Forty three capabilities, ResDiary in one column and Allvio in the other. ResDiary is included on twelve, does part of the job on two at no extra cost, puts two behind a paid add-on or a higher tier, answers one with a plain no, and sits outside twenty six. Before you read the table, understand what that twenty six means, because it is the whole point of this page. It is not a list of failings. ResDiary is a reservations product and a good one. It is not attempting to be a till, a roster or an ordering page, and marking those rows any other way would be dishonest.
Where ResDiary is simply better than us
Say the hard part first. ResDiary's yield management and its control of service pacing are more mature than ours, and if you run two sittings on a Saturday and need the eight o'clock wave to arrive in an order the kitchen can survive, they have thought about that problem longer than we have. Availability rules and trading hours, the diary itself, the floor plan and table assignment, bookings from your own site, deposits and no show protection, the waitlist and walk ins, and confirmations and reminders all come back as included. Allvio's own column is thinner in two of those places: we hold tables, sections, capacity and status without a visual floor plan designer, and we take a deposit at the moment of booking without automatically charging a no show or late cancellation fee.
They are good on the guest side too. One customer record, visit and spend history and segments such as regulars and lapsed are all included, with notes, preferences and allergies doing part of that job at no extra cost. Email campaigns are included and so are campaign results tied back to spend. Their pricing is published in Australian dollars with no commission on covers, which means you can work out your own bill without a sales call, and their plans are stepped by booking volume, so growth eventually moves you up a tier. Reporting on your phone they do part of, on their own app, day of covers and booking lists rather than full reports. Ours is a phone browser with no native app, so neither of us wins that row outright.
Capability | ResDiary | Allvio |
|---|---|---|
Selling and taking payment | ||
Touchscreen till for counter and table service | Not what it does | Yes |
Card, cash, split and part payments | Not what it does | Yes |
Table plan and open tabs | Not what it does | Yes, no floor plan designer |
Kitchen screens or dockets | Not what it does | Yes |
Stock counts and low stock alerts | Not what it does | Part of it, stock moves with sales |
Discounts, happy hour and price levels | Not what it does | Yes |
Gift cards | Not what it does | Yes |
Refunds, voids and exchanges | Not what it does | Yes |
Cash up and end of day | Not what it does | Yes |
Online ordering | ||
QR ordering at the table | Not what it does | Yes |
Pickup and takeaway from your own site | Not what it does | Yes, commission free |
Menu built and changed in one place | Not what it does | Yes |
Modifiers, sizes and dietary flags | Not what it does | Part of it, no nested modifiers |
Online payment and split bills | Not what it does | Part of it, no online bill split |
Upsells and promo codes | Not what it does | Part of it, no automatic upsells |
Orders land straight in the kitchen | Not what it does | Yes |
Bookings and reservations | ||
Booking diary | Yes | Yes |
Floor plan and table assignment | Yes | Part of it, no visual floor plan designer |
Bookings from your own website | Yes | Yes |
Deposits and no show protection | Yes | Part of it, deposits but no automatic fees |
Waitlist and walk ins | Yes | Yes |
Confirmations and reminders to guests | Yes | Yes |
Ticketed events and set menus | Costs extra, add-on or higher tier | Part of it, no ticket pricing tiers |
Availability rules and trading hours | Yes | Yes |
Knowing your customers | ||
One customer record | Yes | Yes |
Visit and spend history | Yes | Yes |
Notes, preferences and allergies | Part of it, included | Yes |
Segments such as regulars and lapsed | Yes | Yes |
Loyalty and rewards | Not what it does | Yes |
Marketing | ||
Email campaigns | Yes | Yes |
SMS campaigns | Costs extra, add-on or higher tier | Yes |
Automated messages such as birthday and win back | No | Yes |
Campaign results tied back to spend | Yes | Yes |
Your team | ||
Rostering | Not what it does | Yes |
Clock in and out | Not what it does | Yes |
Timesheets ready for pay | Not what it does | Yes |
Leave and availability | Not what it does | Yes |
Staff app on their own phone | Not what it does | Part of it, phone browser, no native app |
Back office | ||
Invoices and quotes | Not what it does | Yes |
Payroll and payslips | Not what it does | Yes |
GST and BAS figures | Not what it does | Yes |
Seeing how you are doing | ||
Sales and end of day reporting | Not what it does | Yes |
Reporting on your phone | Part of it, day of covers on the app | Part of it, phone browser, no native app |
Three rows worth arguing about
Automated messages such as birthday and win back is the only plain no in their column, and it is the one that costs you money quietly. Nothing writes to the guest who has not been in since January unless a person remembers to. Fourteen people booked for a Sunday that has just changed, and you either ring fourteen numbers between two and five or you build a list somewhere else. Allvio runs multi step journeys off the same guest record, with waits, branches and a dry run before anything sends.
SMS campaigns is the second, and it belongs in the costs extra column rather than the no column, because the capability exists and sits on a paid add-on or a higher tier. Same with ticketed events and set menus: real, and above the entry level. Neither is a gap. Both are a line on a bill and a conversation you will have later rather than now.
The third is the menu, and it is the row an owner feels every week. ResDiary holds no menu, so the price of the steak lives in the till, on the ordering page, on the website and on the printed list, and Thursday's increase is four separate jobs after close. Then a public holiday: new hours in the diary, then the till, then the ordering page. In Allvio sessions and trading hours are set once, and the register and ordering page read one menu.
Behind those sit the other twenty six. Card and cash handling, kitchen dockets, cash up, QR and takeaway ordering off your own site, loyalty, rostering, timesheets, leave and sales reporting are all outside ResDiary. Each is another signup, another setup, another screen for staff and another number to ring mid service. Invoicing, payroll and the books are in the Allvio subscription as well, which is worth a clause and nothing more.
What the totals mean and what they do not
Twelve, two, two, one and twenty six do not add up to a verdict. They describe a shape. A booking specialist with twenty six rows outside its scope is a narrower product, often a deeper one, and ResDiary is deeper than we are at the thing it specialises in. The question the table actually asks is who buys, sets up, pays for and looks after the other twenty six capabilities, and whether the guest on table four is recognisably the same person in every one of them. For a venue with a reservations manager, that is somebody's job. For an owner operator it is your evening.
The venue that should choose ResDiary
A restaurant living or dying on covers per sitting, with a kitchen that needs arrivals paced and a room that turns three times on a Friday, should buy ResDiary and use the yield tools properly. Published Australian pricing and no commission per cover make it easy to justify. If instead the booking diary is one of nine things you are trying to keep straight, Allvio Complete is $399 per month ex GST for one location with every app switched on, plus $299 per month per extra location, and the trial is 30 days with no card.
Every cell above comes from each vendor's own published material, checked in August 2026. Products change constantly: always confirm current capability directly with each vendor before deciding.