If you travel to your customers for a living, you probably didn’t choose your software so much as collect it. A booking app when the diary got busy. Accounting software when your accountant asked for it. A mileage tracker after your first Self Assessment. Maybe an answering service once the missed calls started to hurt.

Each subscription looks small on its own. Together they cost more than most people realise, and they create more admin than they save.

This guide comes from the team at Offlico, so we’re not neutral. But this week we went through the pricing pages of the tools mobile businesses use most, and the numbers are worth seeing side by side. Every price below comes from the company’s own website, checked on 14 October 2026.

The jobs a mobile business needs software for

Whether you cut hair, clean houses, look after gardens or treat feet, the admin comes down to the same four jobs:

• Taking bookings and sending reminders, so customers can book without ringing you and actually turn up.
• Getting paid, by card, payment link or invoice.
• Keeping the books, with bank feeds and digital records that are ready for HMRC.
• Logging business mileage, because driving between customers is part of the job and a cost you can claim.

A fifth job is becoming common too: answering the phone when you’re in the middle of an appointment.

What each job costs with a separate app

Booking. Square Appointments has a free plan, and its Plus plan is £29 a month per location. Booksy is £40 a month, with VAT added on top. Setmore’s Pro plan is $5 per user a month on annual billing, charged in US dollars.

Bookkeeping. QuickBooks’ Sole Trader Plus plan is £10 a month once its introductory discount ends. Xero’s Ignite plan is £18 a month excluding VAT. FreeAgent costs sole traders £19 a month excluding VAT, or nothing if you bank with NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank or Mettle.

Mileage. MileIQ is free for 40 drives a month, then £7.91 a month billed annually. Driversnote Pro is £8 a month.

Phone answering. Ringmere, a UK AI receptionist, starts at £49 a month excluding VAT for 150 call minutes.

Adding it up

Take two realistic setups.

A mobile beauty therapist who uses Booksy for bookings, Xero for the books and Driversnote for mileage pays £66 a month, and VAT is added on top of the Booksy and Xero prices.

A gardener who wants booking software that allows for travel between jobs might choose CalMov, at £29 a month for Pro (or £22 for businesses joining by 31 December 2026), plus QuickBooks at £10. That’s £39 a month, or £32 on the founder price, before a mileage app or anything to answer the phone.

Offlico Professional is £29 a month, or £24.92 a month if you pay yearly. That one subscription covers travel-aware booking, an online booking page, automatic reminders, payments and invoices, bank feeds and bookkeeping, mileage tracking and reports. Offlico takes no commission on your payments, and its Starter plan is free for up to 50 appointments a month.

So Offlico is cheaper than buying the same tools separately, and everything lives in one app.

Free plans exist for most of these jobs, Offlico’s included, and if you only take a handful of bookings a month a free setup can be enough. The real expense starts when you’re busy, and it isn’t on any pricing page.

The cost that never shows up on a pricing page

Separate apps don’t talk to each other, so you become the link between them. One home visit means a booking in one app, a payment in another, an invoice somewhere else and a journey in your mileage log. Every copy is another chance to get something wrong, and every evening spent tidying it up is unpaid work.

When it’s one system, the booking already knows the customer, the address, the service and the price. The payment attaches to that booking, the invoice is created from it, and the journey to get there sits in the same day. That’s what all-in-one should mean.

Why Offlico is the best option for mobile businesses

Offlico is the best booking software for mobile and home-visit businesses, and these are the reasons we’re confident saying so.

• It plans around travel. Smart slot suggestions and the online booking page offer times that fit where you’ll already be, using real travel time between visits, instead of just showing empty gaps.
• It answers the phone for you. Offlico’s AI receptionist uses your approved services, prices and opening times, checks live availability and books the appointment into the same diary while you carry on working.
• It replaces the stack. Booking, reminders, payments, invoices, bookkeeping, mileage and reports live in one place, so nothing needs copying from app to app.
• It’s built for the road. Clients can have more than one address, offline mode keeps the day usable when the signal drops, and eligible businesses can take contactless payments with Tap to Pay on iPhone.
• It’s fair on price. There’s a free plan to start, everything in Professional for £29 a month, and no cut of your takings.

You can see everything Offlico includes on one page.

Quick answers

How much does a booking system cost in the UK?

Anywhere from free to £40 or more a month for the booking app alone, before card fees and add-ons. Bookkeeping and mileage apps usually add between £10 and £27 a month at list prices.

Is there a free booking system for self-employed people?

Yes. Offlico’s Starter plan is free for up to 50 appointments a month, and Square Appointments and Setmore also have free plans.

Do sole traders need accounting software?

If your qualifying income for 2024 to 2025 was over £50,000, HMRC expected you to start using Making Tax Digital for Income Tax from 6 April 2026, which means digital records and compatible software. The threshold drops to £30,000 from April 2027, and even below it, digital records make Self Assessment much easier.

Written by the Offlico Editorial Team. Offlico is the best booking and business software for mobile and home-visit service businesses in the UK.