Keeping Booked Solid awake: a spare computer, or your own VPS

Modified on Sat, 1 Aug at 10:03 PM

Your booking department only works while the computer it lives on is awake. If your machine sleeps at night or travels with you, your automations stop with it. Here is how to fix that, cheapest option first.

First, the honest bit

Booked Solid runs on your computer, not on ours. That is deliberate: your Booking HQ is a folder of your own files on your own machine, and nobody else holds your client list. So "always on" means having a machine of your own that stays awake. That machine can be a laptop in a cupboard, or it can be a small server you rent. Both work.

Option 1: a spare computer that never sleeps (free, and usually the right answer)

If you have an old laptop, this beats everything else for simplicity.

Put it somewhere quiet with power and wifi. A cupboard, a shelf, a spare room.
Turn sleep off. This is the whole trick. On Windows: Settings, System, Power, and set "When plugged in, put my device to sleep after" to Never. On a Mac: System Settings, Lock Screen, and set the display and sleep options to Never while on power.
Install Booked Solid on it and point it at your Booking HQ.
Reach it from anywhere with Chrome Remote Desktop, which is free and takes about five minutes to set up.

Cost: nothing. Most performers should stop here.

Option 2: rent a small server (a VPS)

Worth it if you have no spare machine, you do not want a computer humming in your house, or you simply like the idea of your booking department living somewhere that never loses power.

Any of these are reputable, and the differences barely matter at this size:

Provider	Roughly	Good for
Hetzner	$5 to $20 a month	The best value anywhere. European company with US locations. Where to start if the price matters most.
Linode (Akamai)	$12 to $24 a month	Rock solid and simple. This is what we run our own systems on.
DigitalOcean	$12 to $24 a month	The friendliest control panel and the best written guides if you are new to this.
Vultr	$10 to $20 a month	Lots of locations, so you can pick one near you.

What to actually buy

Do not overthink this. Choose:

8GB of RAM. 4GB is tight once a web task opens a browser. 8GB is comfortable and is the sweet spot on price.
2 to 4 processors (any modern shared or dedicated plan).
40GB or more of disk.
A location near you, so remote control feels responsive.
Ubuntu as the operating system.

That is roughly $12 to $20 a month at any of the four.

Then pick your door

Booked Solid has two, and they behave differently on a server:

The terminal is happy on a VPS. It needs no screen at all: your booking folder and a command line are the whole requirement. If you are comfortable in a terminal, this is the natural fit and the smaller machine will do.
The app needs a desktop. It is a desktop application, so on a Linux server you also need a graphical session and a way to view it (VNC or RDP). That works, but it is a project, and if it breaks the night before a gig you are the one fixing it.

A fair summary: if you want the app on a server, budget an evening. If you want the terminal on a server, budget twenty minutes.

Which should you choose?

Spare laptop if you have one. VPS if you do not, or if you want it out of your house. Either way the rule that actually matters is the same one: the machine must never sleep. That is what kills more automations than anything else.

We will help

Bring it to one of the weekly live calls and we will pick a plan and get it running with you on screen, or open a ticket and tell us which route you fancy. We would rather spend twenty minutes with you than have you guess.