FAQ
Platform and Features
Common questions about platform and features for commercial sauna, cold plunge, and wellness operators.
Zettlor covers the full operating stack for a sauna or cold plunge business:
Booking and scheduling - Online reservations for shared and private sessions, private buyouts, resource-based calendar management, walk-in queueing, waitlists, and real-time availability
Fair-draw allocation for sold-out sessions - Replaces the first-come-first-served refresh race with a registration window and a verified draw, with optional member priority weighting and SMS verification to block duplicate entries
Memberships, passes, and guest passes - Recurring memberships with configurable access rules, punch passes, day passes, multi-visit packages, and member guest passes (e.g., "bring 2 guests per month")
Credits and wallet - A flexible credits system for promotions, service recovery, referral rewards, and cancellation-to-credit policies, with guest-facing balance tracking
Guest flow and check-in - Digital waivers, check-in management, session tracking, and real-time occupancy visibility
Online store - A customizable storefront where guests browse and purchase memberships, packages, passes, and add-ons
Point-of-sale - Full POS with product categories, inventory management, line items, and sales tracking for retail items like towels, drinks, merchandise, and add-on services
Gift cards - Digital gift cards with purchase, delivery, redemption, and balance tracking
Promo codes - Configurable promotional codes for discounts on bookings, memberships, or store purchases
Dynamic pricing - Automated pricing via configurable rules and schedules based on time of day, day of week, seasonality, and demand patterns
Donation-based pricing - Operators can set a suggested donation amount and a minimum, ideal for community sessions or special events
Payments - Integrated payment processing through Stripe, including online checkout, in-person POS checkout, and automatic fee collection
Reporting and analytics - Revenue reporting, booking trends, occupancy data, membership metrics, credit balances, and business performance dashboards
Automated communications - Booking confirmations, reminders, waitlist notifications, and schedule updates via SMS and email, with customizable messaging
Customer portal - A guest-facing account at /account where customers view reservations, credits, memberships, and booking history
Seat and position assignment - Fixed-seat or numbered-position support for spaces with designated spots
Dynamic pricing is a Zettlor feature that automatically adjusts session prices based on rules the operator defines, such as time of day or day of week. Operators set the price points and conditions; the system applies them without manual intervention.
The goal is to fill off-peak sessions by lowering the barrier and capture fair value during high-demand periods, so you stop leaving revenue on the table during busy stretches and stop running empty rooms during slow ones.
The most-loved sauna sessions - seasonal openings, full moon Aufguss, festival evenings, harbor sauna slots in summer, special events at Sauna Festival - sell out the moment they go live. The default booking model rewards whoever has the fastest internet and the freest schedule to refresh at exactly 9:00 AM. That alienates working people, parents, and your most loyal members - and bots make it worse.
Zettlor replaces the race with a registration window. Guests sign up at any point during a published window (for example, "registration open Tuesday 9am-9pm"), and at the close of the window, spots are allocated through a verified draw with SMS confirmation to prevent duplicate entries. Members can be given priority weighting so loyalty is rewarded, without guaranteeing selection - which keeps the experience fair to first-time visitors and the broader community.
For operators, this turns a stressful customer scramble into something predictable and defensible: anyone can register at their convenience, allocations are auditable, and guests who don't get a spot are rolled into a waitlist for cancellations so no one has to keep refreshing.
Yes. Zettlor natively supports shared sessions, private sessions, and private buyouts on the same rooms - something most general booking platforms can't do. Unlike one-to-one appointment tools, Zettlor was built around the way sauna businesses actually run.
Shared sessions - Multiple guests book into the same time slot up to room capacity, with optional seat or position assignment.
Private sessions - A guest or group books exclusive access to a room for a set duration.
Private buyouts - A guest purchases every spot in a shared session to get the room to themselves, at a configurable buyout price.
Mixed scheduling - Operators can offer shared, private, and buyout options for the same room at different times or price points.
Yes. The platform supports multi-room scheduling - saunas, cold plunge pools, steam rooms, relaxation areas - within a single location, and multi-location management for operators running more than one facility. Each room or resource has its own capacity settings, seat configuration, availability windows, and pricing rules.
Yes. Zettlor covers every capacity scenario a sauna or cold plunge facility runs into - walk-in queueing, automatic waitlists, and a fair-draw allocation for sessions that sell out in seconds. See "How do operators allocate spots fairly when sessions sell out in seconds?" for how the draw works.
Walk-in queueing - Live queue for guests who show up without a reservation, slotted in as capacity allows.
Waitlists - Guests join a waitlist for fully booked sessions and are notified automatically when a spot opens, no manual follow-up needed.
Fair-draw allocation - For sessions where demand far exceeds capacity, guests register during a published window and spots are allocated through a verified draw instead of a first-come-first-served race.
Yes. Digital waivers are built into the guest check-in flow. Guests can sign waivers before arrival (during online booking) or at check-in. Every signed waiver creates a versioned legal record - if the waiver template is updated later, past signatures retain the original language. Signed waivers are linked to the guest's customer record and visible in the staff dashboard. See "Does Zettlor provide an audit trail?" for more on waiver recordkeeping.
Yes. Zettlor includes a full POS system for selling physical goods and add-on services alongside bookings - towels, robes, drinks, retail products, branded merchandise, and more. Operators can set up product categories, manage inventory, track sales by item, and process transactions at the counter via Stripe's in-browser card checkout (or record cash sales) or online at checkout. POS sales appear in the same reporting dashboard as booking revenue. See how POS card checkout works.
Every Zettlor operator gets a customizable storefront where guests can browse and purchase memberships, session packages, punch passes, gift cards, and add-on items. The store is accessible at a dedicated URL and can serve as the primary entry point for new guest purchases. Operators control what's listed, how it's displayed, and what pricing or promo codes apply.
Yes. Operators create promo codes with configurable rules - percentage or fixed-amount discounts, expiration dates, usage limits, and restrictions by product or session type. Guests enter promo codes at checkout.
Yes. Zettlor's pricing engine includes a donation pricing type where operators set a suggested donation amount and a minimum. Guests see the suggested amount at checkout, and the operator controls the floor so no booking goes below a set threshold. This works well for community sessions, charity events, or introductory offerings where a fixed price might feel like a barrier.
Yes. Operators can configure multiple booking page variants with different layouts, branding, and session groupings. This is useful for operators who want different landing experiences for different audiences - for example, a general booking page and a separate page for member-only sessions or special events.
See all frequently asked questions or explore sauna booking software.