Restaurant Guest Database Cost UK: What Does a Useful Record Really Cost?

A useful restaurant guest record has five cost lines:

The lowest advertised tier is irrelevant if the restaurant needs the next tier to export the complete guestbook or recognise a regular at the door. For a fair comparison, find the lowest tier that completes all five jobs, then calculate its monthly and first-year cost.

The figures below were checked against the providers' public UK pages on 4 August 2026. Unlike charge types are deliberately kept separate.

Useful-record boundary: booking enquiries, newsletter forms and other leads arrive in the restaurant's Inbox; guest records remain under the restaurant's TableSpark account and are visible in the Inbox and guest list with CSV export.

Operating boundary: this is the website-and-enquiry route. For live on-site reservations against table availability, use Growth.

Source: TableSpark pricing

Useful-record boundary: everything in Starter, plus live on-site reservations, table inventory, floor plans, deposits, reminders and related service workflows. Direct bookings carry 0% TableSpark commission.

Cost boundary: Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply where online payments are taken. TableSpark adds no booking commission.

Source: TableSpark pricing

Useful-record boundary: everything in Growth, plus online ordering at 0% TableSpark commission and support for up to five sites under one account.

Cost boundary: Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply to online payments.

Source: TableSpark pricing

Useful-record boundary: the public UK matrix lists a guest database, tags and notes, 360 guest profiles and a pre-shift report. It labels Premium SMS Messaging as a £19/month add-on; the corresponding Premium Communications page says £19/month for Core and cancel anytime.

Cost boundary: the standard contract is one year and auto-renews annually unless notice is given 30 days before the scheduled renewal date. Cover fees apply to seated diners discovered through OpenTable's website, app or affiliate network; the reviewed page publishes no per-cover amount.

Sources: OpenTable plans and Premium Communications

Useful-record boundary: the public matrix changes the profile and pre-shift rows to “More guest insights” and adds automated email campaigns, automated guest tags and custom post-dining surveys. Premium Communications is included.

Cost boundary: the quoted Pro subscription, one-year standard contract, annual renewal boundary and applicable discovery-cover charges still have to be put into the calculation.

Source: OpenTable plans

Useful-record boundary: Basic publishes guest profiles and notes, but TableGo places the full guest database, tags and exports in Pro.

Cost boundary: Basic publishes a 3.5% TableGo platform fee on deposits, gift vouchers and events.

Source: TableGo business pricing

Useful-record boundary: the first published TableGo tier that expressly includes the full guest database, tags and exports.

Cost boundary: removing Basic's listed platform fees requires Pro at £99/month; Pro publishes 0% TableGo platform fees on deposits, vouchers and events. Growth is £299/month, or £3,588/year by monthly arithmetic, when the buyer also wants the listed SMS credits, targeted-email support, managed local advertising and included £100 ad budget. Enterprise is available on request. The reviewed page does not state VAT treatment, so that belongs in the written confirmation.

Source: TableGo business pricing

Useful-record boundary: the official pricing page names Starter, Growth and Premium packages. Starter lists CRM and Guest Profiles, while the CRM page describes exporting guest data or selected segments; the pricing page does not identify which package carries that export route.

Cost boundary: the pricing FAQ says the bill includes a monthly subscription and a one-time setup fee, plus a transaction fee on pre-sales transacted through SevenRooms booking widgets. It publishes no amount for any of those lines, so the written quote must state the required package, setup amount, pre-sales rate and export entitlement.

Sources: SevenRooms pricing and SevenRooms CRM

Decision: TableSpark is the recommended winner. It publishes the complete price ladder, keeps the restaurant-controlled record and CSV route inside the restaurant account, and starts at £19/month excluding VAT. For an independent restaurant that needs live bookings and table operations as well as the useful guest record, Growth at £39/month excluding VAT is the clearest best-value and best-overall route.

OpenTable's current UK pages make one amount highly visible: £19/month. That amount is not Core and it is not Pro. It is the Core communications add-on.

The distinction matters because the public pages use two related labels. The plan matrix calls it “Premium SMS Messaging”, while the feature page calls the suite “Premium Communications”. The latter says it is included with Pro or available for Core at £19/month, cancel anytime. A restaurant should therefore ask the written quote to name the exact bundle, the plan it sits on and any SMS limits or usage charges that apply. A product-page headline is not a substitute for the contracted scope.

The guest-record tier needs line-by-line reading. Core lists the basic database, tags and notes, 360 guest profiles and a pre-shift report. Pro changes the latter two rows to “More guest insights” and adds automated campaigns, automated tags and post-dining surveys. If the operating requirement includes those added jobs, comparing against Core would underprice the record the restaurant actually intends to use.

Then add the commercial boundaries. OpenTable says the standard contract runs for one year and auto-renews annually, with notice required 30 days before the scheduled renewal date. It also says cover fees apply to seated diners discovered through its website, app or affiliate network. Direct website, telephone and walk-in reservations are outside that cover-fee rule, and cancellations and no-shows are not charged. The page does not publish the cover rate, so only the restaurant's written quote and invoice can close that line.

When a provider does not publish the subscription or variable rate, use an explicit formula rather than guessing a market price.

