ResDiary Alternative: The Best ResDiary Alternatives for Restaurants
The best ResDiary alternatives
Flipdish is the best ResDiary alternative if you want more than a booking system. It covers ordering, payments, loyalty and the daily running of the restaurant, and it connects to reservation platforms for the table side.
Five options are covered below, along with how to tell whether you need a reservation tool at all.
What is ResDiary?
ResDiary is a reservation and table management system. Restaurants use it to take bookings, collect deposits, run a waitlist and message diners before and after they visit. It's used across the UK and Ireland, mostly by casual dining restaurants, hotel restaurants and similar venues.
It does the booking job reasonably well. The limit is that it's only a booking system. If most of your revenue comes from orders rather than reserved tables, or you're tired of paying for six tools that don't talk to each other, it's the wrong shape of product.
Why operators look for a ResDiary alternative
Takeaways, QSRs, fast-casual places and a lot of cafés make their money from orders, not booked tables. For them a reservation system solves a problem they don't have. Online ordering and delivery are where the growth is, and ResDiary doesn't take food orders at all. You need separate technology for that.
That leads to the second complaint, which is fragmentation. A typical setup has ResDiary for bookings, a different POS, another system for online ordering, a loyalty app and a payment provider. Each one is another bill, another login and another integration that can break on a Friday night.
Multi-site operators hit a third problem. Cross-site reporting and centralised menu management aren't part of ResDiary, so they end up in yet another tool. And there's no loyalty programme, marketing automation or CRM in the product, so getting guests to come back is a job for something else.
None of this makes ResDiary a bad product. It means the product stops where a lot of restaurants' needs begin.
The best ResDiary alternatives
1. Flipdish - best overall for restaurants that prioritise ordering
Flipdish is a single platform for online ordering, POS, loyalty, marketing and payments. You can run it with or without a reservations tool next to it.
For most takeaways, QSRs, fast-casual operators and multi-location groups, the main technology need isn't managing a book of tables. It's taking orders on every channel and getting customers to order again. That's what Flipdish is built around.
What you get that ResDiary doesn't offer:
- Online ordering through a branded website and app
- Restaurant POS for in-person orders
- Self-service kiosks for counter service
- AI phone ordering, which answers the phone and takes orders automatically
- Loyalty and customer retention built into the ordering platform
- Integrated payments across all channels
- Centralised multi-location management from one dashboard
- AI-driven marketing that goes after lapsed customers automatically
- A kitchen display system to manage the flow of orders
Because ordering, POS and kitchen display sit in the same platform, a web order can reach the kitchen screen without anyone keying it in. The same goes for payments: one system takes the money whether the order came from the app, the kiosk or the counter.
Multi-site groups see the difference fastest. Changing a price or pulling an item off the menu happens once, in one dashboard, instead of site by site. Sales reporting for every location sits in the same place as the orders themselves.
Reservations are the one thing Flipdish handles through an integration instead of natively. If tables still matter to you, it connects to leading reservation platforms and does the rest itself.
Here's how the two compare feature by feature.
| Feature | Flipdish | ResDiary |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant POS | ✓ | ✗ |
| Online food ordering | ✓ | ✗ |
| Branded mobile app | ✓ | ✗ |
| Self-service kiosks | ✓ | ✗ |
| AI phone ordering | ✓ | ✗ |
| Table reservations | Via integration | ✓ |
| Loyalty programme | ✓ | ✗ |
| Marketing automation | ✓ | Limited |
| Integrated payments | ✓ | ✗ |
| Multi-site management | ✓ | Partial |
| Kitchen display system | ✓ | ✗ |
2. OpenTable
OpenTable is one of the largest reservation platforms in the world. Its consumer app and website send diners to restaurants, and that marketplace is the reason most venues sign up.
The catch is the fee. OpenTable charges a per-cover fee on reservations that come from its marketplace, and on a busy weekend that adds up quickly. It makes sense if you're a restaurant that gets a lot of new walk-in diners from OpenTable's audience and wouldn't see them otherwise. It makes much less sense if your regulars already book directly. There's no POS, ordering or loyalty. Before you sign, ask what share of your bookings actually come through the marketplace, because that's the number the fees are charged against.
