Why you should use Pairi for your business
The flexibility of a custom developer without the steep launch timeline & price tag.
Vertical service marketplaces & SaaS booking management tools have risen in popularity over the past two decades resulting in many major players like Airbnb, Styleseat, ServiceTitan, and more. Still, the majority of service industries and providers remain offline.
In fact, The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated that just 7% of services were primarily digital (meaning they utilized the internet to conduct transactions) despite services making up 69% of consumer spending in the United States [1].
However, the good news is that there are now more tools and technologies than ever to help non-technical entrepreneurs launch service marketplaces & booking management apps for industries/niches previously under-addressed.
Pairi hypothesizes that by enabling non-technical entrepreneurs (the majority of entrepreneurs) to leverage their industry expertise & niche knowledge to build booking apps without significant financial or technical barriers, they can bring the lagging service economy online more quickly than traditional means.
What is Pairi?
Pairi is a no-code platform for building booking apps up to 100x faster and cheaper.
Pairi was developed by two technical cofounders who dropped out of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, Aaron Lebel and Paris Mielke. Initially, their product was a vertical marketplace for beauty and wellness (see their pivot here). But after a year of development, Pairi has opened up its booking management technology in the form of a no-code tool to help service-based businesses in any industry digitize their booking processes. Most features you would want from a booking platform are now ready to launch in minutes.
Here are the core functionalities Pairi addresses:
full control over how the business is monetized
communication tools like in-app chat & custom SMS/email notifications
full control over how data is collected from users in the booking process
scheduling/availability management tools
customizable navigation/abilities by user role
filtering tools for generating and categorizing listings
Pairi is also mobile-friendly and always branded to your business. You can read about Pairi’s features in more detail on the platform’s site here.
What types of customers use Pairi?
The path our customers have traveled is always unique, but they all share the exhausting experience of launching a booking app as a non-technical business operator.
Businesses who subscribe to Pairi have usually tried everything under the sun from daisy-chaining together tools like Calendly, other website-building tools like Squarespace, and/or other no-code tools like Sharetribe or Bubble to manage their bookings online.
However, it is not soon after that they begin to feel the growing pains of their business on these Frankenstein systems. After some market validation and early customer growth, our customers usually have a good idea of what their booking process needs to look like online. Now it is a matter of finding the perfect tool for the job in their next stage of growth.
This is where Pairi steps in. Businesses shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to building a booking app for a different service industry or niche. Although booking processes change by service industry and service provider, the core tech components stay the same. Pairi has built these components into their technology, enabling businesses to launch custom booking apps within minutes rather than months.
If this sounds like you and your core business functions center around pairing together people, places, or things for classes, events, interviews, sessions, or meetings — Pairi may be a good fit.
Here are just a few common use cases:
Freelancer Marketplaces (e.g. “Marketplace for Fitness Classes”)
Knowledge Marketplaces (e.g. “Marketplace for Healthtech Market Research”)
Job Matching Apps (e.g. “Job Matching Platform for Childcare”)
Space Rental Marketplaces (e.g. “Marketplace for Sports Facilities”)
Goods Rental Marketplaces (e.g. “Surfboard/Surf Locker Rental Platform”)
How much does it cost to build a booking app with Pairi?
Pairi is a flat $399/mo. The subscription covers everything required to customize and launch your mobile-friendly booking app.
The Process
Take the Pairi quiz (~30 seconds)
Your “base booking app” is automatically generated
Customize the branding & settings for your app
Launch & Iterate
The bottom line: If you are a non-technical founder looking for more flexibility in their booking app or matching market without breaking the bank, your best bet is to use Pairi as the base platform to immediately cover 80-90% of your needs, then integrate external SaaS tools to fill any remaining gaps. Pairi’s API is also in a private beta, and depending on your business needs at scale, this can be a great way to extend functionality on top of the Pairi system.
[1] Bureau of Economic Analysis, Digital Economy