FISHING CHARTER BOOKING SOFTWARE
Take bookings online without paying to book.
Most "booking software" for charters is either a marketplace that takes 10–30% a trip, or generic tour software that charges a monthly fee plus ~3% on every booking. Timber & Tackle is built for guides — online booking, deposits, and your own site — for one flat fee, no commission, no per-booking cut.
When a charter captain goes looking for booking software, the options usually split two ways. Marketplaces (FishingBooker, Captain Experiences) get you found but take a commission on every trip — forever, including your repeat customers. Generic tour/activity platforms (Rezdy, Checkfront) put a booking widget on your site but charge a monthly subscription plus about 3% on every online booking, on top of card processing.
Either way you're paying to take your own booking. And neither is really built for a guide — the deposit-then-balance rhythm of a trip, the intake questions, the weather reschedule, licenses, the seasonality.
Timber & Tackle is booking software made for fishing guides specifically: a customer requests a trip, you accept, they pay a deposit straight to your own account, and they get a branded confirmation with everything they need. One flat monthly fee — no commission, no per-booking percentage — and the whole thing runs on your own domain with your client list yours to keep.
Three ways to take a booking
SaaS pricing (Rezdy $49–$249/mo + 3%, Checkfront $99/mo + 3%) and marketplace commissions are from published 2026 pricing.
| Commission marketplace | Generic tour SaaS | Timber & Tackle | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it charges | 10–30% commission per trip | Monthly fee + ~3% per booking | One flat fee — $0 per booking |
| Cost as you book more | Grows every trip | Grows (the 3%) | Flat — never grows |
| Built for fishing guides | You're a listing | Generic activities | yes — trips, deposits, intake, weather |
| Own your client list | |||
| Your own domain & brand | A widget on your site | Your whole site | |
| Who brings new customers | The marketplace (that's the trade) | You do | You — plus owned SEO & content |
$0 per booking
No commission, no 3% online-booking fee — one flat monthly cost whether you run 10 trips or 200.
Made for guides
Deposit-then-balance, intake questions, weather reschedule, seasons, licenses — the actual rhythm of a charter, not a generic activity slot.
You own it all
Your own domain, your SEO, your client list — export everything with one click, anytime. You're building an asset, not renting a listing.
Do the math on your own trips.
Compare against a commission marketplace or the per-booking SaaS fee — put in your real trip count and price and see what a flat fee keeps in your pocket.
What are you on now?
50 trips= $28,650 a year
FishingBooker at 15%
$4,298
Timber & Tackle flat
$1,200
You keep $3,098 more a year.
Only guide part of the year? Pause the rest.
Run your seasons, then pause your bill in the off-months — $0 while you're off the water, and your site stays live, still booking next season. You only pay the months you're actually fishing.
FishingBooker commission is captain-set between 10–30% per their help center, charged on every trip. We assume your same trips book elsewhere.
Straight answers.
Is there really no per-booking fee?
Correct — no commission and no per-booking percentage from us. One flat monthly subscription. The only per-transaction cost is standard card processing (Stripe), which every platform incurs and which goes to Stripe, not us.
How is this different from Rezdy or Checkfront?
Those are solid general tour/activity platforms, but they charge a monthly fee AND about 3% on every online booking, and they're not built around a guided trip. Timber & Tackle is guide-specific and takes no per-booking cut.
Do I get my own website or just a booking button?
A whole site — hero, trips, gallery, reports, reviews, and booking — on your own domain, built for you free before you pay anything. Not a widget bolted onto someone else's template.
What if I also want the marketplace traffic?
Keep your marketplace listings for discovery. Send your repeat and direct customers to your own site so you stop paying commission on the people who already know you.
Booking software that doesn't charge you to book.
We build your whole site free and send you a link. Look it over. If the math doesn't move you, you've lost nothing.
Get your site built — free$0 today · keep every listing you have · built before you decide