What is the difference between DesignMyNight and Collins?

They are two products from the same company. DesignMyNight is the consumer-facing marketplace at designmynight.com — a discovery site for bars, restaurants, pubs, and clubs, covering 20+ cities across the UK plus Australia, America and Ireland by its own account, with Access putting the bookable side at over 5,000 UK venues. Collins is the booking and enquiry-management software that venues use behind the scenes, launched in February 2014. Both were acquired by The Access Group, announced 23 November 2017, and Collins is now sold as Access Collins Evo, which Access positions as the AI-powered next generation of the original product.

How does Seatly compare to Collins on price?

Access Collins Evo starts at £149 per month per site according to The Access Group's own product page, with possible additional charges for training, setup, integrations, and add-on features. Seatly is a flat £59 to £129 per month with no per-cover fees, no setup fee for founding members, and no add-on fees on the base tiers. For a single-site UK independent, Seatly Professional at £89 is the closest feature comparison. The gap on monthly subscription alone is roughly £60 per month before any extras. Specific Collins pricing beyond the entry tier is quote-based and not publicly disclosed, so verify directly with The Access Group.

Does Seatly include a consumer marketplace like DesignMyNight?

No, and that is intentional. DesignMyNight runs a consumer-facing discovery site that surfaces venues to diners — and listing on it is part of what Collins customers pay for. Seatly is a pure white-label booking platform: there is no diner-facing Seatly marketplace, no app to install, and no other restaurants surfaced on your booking flow. If your business depends on inbound traffic from the DesignMyNight consumer site, that is a feature you would lose by switching. If most of your bookings come direct from your own website, the marketplace coupling is paid-for capacity you may not be using.

Is there a contract with Seatly?

No. Seatly is monthly rolling. You can cancel at any time, and your booking and customer data are exportable on the way out. Collins is bought under The Access Group's global terms, which set an initial term of 36 months unless your individual Order says otherwise, renewing automatically for further 12-month periods, with at least 90 days' notice to terminate at the end of any term. Appendix 1 of those terms lists Collins under W.F.L Media Limited, so they apply. Because the Order can override the standard period, ask The Access Group to confirm in writing the specific term and notice period on your paperwork before you sign or switch.

When is DesignMyNight or Collins still the right choice?

Bars, pubs, and late-night venues whose audience genuinely browses DesignMyNight to plan a night out — that consumer marketplace is what you are paying for. Multi-site operators who already use Access Group products for EPOS, payroll, or finance and benefit from a unified vendor. Venues that want event tickets sold to DesignMyNight's own consumer audience through Tonic Ticketing — Seatly's Business tier covers ticketed events (free, deposit, or pre-paid entry) sold through your own website and social links, but it has no marketplace to put them in front of. For a single-site UK independent restaurant whose bookings come direct from their own website and word of mouth, the Collins feature set is more than is needed — and the price reflects it.

Seatly vs DesignMyNight

The DesignMyNight alternative for UK independents.

Seatly is a flat-fee booking platform built specifically for UK independent restaurants. No per-cover fees. No marketplace coupling. No annual contracts. From £59 per month, fully white-label, monthly rolling.

Last updated 10 August 2026. Around a 5-minute read.

Talk to the founder Calculate Your Savings

What DesignMyNight actually is

DesignMyNight is two products under one roof. The consumer-facing site at designmynight.com is a discovery marketplace for bars, restaurants, pubs, and clubs — by its own account, 20+ cities across the UK plus Australia, America, and Ireland, which diners browse to plan a night out. Access puts the bookable side of that at over 5,000 restaurants, bars, pubs and clubs in the UK, so the reach that matters commercially is a British one. Behind the scenes, venues use Collins, the booking and enquiry-management software the same company launched in February 2014. Both were acquired by The Access Group, announced 23 November 2017, and Collins is now sold as Access Collins Evo, which Access positions as the AI-powered next generation of the original product.

That is a different product class to Seatly. Collins is built around the bar and late-night venue audience, ships with a marketplace listing on DesignMyNight, and integrates into the broader Access hospitality stack (EPOS, payroll, finance). Seatly is a single-purpose restaurant booking platform with no consumer marketplace and no wider product suite to opt into.

Whether DesignMyNight or Seatly is the right answer depends on whether the marketplace coupling is paying its way for your venue.

