Compared
Session vs Acuity Scheduling
Session is built specifically for saunas. Acuity is a general appointment scheduler owned by Squarespace.
Both can take group bookings and payments, but they start from opposite ends: Acuity is built around one-to-one appointments, while Session is built around sessions — a fixed number of people sharing one slot, with private hire, part-session pricing, per-guest waivers, on-the-day check-in and in-app refunds handled natively.
As one Session customer put it: "Acuity is built for appointments, not sessions."
What Session adds for a sauna
Private and communal sessions side by side — communal shares capacity across everyone; private hire books out the whole room. Acuity caps class numbers but has no private-hire model.
On-the-day check-in — a dedicated staff page to mark arrivals and verify each visitor's waiver, not just a showed/no-show flag on the calendar.
Multiple locations from one account — each with its own location-aware booking page, rather than Acuity's separate calendars.
Automatic, manual and partial refunds, in-app — Acuity can't refund itself (it sends you to your payment processor); Session refunds for you, from your own Stripe account.
Cancellation and cutoff rules you control — cancel/reschedule windows plus a minimum booking notice (time to light the sauna); customers self-serve via a secure link, no account.
Plus the rest — part-session pricing, memberships with included sessions and early access, bundles, gift vouchers, waiting lists, add-ons, and a branded installable app.
Where Acuity fits
Acuity's strengths are real, especially starting out:
A simple, fairly cheap subscription.
Website and booking in one place (it's part of Squarespace).
One invoice for the whole setup.
It's a good place to begin. Most saunas outgrow it - the session model, memberships and in-app refunds are where it starts to feel like a workaround - and switch.
Pricing
Acuity is a subscription with no free plan: roughly $20–$61/month (about $16–$49 annually) after a 7-day trial, plus separate card processing. Session has no subscription — free to start, 0.5% per booking capped at £100/month, with Stripe's processing (~1.5% + 20p on UK cards) separate and paid into your own account. Community and non-profit saunas get a Community Sauna Network deal. For a sauna doing hundreds of bookings a month, a capped 0.5% usually beats a fixed subscription — and a quiet month costs nothing.
Switching from Acuity
Session imports your bookings, customers (with history) and vouchers from an Acuity CSV — no data lost, no gaps — and imported customers claim their account on next sign-in. The founder runs the migration with you. As Ollie Jenkins at Leeds Community Sauna put it: "We switched from Acuity to Session in a day. It has honestly been fantastic for us."
FAQ
Is Session a good Acuity alternative for saunas? Yes. Session is purpose-built for the shared-capacity model saunas use — many people booking spaces in one slot — with private hire, part-session pricing, per-guest waivers and on-the-day check-in built in. Acuity is a general appointment scheduler with classes added on. Session also imports your existing Acuity bookings, customers and vouchers from a CSV.
Can Acuity handle sauna sessions and capacity? Acuity can cap attendees on a group class, so basic capacity works. What it doesn't model natively is the sauna pattern: private hire of a shared room alongside communal sessions, part-session windows that share one space, and per-guest waivers verified at check-in. Session is built around that model rather than adapting an appointment tool to it.
Does Acuity handle refunds, or do I have to use Stripe? With Acuity you issue refunds through your payment processor (e.g. Stripe), not inside Acuity — it emails you a link to the payment to refund manually. Session handles refunds in-app: automatic on an in-policy cancellation, or a manual full or partial amount when you choose, paid from your own Stripe account.
Can I move my Acuity bookings and customers to Session? Yes. Session imports bookings, customers and vouchers from an Acuity CSV export, preserving history. Imported customers claim their account when they next sign in, and the founder assists with the migration directly so nothing is lost.