Show Me The Money Honey!

When evaluating the functionality and pricing of different software packages, it is really important to look at all aspects of the software. 

Honeybook is a great tool for the types of individuals & soloopreneurs it is designed for. But it is not built for wedding and event venues, it does not have the tools required and it is very expensive to process through Honeybook. For venues, there are significant differences between Honeybook and BriteVenue. I will highlight the four main differences below.

1. Price 

We are entering an age where both venues and clients want to manage all payment transactions digitally, through a client portal. Credit Card fees have always been high for venues, and now there is a move in the US to digital ACH payments. It’s fast and easy for both the venue and the client, and costs are cheap – well that depends on the CRM software service provider?

If you choose to use credit card payments in Honeybook, we have had venues report payment processing fees of up to $40,000 in one year. That is an incredible amount to pay on payment processing. Honeybook insists you use their own payment processing tool. With BriteVenue, you can choose your payment process provider such as Stripe or Authorize.net.

If you want to use bank wire/ACH transfer as your main form of payment, you should look well beyond the advertised “Monthly Subscription” rate of the software. Comparing HoneyBook and BriteVenue –  If a venue has, lets say, 100 events in a year with $15k revenue from each event, that is  $1.5M in turnover.  Lets also assume each booking makes three $5k transactions.

Honeybook – Charge 1.5% on bank transfers = $1.5M x 1.5% = $22,500/annum

BriteVenue – Don’t charge for bank transfer, and empower your venue to use Quickbooks Pay for ACH – 1% max $10 per transaction. Assuming each booking makes 3 transactions = $10 x 3 x 100 = $3,000/annum

Payments with BriteVenue are substantially cheaper when you compare credit card processing, and they are also significantly cheaper when you look at ACH payments. This is how Honeybook makes its money. Annual saving with BriteVenue/QuickBooks Payments on ACH is = $19,500/annum (or more). 

See Honeybook Pricing

See Quickbooks Payments

2. BriteVenue is built specifically for the Wedding & Event Industry AND includes Wedding Directory Integrations

BriteVenue is built for the Wedding and Events Industry and brings your inquiries into one place from WeddingWire, The Knot and Here Comes The Guide. Our current users say that having these integrations saves them more than an hour a day. No more switching between systems, no more copying and pasting, no more duplications, no more wondering who has followed up on what inquiry. That’s a saving of around a day a week per person, which adds up further if there are three co-ordinators in a venue.

1 hour per day x 3 people x 48 working weeks x 5 days per week x $20 per hour = $14,400/annum

This is additional time available to grow sales, look after current clients and bookings. Having all your inquiries in one place is a huge thing for venues, stops admin overload.

3. Venue Specific 

BriteVenue is designed specifically for venues to manage weddings and events, Honeybook is not. There are many differences I can list here. Some examples are;

– BriteVenue manages Worksheets/BEO’s with the client through the client portal. Clients can add information, upload files etc. You can print or email specific Wedding Day Programmes/BEO’s etc Honeybook does not do this.

– Manage Function Rooms/Resources – You can manage your function rooms and resources with BriteVenue, similar to what you would in a Property Management System. HoneyBook does not have this feature, it is not built for venues.

4. Quickbooks Integration 

BriteVenue has a high level two way Quickbooks integration which you are looking for, along with Quickbooks Payments. Honeybook does not offer this. BriteVenue also has best in class Google Calendar and Gmail integration, and a Gmail App.

There are lots of other differences as well. BOOK A FREE DEMO to find out more.