Side-by-side comparison

DesignMyNight figures come from The Access Group's own published material, verified 10 August 2026: the entry price and the commission row from the Access Collins Evo product page , the contract term from the Access global terms (Appendix 1 of which lists Collins), and the ticketing rates from Tonic Ticketing's own fee page . Tiers above the entry price, and any setup, training or integration charges, are gated behind a sales form — where Access publishes no figure, the table says so rather than guessing. Always verify current pricing directly with the provider.

	Seatly	DesignMyNight (Collins)
Product class	Single-purpose booking platform	Booking software bundled with consumer marketplace
Monthly subscription	£59 to £129 flat	From £149 per site (Access Collins Evo)
Per-cover fees	£0 at every tier	£0 — Access publishes "0%" commission on bookings^†
Ticketed events	Included on Business, £0 commission	Not part of Collins. Sister product Tonic Ticketing charges £0 on free tickets, then 10% / 8% / 6% by price band^†
Setup fee	£0 for founding members	May apply (Access Group lists it as a possible cost)
Contract term	Monthly rolling, cancel anytime	36-month initial term, then 12-month renewals, 90 days' notice — unless your Order says otherwise
Widget branding	White-label by default^*	Restaurant brand on widget; DesignMyNight brand on marketplace
Consumer marketplace	None — your bookings, your traffic	DesignMyNight discovery site (UK + Australia cities)
Vendor focus	UK independent restaurants only	Bars, pubs, restaurants, clubs (broader hospitality)
Wider product suite	Booking-only — no upsell stack	Part of Access Group hospitality suite (EPOS, payroll, finance)
Data residency	London, UK	Not publicly specified
Setup	Paste one line of code	Sales process via Access Group

The maths on a single-site independent

Both Seatly and Collins charge a flat subscription with no per-cover fees, so the comparison is straight subscription. Collins's published entry point is £149 per month per site. Seatly Professional is £89.

Access Collins Evo

£149

per month, per site (starting)

Subscription: from £149

Per-cover fees: £0

Setup, training, integrations: may apply

Seatly Professional

£89

per month

Subscription: £89

Per-cover fees: £0

Setup, training, integrations: £0 for founding members

Annual difference at the entry tier

£720

Per site, per year. Excluding any setup, training, or add-on fees that Access lists as possible additional costs.

Figures are illustrative. Collins entry-tier subscription is taken from The Access Group's published product page as of April 2026; the full tier table, contract terms, setup fees, and add-on costs are gated behind a sales form and not publicly disclosed. The annual gap above is monthly subscription only and may understate the real difference once setup, training, integration, and multi-site fees are factored in. Verify current pricing with The Access Group before deciding.

What you keep when you switch

01. Your customers. Every diner who books becomes a record in your database, not a third party's. Names, emails, booking history — yours to keep, export, or delete, with no marketplace having a parallel copy.
02. Your brand. The booking widget shows your colours, fonts, and restaurant name. No "Powered by" badge in the widget by default.^*
03. Your traffic. Diners book directly on your website. There is no companion marketplace where competing venues are surfaced next to your booking flow.
04. A simpler stack. One product, one subscription, one vendor. No upsell path into EPOS, payroll, or wider Access Group products you have not asked for.

When DesignMyNight is still the right choice

We are not trying to talk every Collins customer out of their system. Some venues are paying for exactly what they get:

• Bars and late-night venues whose audience actively browses DesignMyNight to plan an evening — the consumer marketplace is what you are paying for and it earns its keep there.
• Multi-site operators already on Access for EPOS, payroll, or finance. Adding Collins to a vendor you already trust beats fragmenting across two providers, even at a higher per-site price.
• Venues that want tickets in front of DesignMyNight's own audience. Tonic Ticketing sells events to the DesignMyNight marketplace crowd, on published booking fees of nothing for free tickets, 10% under £40, 8% between £40 and £69.99, and 6% at £70 and above. Seatly's Business tier covers ticketed events — free, deposit, or pre-paid entry, sold through your own website and social links, with no commission taken — but has no marketplace to promote them in. If the reach is what sells the tickets, the fee is buying you something real.

For a single-site UK independent restaurant whose bookings come direct from their own website and word of mouth, Collins is feature-rich and priced for it. That is where Seatly fits cleanly.

Switching is straightforward

01. Check your contract, and check it early. Access's standard terms run to a 36-month initial term with 90 days' notice, and the notice window sits at the end of a term rather than any time you like. Find your Order, find the dates, and work backwards. Getting this wrong is the expensive part of switching, not the technology.
02. Export your data. Ask Access to export your booking history and customer list — usually as a CSV.
03. Install the Seatly widget. An inline script tag on WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace Premium, and custom HTML sites. An iframe URL on Wix and other platforms that block third-party JavaScript. Either way, the widget is white-labelled to your restaurant brand.
04. Point new bookings at Seatly and let the last Collins bookings play out. No migration drama.

