Trying out a booking system sounds like a five-minute job — until you actually do it. You get an empty account and have to invent service names, prices, time-slot lengths, opening hours, and a few customers on top of that, or there's nothing to click on. That's not trying a product anymore, that's homework.
So we rebuilt the micali.online demo. Now we ask two short questions and prepare everything else for you. Even the six-digit PIN that used to appear right at the start with an instruction to take a screenshot of it is gone — you stay signed in for as long as the demo runs.
First Question: What You'd Like to Try It With
The moment you launch the demo, you see the question "What would you like to try it with?" and nine options: hair salon or barber, nail studio, massage, beauty, physiotherapy, yoga and fitness classes, personal trainer, photographer, and "something else". Click whichever comes closest to your own business, and a few seconds later the account is full.
In the same window, we also ask for your language. It's not just a courtesy question: the demo account is created based on your browser's language, which is only a guess, and everything we add to the account is written in the account's language and never translated afterwards. So this is the only moment when you can still correct it. The country changes along with the language, and the currency in the price list depends on it — a Czech demo gets prices in crowns, in numbers that make sense, not 200 Kč where it should have said 200 €.
What You'll Find in the Account
A whole small business gets created based on the type you choose. For massage, it looks like this:
- An account with a name and a description — for example a studio called Aura Massage, complete with an about text.
- A service with four treatments — classic, relaxing, sports and lymphatic massage, each with its own duration and price, plus three weeks of open time slots ahead.
- A group class that repeats every week — three dates are already behind you, five are ahead.
- Three prepaid plans — a ten-visit pass, an unlimited monthly plan, and a trial one. Two of them are valid for the class, and four customers already have one.
- Eight customers and their bookings — past and future, one waiting for approval, one cancelled, attendance marked on the past ones (including one no-show), and two people in the waiting list for the next slot.
- A booking form that the customer fills in when booking, complete with a few filled-in answers.
None of these details are random. They're there so every screen has something to show: the statistics have numbers to work with, the waiting list isn't empty, the dashboard reports "5 approved, 1 waiting for approval", and the bookings list also shows you what a cancelled booking looks like, or a customer who didn't show up.
We didn't rush the translation of the treatment names for the demo — they're the exact same names offered by the account setup wizard, which already exists in micali.online in 31 languages. The demo account and an account built through the wizard speak the same words.
Second Question: Where to Send Your Notifications
Once your sample business is ready, we ask one more thing: "Where should we send notifications?" The reason is practical. The demo is created without you typing anything, so the account has no real address — and without one, there's nowhere for a message to arrive telling you that someone just booked. Once you give an address, bookings on your sample business will reach you exactly the way real ones would: a new booking, a cancellation, a message from a customer.
The address adds you as a manager of this account, not as its owner. The account stays a demo: nothing is charged, and it still expires unless you decide to keep it. You'll get the ordinary account invitation email, which also doubles as your way back in from another browser or device. And if you keep the demo later, we'll offer you that same address right away — the account, ownership included, moves to it.
The question is optional, and the "Not now" button skips it. The sample business is already finished by that point, so skipping costs you nothing except the emails — and what that means in practice, we cover below.
Try the Other Side, Too
At the top, in the yellow bar, there are two buttons. Try a booking opens your public booking page exactly as the customer sees it — with the time slots, the class and the prepaid plans we've prepared. So you can walk through the whole journey: book as a customer, come back to the app, and confirm, move or cancel that booking. That's the part you can't try at all with an empty account.
None of It Is Real, and the Sample Customers Get Nothing
The sample customers are made-up people with addresses on the domain example.com, which is reserved for exactly this purpose and never delivers anywhere. But the main safeguard is elsewhere: the class is created with message sending switched off and without reminder templates, so even the nightly jobs have nothing to send. Whatever you click through in the demo, you're not bothering anyone.
If You Don't Give an Address: Notifications Stay Inside the App
When you skip the second question, the account is left with only a placeholder address that goes nowhere, and we categorically never send anything to that kind of address. The consequence is straightforward: you won't get a single email or SMS — not even a notification about a new booking.
What still works are the in-app notifications. The bell in the header and the pop-up bubbles that appear in the corner show you everything that matters: a new booking, a cancellation, someone joining the waiting list, a prepaid plan ordered, a new message from a customer. They're the exact same alerts a live account gets — you just see them while you have the app open, not in your inbox.
You can fix this any time, not just at that one question:
- Add the address later. In Account Users, add yourself as a manager, or just click Keep this account — either way, emails start reaching you from then on.
- Make a test booking with your own address. Then you're acting as the customer, and your address is real — we check the recipient's address, not the account. So you'll see exactly the emails customers get.
How to Keep the Demo
The demo lasts 7 days, and then it's deleted along with everything in it. The Keep this account button in the yellow bar stops that: you enter an email address (if you already gave one at the second question, we'll offer it pre-filled), a 6-digit code arrives, and from then on you sign in with that address. We ask straight away what to do with the sample data too — keep it and edit (rename the services, change the prices, delete what you don't offer), or start with an empty account, which wipes the sample services, classes, prepaid plans, customers and bookings. The account, the team, the message templates and the settings stay either way.
And If You Want to Build It From Scratch
The business-type question also has an "I'll set it up myself" button. In that case, nothing gets created and you get a clean account — and the offer won't come back on this device. The sample data is an offer, not an obligation.
Where to Try It
At app.micali.online, no sign-up and no payment card. One click, two questions — and after that, you're just clicking around in an account that looks like your own.
