🎉 Baluu's 2026 Building a Rock-Solid Foundation & The Future of Booking

One year ago, Baluu began a new chapter as we became an independent entity, shifting our focus 100% to this project. We want to sincerely thank our community for their support—your feedback has been the compass guiding our development.

This past year has been foundational. We have been heads-down, focused on consolidating and strengthening the core of our booking system to provide the robust and flexible engine your business deserves.

Here’s a detailed look at what we’ve accomplished together, our exciting vision for the road ahead, and important updates regarding our business model for 2026.

🛠️ Year One: Key Accomplishments and Milestones

Our primary focus was building stability and flexibility, enabling you to manage even the most complex offerings:

• Core Booking System Enhancements: We heavily invested in foundational logic for sessions, multi-term courses, and bundles.

• Enhanced Bundles Flexibility: Customers can now apply bundle credits across different listing types.

• Next-Gen Notifications Foundation: We built the technical foundation for a brand-new notification system.

• Accelerated Development: We upgraded our entire dashboard codebase, allowing for much faster release cycles.

• A New Feedback Portal: We launched a dedicated portal for you to submit requests and monitor their progress.

• The Power of AI: We launched an AI Chatbot that allows customers to make reservations directly via WhatsApp.

🚀 What’s Next: One Engine, Multiple Apps

Our focus for the next year is all about Customer Experience and Specialization.

We know that deep customization can sometimes lead to complexity. It is often impossible to offer endless options while maintaining simplicity—usually, one kills the other. To combat this, and to ensure the platform remains simple yet powerful, we are shifting our strategy to: One Engine, Multiple Apps.

We are building multiple, smaller applications tailored for specific industries, all running on the same Baluu core engine:

• An application optimized for Workshops and Classes.

• An application optimized for Wellbeing and Yoga.

• An application optimized for Services and Appointments.

• ...and more.

Unlike this year's focus on the Partner Dashboard, our upcoming priority is the Customer Experience (CX) across all channels (widgets, website, AI chatbot). This specialized approach allows us to optimize the user journey, interface, and data presentation based on your industry’s specific needs without sacrificing the power of our core booking engine.

For example, a Workshop needs to prioritize selling the experience and showcasing reviews, whereas a Padel court requires features like player ratings and user profiles. Our new app strategy allows us to address these unique needs precisely.

🎁 New Checkout Engine & Web Components

With this specialized environment, we do not have to change what we already offer. The legacy Website and Embed codes will stay the same; we are simply adding new, better options for partners to choose from.

Our vision is that partners requiring a full website will use the Version 2 Website Builder (currently being built), while partners with their own brands will gradually move toward using Web Components to integrate Baluu.

To kick off the new year, we have already deployed a major update to all accounts that aligns with this strategy.

What is changing:

• New Checkout Engine: We have deployed a new checkout system. It is fully backward compatible, so no action is required on your part.

• Better Mobile Experience: We added a "Review Order" step to make Gift Card and Discount inputs easier to find on mobile devices.

• Inline Receipts: Customers can now see their booking confirmation without leaving your website URL.

• Web Components: We are launching a new, superior way to integrate Baluu into your website that solves the limitations of iFrames.

Click here to read the full technical deep dive on the New Checkout & Web Components

🔮 Coming Soon: Memberships & Advanced Notifications

We are currently working on two major pillars that will define the next phase of Baluu.

1. Memberships

Last year, we asked our partners to switch from "Destination Charges" to "Direct Charges" in Stripe. While this helps us expand overseas, the primary reason was to prepare the groundwork for Memberships. The new checkout engine was built specifically with this in mind—allowing the system to recognize members and apply discounted prices immediately during booking. We know this is one of our most highly anticipated features, and the infrastructure is now ready to support it.

2. The New Notification Engine

We have built a powerful new notification engine with three specific goals:

• Partner Visibility (Delivered): You can already see exactly when and how notifications are sent to your customers.

• Templates (In Progress): We want to give you full control over the content and layout of your emails.

• Workflows (In Progress): We are building a system where you can define triggers. For example: "When a new booking is made -> Send Email Receipt -> Send WhatsApp alert to Partner."

Our Philosophy: Balancing Power with Simplicity

We want to offer you these advanced customization options without losing the simplicity that makes Baluu great. It is vital to us that a new user can still sign up, add a listing, and start selling immediately with pre-configured defaults. We are designing these new features to be powerful tools for those who need them, without overcomplicating the experience for those who just want to hit the ground running.

💼 Preparing for 2026: Pricing & Business Model Updates

To ensure Baluu remains a sustainable and robust platform for years to come, we are making changes to our pricing structure effective March 1, 2026.

The Highlights:

• VAT Update (UK): Commission fees will move from being inclusive of VAT to exclusive of VAT for UK businesses.

• Minimum Fee: We are introducing a small floor fee (e.g., 30p) to cover costs on very low-value transactions.

• New "Subscription Saver" Plans: We are introducing new tiered plans for high-volume businesses, offering commission rates as low as 1%.

• Legacy Protection: As mentioned, existing subscriptions are protected and their prices will not change.

We have written a detailed breakdown of exactly how this works, why we are doing it, and the new plan tiers.

Click here to read the Full Pricing Policy & 2026 FAQ

🙏 Thank You

On a personal level, this was a challenging and eye-opening year. I have always been a developer in my career, but taking on a role where I talk directly with partners on a regular basis, adjusting the roadmap, and building something our users genuinely like has made me fall in love with software development all over again.

Even during rough patches—including the loss of my father and my grandmother this year—it was that feeling of accomplishment and connection with you that brought me joy. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your support, for your patience, and for trusting in us.

We at Baluu look forward to another successful year of growing together.