We're onboarding our first cohort of UK independents one at a time. If you are on Collins and ready to switch, get in touch and we will walk you through the handover personally.

Common questions

What is the difference between DesignMyNight and Collins?: Two products from the same company. DesignMyNight is the consumer-facing marketplace at designmynight.com — a discovery site for bars, restaurants, pubs, and clubs, covering 20+ UK cities plus Australia, America and Ireland by its own account, with Access putting the bookable side at over 5,000 UK venues. Collins is the booking and enquiry-management software that venues use behind the scenes, launched in February 2014. Both were acquired by The Access Group, announced 23 November 2017, and Collins is now sold as Access Collins Evo, which Access positions as the AI-powered next generation of the original product.
How does Seatly compare to Collins on price?: Access Collins Evo starts at £149 per month per site according to The Access Group's own product page, with possible additional charges for training, setup, integrations, and add-on features. Seatly is a flat £59 to £129 per month with no per-cover fees, no setup fee for founding members, and no add-on fees on the base tiers. For a single-site independent, Seatly Professional at £89 is the closest feature comparison. The gap on monthly subscription alone is around £60 per month before any extras. Specific Collins pricing beyond the entry tier is quote-based and not publicly disclosed, so verify directly with The Access Group.
Does Seatly include a consumer marketplace?: No, and that is intentional. DesignMyNight runs a discovery site that surfaces venues to diners — listing on it is part of what Collins customers pay for. Seatly is a pure white-label booking platform: there is no diner-facing Seatly marketplace and no other restaurants surfaced on your booking flow. If your business depends on inbound traffic from the DesignMyNight consumer site, that is a feature you would lose by switching. If most of your bookings come direct from your own website, the marketplace coupling is paid-for capacity you may not be using.
Is there a contract?: Not with Seatly — monthly rolling, cancel anytime, with data exportable on the way out. Collins is bought under The Access Group's global terms, which set an initial term of 36 months unless your individual Order says otherwise, renewing automatically for further 12-month periods, with at least 90 days' notice to terminate at the end of any term. Appendix 1 of those terms lists Collins under W.F.L Media Limited, so they apply to it. Because the Order can override the standard period, ask The Access Group to confirm the term and notice period on your own paperwork in writing before you sign.
When is DesignMyNight or Collins still the right choice?: Bars, pubs, and late-night venues whose audience genuinely browses DesignMyNight. Multi-site operators already running on Access Group products (EPOS, payroll, finance) who want a unified vendor. Venues that want event tickets sold to DesignMyNight's own audience via Tonic Ticketing — Seatly's Business tier sells ticketed events through your own site instead, without the marketplace reach. For a single-site UK independent restaurant booking locals through their own website, the Collins feature set is more than is needed.

A simpler stack, a flatter fee

We are onboarding UK independents into the first cohort right now. Tell us about your venue and we will walk you through a switch from Collins end-to-end.

Talk to the founder See the savings on your covers

* A note on Seatly branding. Seatly branding is optional and entirely your choice. A single toggle in your admin Settings controls whether a small "Powered by Seatly" line appears on your booking widget AND in confirmation, reminder, and cancellation emails. When enabled, you receive a tier-matched discount on your subscription (£5/month on Starter, £10/month on Professional, £15/month on Business). The toggle defaults to ON for Starter accounts and OFF for Professional and Business — you can change it whenever you like.

† Bookings and tickets are charged differently, and by different products. The 0% is Access's own figure for commission on bookings, published in its own comparison table and footnoted by Access as accurate at June 2026 — it is their claim about their product, and we repeat it as that. Ticketing is a separate matter: Tonic Ticketing is a sister product rather than part of Collins, and Access describes Collins as connecting to whichever ticketing platform you already use, so a Collins venue may never touch Tonic. Where Tonic is used, it publishes nothing on free tickets, 10% on tickets under £40, 8% from £40 to £69.99, and 6% at £70 and above, plus VAT. Separately, DesignMyNight's promoter terms define an "Inside Commission Fee" of 20% of ticket face value — but that is a penalty the terms reserve for promoters who sell tickets through another platform in breach of exclusivity, not a standard rate. We spell that out because the 20% circulates without it. Those terms are WFL Media's consumer and promoter terms and say themselves that the Collins software terms prevail in any conflict; the Collins licence is a separate agreement Access does not publish.