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Why Wix Bookings Isn’t Enough for Multi-Sided Platforms (and How We Solved It)

Introduction

When building multi-sided platforms – websites that connect two groups of users – the limitations of off-the-shelf booking tools quickly become apparent. This was exactly the challenge we faced when building PTBooker, a platform that connects physical therapists with customers seeking appointments.

While Wix Bookings is a powerful tool for smaller websites, it falls short when you need to scale. Here’s why, and how, we built a bespoke booking system to overcome those limitations.

A screen capture of the home page of the new PTBooker site. It displays a banner menu at the top with options for Home, Find a Trainer, Blog, How It Works, Our Partners, Contact Us, About Us, and Mission & Values. The PTBooker logo is displayed top left. The hero section has a background of a physical therapist exercising and displays a subtitle stating 'connect with your ideal personal trainer anywhere' and two buttons, the first says 'Find Your Trainer', the second says PT Register/Login'
The new PTBooker home page, designed by Digital Edge

The Key Limitations of Wix Bookings

Wix Bookings only allows 135 active resources at any given time. Resources include staff, services, or any other bookable entity.

For a platform like PTBooker, where each physical therapist is a separate resource, this limitation meant the site could never have more than 135 therapists available for booking! That’s simply not scalable for a growing business.


A screen capture from the Wix Velo documentation. It reads: - A resource can have one schedule only. - You can have up to 135 active resources and an additional 135 deleted resources.

Why We Needed a Custom Solution

PTBooker isn’t just a simple “customer books a slot” website. It’s a two-sided platform:

  1. Physical Therapists need to be able to manage their profiles, update availability, and confirm bookings.

  2. Clients need an intuitive way to browse physical therapist profiles, view live calendars, and book securely.


Unfortunately, Wix Bookings doesn’t:

  • Allow more than 135 bookable resources

  • Offer a way to display custom-designed calendars for each resource

  • Provide flexible database-driven control for both sides of the platform


Our Custom Booking System

To meet PTBooker’s needs, we built a fully bespoke system using the Wix CMS, custom code, and 3rd-party integrations.


1. Therapist Database

We created a CMS database to store all therapist data – profiles, services, and schedules – which each therapist can update at any time.

2. Calendar Display (FullCalendar)

Wix Bookings does not natively allow custom calendar displays for resources. We solved this by integrating the 3rd-party module FullCalendar, which dynamically shows each therapist’s availability.

3. Booking Database & Dynamic Pages

A second database stores all booking data, including therapist and customer information. Each booking automatically generates a secure, tokenised dynamic page that both parties can access to confirm details and track appointments.

An image displaying the custom calendar section from the PTBooker site. It is titles 'Availability' and displays a calendar in week-view, with an option to switch to month-view. At the bottom there are 3 inputs for making a booking: one to select a date, one to select a time and one to select length of session.

The Result

PTBooker now has a fully scalable booking system with no artificial resource limit. Therapists can manage their own profiles and schedules, customers have a smooth booking experience, and the platform can continue to grow without technical bottlenecks.


If you'd like to read more about PTBooker and everything we built for them (including integrating Google Maps API and maintaining the site), you can do here.


When Should You Consider Going Beyond Wix Bookings?

If your website or platform is…

  • Connecting multiple groups of users

  • Expecting to scale beyond 135 staff/services

  • Requiring complex scheduling or custom calendar displays

…then Wix Bookings alone may not meet your needs. A bespoke system like the one we built for PTBooker gives you complete control and unlimited scalability.


If you’re struggling with the limitations of Wix Bookings, we can help.

Contact Digital Edge today to discuss how we can build a custom solution tailored to your platform.


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