Comparison
Bookwhen is a good general booking tool. That's the point: it's general. It sells places on a session for choirs, yoga studios, workshops and clubs of every kind, and it does that job well. What it isn't is a forest school system, so the moment the booking is taken, you're back to a register on paper and a risk assessment in a folder. This is the alternative where the booking is the register, and the register carries everything the session needs.
A general booking platform's job ends when the money clears. A forest school's day is only starting: you still need to know who turned up, how many adults that requires, which risk-benefit assessments apply to the fire you're lighting, what you noticed about a child who finally used the bow saw, and whether the parent who never reads emails has consented to photographs. Those aren't booking problems, so booking software doesn't solve them.
No export, no spreadsheet, no retyping a list of names on a cold morning. A confirmed booking is a place on the session register, with allergies, medical notes and photo consent attached and kept current by the parent. Parents agree to and sign your terms and conditions on the way through, and every booking keeps the exact terms they saw.
Mark children in and the adult-to-child ratio updates with them, so the number you're working to is the number actually stood in the wood, not the one you planned for at breakfast. See how ratios work.
Keep a library of assessments and stack the ones this session needs onto it, snapshotted as they were on the day. Plus a dynamic risk log for the things the wood does that no paperwork predicted.
Tap what you saw, against the NETA development areas, while it's still happening. They roll up per child across the term and come out as a proper record, instead of being reconstructed from memory on a Sunday night.
Woods do not have 4G. The field app holds the entire session offline (register, assessments, observations, photos, incidents) and syncs when you get back to signal. A web-only booking page can't do that.
Concerns are visible to your designated safeguarding lead and nobody else, not other staff, not administrators. It's built into the permissions rather than being a folder everyone technically has the key to.
Be honest about this
Bookwhen is genuinely good at what it does, and there are cases where swapping would be a downgrade. If you run a broad mix of events that aren't forest school and you want one place for all of them, a general tool fits better than a specialist one. If your bookings are working fine and the paperwork side is already sorted, or you don't take bookings at all, because a school pays you per block, then the part we're strongest at isn't the part that hurts, and there's no reason to move. We'd rather say that than sell you a migration you didn't need.
Every leader, assistant and volunteer gets a free account. You only pay if you're the provider running the sessions. Solo is £8 a month for a freelance leader, Team is £29 a month flat however many staff and however many woods, and sites are never a price lever, because charging per wood would quietly encourage someone not to declare one. When we collect payment for you it's a flat 1%; free and offline payments never incur it. See full pricing.
You don't have to move everything at once, and we'd suggest you don't. Set up one group and one term's sessions, run a fortnight of them in the woods, and see whether the record at the end is the one you'd want if somebody asked. Keep taking bookings wherever you take them now while you do. There's a free trial with no card, so the only thing it costs you is an evening.
Switching questions
No. They tap your link, choose a session and book with their email, no app, no password. If they want to manage bookings later they get a passwordless portal: enter the email, pop in the code we send.
Yes, through Stripe, and you connect your own Stripe account so the money is yours and lands where your money already lands. Free sessions and cash-on-the-day work too, and cost nothing.
They carry on exactly as they are, nothing about starting here interferes with a booking system you're already using. Most people run the two side by side for a term and only move the bookings across at a natural break, like the start of September.
It's built for forest school and outdoor education specifically, and that's the reason to choose it. If most of what you run isn't outdoors with children, you'll be better served by something general.
Free for 30 days, no card. Keep your current bookings running while you do.