admin Settings controls whether a small "Powered by Seatly" line appears on your booking widget AND in confirmation, reminder, and cancellation emails. When enabled, you receive a tier-matched discount on your subscription (£5/month on Starter, £10/month on Professional, £15/month on Business). The toggle defaults to ON for Starter accounts and OFF for Professional and Business — you can change it whenever you like.