I’m writing this at the end of April 2025. And if you are reading this, you must be wondering what is happening with BookingKoala? If you are a BookingKoala customer (like us), you will have invariably felt the problems it has been having. Well, the problem started in March 2025 and was a culmination of multiple things that set a maelstrom of customer service complaints. The TLDR version is that they implemented a price increase, updated the app, suffered a DDOS attack…all at the same time. However, to add a topping to the cake, their public response portrayed a sense of aloofness to the headaches that their customers were suffering as a result of their service not working. In the article below, I will lay out the timeline and granular details of what happened with BookingKoala.
February/March 2025
In February/March 2025, they released a new Leads Module. Per their site, “The Leads Module is designed to help you gather leads, track progress, and convert leads into customers, employees, and more. Leads can be imported from other software or collected through a customizable lead form, allowing visitors to request a quote or inquire further about your services, enabling prospective providers to complete an application or gather customer feedback. Once a lead is collected, you can monitor that lead’s progress in a funnel, indicating whether the lead has booked a service, the revenue associated with the lead, and other custom fields.”
This new lead funnel was built especially for their top-tier plan (Premium, at $197/mo). Those on the Starter and Growing plan can only use the Leads Module on one form max. And that’s where the problems started. Many customers were upset that they would have to upgrade to a new plan in order to get details about their leads if they use more than one form. But the technical problem lies in the fact the module interacts with customers’ existing databases. This change caused the forms of some existing customers to malfunction, as well as many other issues with their customers’ accounts. See below:
Then on March 23, 2025, BookingKoala sent the following e-mail, signaling that a lot of problems were due to a DDOS attack:
Hello everyone,
Due to the recent outages this past week that has affected every single one of your businesses, we have spent the last several days with a third party company to investigate where the initial attack came from.
We have learned that this is a large scale attack, likely from a big competitor, and have been constantly trying to take BookingKoala down with several DDOS attacks daily. We are in the midst of working with AWS and several other companies to bring everything back to normal.
We advise all business owners to send out your weekly bookings to all your providers so that they are able to have their job information.
We are working on this around the clock.
Thank you for everything.
Then on March 29, 2025, they sent another e-mail:
Hello everyone,
We are still here working on containing the attacks. This was from a few hours ago when we had to go under maintenance, which was not planned but we had to act quickly. We know we’re all going through hard times right now but we are working on this.
We know we are continuously getting hit and the site is either out or slow, and we will be doing more implementations this weekend with the help of our partners, so please, whenever you are able to access your account, save your bookings for the day and week.
We thank you for your patience.
But many customers were taken aback by the dismissive nature of the e-mails:
April 2025 – The Leadership Team Finally Speaks Directly To Customers
The executive team finally speaks directly with customers via the Facebook Group:
But many were not happy with the message, and felt that the company was still not doing enough given businesses were losing thousands of dollars in business and dealing with bad reviews and headaches with customer service:
Brian Spriggs and other business owners went public with strong posts criticizing BookingKoala’s vague and dismissive responses. “This is not a minor glitch. It’s a major operational failure… Partial remedies and dismissive processes are not acceptable.”
- Sarah Wasson from Frosteez PTY LTD shared concerns about being charged for the affected period, despite BookingKoala stating otherwise.
- Customers were told to email
[email protected]to claim up to 15 days’ worth of credits, but many argued this barely scratched the surface of their actual losses. Customers were also unhappy about the extra legwork required to count the exact number of days they were non-operational in order to receive an account credit for those days. A customer wrote “Would be nice to not pay full monthly amount… We have NOT BEEN able to access and utilize the platform.”
🧾 Final Thoughts
BookingKoala’s situation is more than a tech glitch—customers feel that it is a breakdown in trust, communication, and support. For many small businesses, the platform is not just a tool but the core of their operations. Unless the company makes bold moves to repair relationships, it risks not just customer churn, but long-term reputational damage.
If you’re a BookingKoala user, make sure to:
- Email [email protected] before April 30, 2025
- Check [email protected] for service notices
- Document your losses if you’re seeking credits or refunds