Tavolix

Description

Tavolix is an all-in-one booking assistant for restaurants: a public reservation widget for your site, an admin dashboard to manage bookings and the floor plan, and automated customer notifications by email and WhatsApp.

With Tavolix you can:

• Publish a public booking widget on any page via the [ristorante_booking] shortcode, with real-time availability based on your rules and table capacity.
• Manage incoming bookings (confirm, waitlist, reschedule, cancel) from a dedicated admin dashboard.
• Configure your restaurant’s room, tables and seating capacity, and get an AI-suggested floor plan layout (Gemini-based, requires your own Google AI API key).
• Define advanced booking rules: closures, blocked or limited time slots, minimum party size, zone assignment, automatic waitlisting.
• Schedule special/themed evenings with their own rules and capacity.
• Send automatic email notifications for confirmations, waitlist, reschedule and cancellations, to both customers and the restaurant owner.
• Optionally send the same notifications via WhatsApp, using your own Meta WhatsApp Business Platform account (Cloud API) — no third-party messaging provider or markup fees.
• Get a ready-to-use booking link for your Google Business Profile, and optionally request a Google review automatically the day after a visit.
• View an aggregated customer history (bookings, contact details) from a dedicated Customers tab.
• Let customers cancel their own booking from a secure, tokenized link in their confirmation email — no account required.
• Export or erase a customer’s booking data on request, using WordPress’ native Privacy Tools (Users → Personal Data Requests), for GDPR compliance.

The plugin stores all its configuration and booking data in your own WordPress database. No data is sent anywhere unless you explicitly enable and configure one of the optional integrations described below.

Free vs. Premium

Tavolix’s core is free forever: the public booking widget, the admin booking dashboard, manual floor plan/table configuration, advanced booking rules and special events, automated email notifications, the guided setup wizard, and GDPR export/erasure tools all work without any license.

A Premium license (79€/year per site, with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required to try) unlocks:

• AI-suggested floor plan layout (Gemini-based).
• Automatic WhatsApp notifications via the Meta WhatsApp Business Platform.
• Automatic post-visit Google review requests.
• The Customers tab (aggregated booking history per customer).
• The AI assistant command bar (natural-language commands across the admin).

The trial doesn’t start automatically at activation: start it with one click, no card required, from Tavolix → Licenza whenever you’re ready. After the trial, these specific features pause until a license is activated from the same page; every free-tier feature keeps working normally, with no interruption and no nag screens blocking the rest of the plugin.

External services

Tavolix integrates with two optional third-party services. Both are off by default and only activate once you configure your own API credentials for that service in Tavolix → Impostazioni.

Google Gemini (AI floor plan suggestions, and the AI assistant command bar)
If you enter a Gemini API key, Tavolix uses Google’s Generative Language API for two features: (1) the “Suggerisci layout AI” feature sends your restaurant’s room dimensions and table configuration (numeric layout data only — never customer or booking data) to receive a suggested table arrangement, only when you explicitly click the AI suggestion button; (2) the AI assistant command bar, shown at the bottom of every admin screen, sends your typed command together with your current rules, opening hours/closures, tables, events, email/WhatsApp/review settings, and a list of upcoming non-cancelled bookings (customer first/last name, date, time, party size and status only — never email, phone or notes) so the assistant can carry out the request you typed (e.g. creating a closure rule, or cancelling/rescheduling a specific booking) immediately, without a preview step. This call happens only when you send a message in the assistant bar.
Service: Google Gemini API — Terms of Service, Google Privacy Policy.

Meta WhatsApp Business Platform (Cloud API)
If you configure a Phone Number ID, WABA ID and Access Token and enable WhatsApp notifications, the plugin sends the customer’s name and phone number, plus the restaurant name and booking date/time/party size, to Meta’s WhatsApp Cloud API (graph.facebook.com) in order to deliver a booking confirmation, waitlist, reschedule or cancellation message. This only happens for bookings where the customer provided a phone number, and only while the WhatsApp toggle is enabled.
Service: Meta WhatsApp Business Platform — WhatsApp Business Terms, Meta Privacy Policy, Meta Platform Terms.

Both integrations require you to create and own your own developer account/API key with the respective provider; Tavolix does not proxy, log, or have access to this traffic beyond what your own site sends directly.

Your restaurant management software (optional booking webhook)
If you enter a webhook URL and an API key in Tavolix → Impostazioni → “Gestionale di sala”, every successful online booking is also sent to that URL (customer name, phone number, booking date/time, party size and notes), authenticated with your API key. The URL is chosen by you and points to your own restaurant management software: Tavolix does not operate this service and sends nothing unless both fields are filled in. A failed call never blocks the customer’s booking.

Freemius (licensing for Premium features)
If you activate a Premium license (see “Free vs. Premium” above) or start the 14-day Premium trial, Tavolix uses the Freemius SDK to manage the license: this sends your site URL, plugin version, and — only if you complete a purchase — billing details you enter directly on Freemius’ own checkout page (Tavolix itself never sees or stores payment details). This only happens if you activate a trial or license; the free tier works with no connection to Freemius at all.
Service: Freemius — Terms of Service, Privacy Policy.

Technical details