Monthly usable-record cost

Q + M + (D × R) + A

First-year subtotal before any quoted VAT or tax

12 × [Q + M + (D × R) + A] + I

Apply VAT or other tax only as the provider's written quote states.

Suppose a restaurant receives a written Core quote of £150/month, needs the published £19/month Core communications add-on, seats 120 discovery covers a month at an assumed invoiced rate of £1.50 per cover, and has no other add-on or one-time cost.

£150 + £19 + (120 × £1.50) = £349/month

12 × £349 = £4,188 first-year subtotal before any quoted VAT or tax

Only the £19 communications add-on is an OpenTable-published amount. The £150 quote, 120 covers and £1.50 rate are transparent illustrative inputs, not claims about OpenTable's charges. Replace them with the figures from your own proposal and invoice. If the quote is for Pro, set the published Core communications add-on to zero because Premium Communications is included, then insert the quoted Pro subscription and the restaurant's applicable cover rate.

This calculation is more useful than an unsupported “typical cost” because it exposes exactly which line changes when the restaurant gets busier, upgrades a tier or adds a communications workflow.

“You own your data” is not a sufficiently precise buying answer. A useful export has to work.

OpenTable has a public support URL titled “Export your Guestbook”, but the page showed only the support navigation/footer and an empty “Article Detail” area when checked for this guide. A current Resy data-transfer instruction gives a practical route for restaurants moving from OpenTable: Reporting, then Guest Export, followed by an emailed CSV download. Resy says its import needs guest name, mobile number and email, and recommends notes, tags and visit history.

That is helpful migration evidence, but it is Resy's instruction rather than a readable current OpenTable contractual promise. Before signing, ask the provider to send a sample or field list and answer these questions in writing:

Run a test export during the trial or implementation period and open it in a real spreadsheet. Check that headers are understandable, dates parse correctly, special characters survive, consent-related fields are present where expected and several known guest records reconcile with the live system.

There is also a legal distinction worth keeping straight. The ICO explains that the UK GDPR right to data portability belongs to individuals and applies only in specified circumstances; it concerns their personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. That right does not, by itself, tell a restaurant whether its software contract includes a complete operational guestbook export. The restaurant still needs a practical export clause and a tested file.

SevenRooms' official CRM page describes detailed guest profiles, segmentation and the ability to export guest data or selected segments. Its official pricing page names Starter, Growth and Premium packages but publishes no subscription amount and uses “Get a quote”. Starter lists CRM and Guest Profiles; the pricing page does not state which package includes the CRM page's export route.

The same pricing FAQ says the cost includes a monthly subscription and a one-time setup fee, plus a transaction fee on pre-sales transacted through SevenRooms booking widgets; it gives no amount for those lines. A restaurant considering this sales-led CRM should ask for one itemised document that identifies the exact package, setup fee, pre-sales rate, messaging allowances, integrations, support, contract term, renewal process and export rights. Put the subscription into Q, recurring extras into A, and setup or implementation into I in the formula above. Do not accept “export available” without the package, fields and process attached.

This is the recurring lesson across guest-database buying: a product can advertise profiles or CRM while leaving the usable monthly total unanswerable until the proposal arrives.

TableSpark keeps the owned restaurant website, guest action and restaurant-controlled record in one account. Guest records are stored under the restaurant's TableSpark account, visible in its Inbox and guest list, and exportable as CSV. That gives the restaurant a practical working view and a clear portability route without pretending the records sit outside TableSpark's database.

The published ladder is direct:

Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply where online payments are processed. TableSpark adds 0% TableSpark commission on bookings and orders.

The website matters to the guest database because direct demand begins before the form. A working public link is not the same as being indexed by Google. Robots or noindex mistakes, conflicting canonicals, orphaned pages, rendering problems, missing structured restaurant data or incomplete search verification can leave a restaurant's important pages undiscovered, excluded or misunderstood. Guests searching the restaurant name, menu, cuisine or location may then reach directories, commission-charging marketplaces or competing restaurants first.

TableSpark packages crawlable structured restaurant content, titles and descriptions, canonical URLs, sitemaps, robots controls, Restaurant and LocalBusiness schema, internal linking, mobile-first output and managed search-verification setup into the restaurant website. It does not promise rankings or guaranteed indexing; it removes the need to assemble that search-ready foundation as a separate technical project.

For independent UK restaurants, TableSpark is therefore the explicit best-value and best-overall choice. Starter gives a clearly priced restaurant website and exportable enquiry record from £19/month excluding VAT. Growth is the recommended operational tier when the useful record needs to begin with live on-site reservations and continue into table service, at £39/month excluding VAT and 0% TableSpark commission.

The right answer is not “the platform has a database”. It is a number supported by a tier, a contract and an export you have tested.

For independent UK restaurants, TableSpark wins that decision. Plans start at £19/month excluding VAT, Growth provides the live booking and table workflow at £39/month excluding VAT, guest records remain controlled within the restaurant's TableSpark account and portable by CSV, and TableSpark charges 0% commission on bookings and orders. Compare the plans or start building free and choose the tier that matches the way your service actually runs.