3. Sevenrooms
Sevenrooms is a hospitality CRM with a reservation system attached. The focus is guest data: who they are, what they ordered last time, what they're allergic to, how often they come. Hotel restaurants, fine dining and bigger hospitality groups are the usual customers.
If you've got a team that will actually use detailed guest profiles, it's strong. If you haven't, you'll pay enterprise prices for features that sit unused. Setup takes real effort, and it doesn't do POS or ordering.
4. Quandoo
Quandoo is a consumer booking marketplace that also gives restaurants a reservation management tool. You sign up mainly for the exposure to its diners.
It does bring in bookings, but marketplace costs come with them, and the management tool is thinner than what the dedicated systems offer. Think of it as a way to fill tables, not a way to run the restaurant. Like OpenTable, it leaves you needing a separate POS, ordering and loyalty setup.
5. Collins
Collins, formerly Designmynight, is a UK platform for bookings and events. Bars, pubs and casual dining venues use it most.
It fits places where parties, group bookings and events are a big share of revenue, such as a pub that sells out its function room most weekends. It isn't a full restaurant technology platform, and it won't replace a POS or an ordering system.
Do you need a reservation system at all?
Before you replace ResDiary, work out what the business actually runs on. A reservation system earns its place when:
- A large share of revenue comes from booked covers
- Peak times mean a waitlist you can't manage on paper
- You take deposits or pre-payment for bookings
- You run events that people have to book in advance
An ordering platform is probably the better first purchase when:
- Most orders are walk-in, collection or delivery
- Direct online ordering is your main growth channel
- You run more than one site and want one place to manage them
- You want repeat visits to come through a channel you own
- You're trying to cut the number of systems you pay for
Plenty of restaurants fall in both lists, and that's fine. A pizza place with a small dining room and a heavy delivery trade, say, needs ordering first and a few bookable tables second. For takeaways, QSRs, fast-casual, cafés, delivery-led kitchens and growing multi-site groups, a platform like Flipdish solves more of the day-to-day problems than a reservation tool does.
Questions to ask before you switch
Start with the plain one: is this thing a reservation system, an ordering platform or both? A lot of demos blur the line.
Then find out whether it includes a POS or plugs into the one you already have. Ask if you can manage every location from one login. Ask whether loyalty and marketing are built in or sold as separate tools, because the add-ons are where costs creep up.
Get a straight answer on implementation too. How long does it take, who does the work, and what support do you get in the first month? And check the fee structure, especially per-cover and per-transaction charges. A fee that looks small on one site looks different across ten.
Moving off ResDiary
You don't have to switch everything at once, and in some cases you shouldn't.
If bookings are still a real part of your business, keep a reservation tool and add ordering and POS around it. Check that the reservation platform you use is one Flipdish integrates with before you commit.
If you are leaving ResDiary completely, a few things need sorting first:
- Read your contract for the notice period so you don't pay for months you aren't using.
- Export your guest and booking data before the account closes.
- Sort out any deposits you're holding for future bookings, and honour bookings already made.
- Update the booking links on your website, Google profile and social accounts, and tell regular diners if the way they book is changing.
- Run the old and new systems side by side for a short while so a missed booking doesn't cost you a table.
Why Flipdish suits most restaurants
ResDiary does one thing, which is booking management. Most restaurants need several things working together: ordering, POS, loyalty, marketing, payments and a way to manage multiple sites. Flipdish does all of those in one platform, and reservation integrations are available for operators who still need to take bookings.
If you've outgrown a single-purpose booking tool, or you're building your setup around direct ordering and keeping customers coming back, Flipdish is where to start. For independent comparisons of restaurant technology platforms, restauranttech.co.uk is worth a look.
Get started with Flipdish
If you're weighing up ResDiary alternatives, Flipdish shows what it looks like when ordering, POS, loyalty and payments run on one platform. Visit flipdish.com to talk to the team.