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BetterSuite is built for teams who see on-demand as a business — not a feature.
You need a parking management system to run your lot: it is the software behind your gates and pay stations that handles entry, permits, payment and the day's figures. If the lot runs well and still sits half empty, you need a parking marketplace as well. A marketplace is parking reservation software that lists your lot beside other owners' spaces in one app, where drivers who don't know you yet can find it.
Most lists of types of parking management system sort them by hardware: barriers, plate-reading cameras, pay stations. Sorted by the job the software does, parking software comes in two kinds.
The first, a site system, is what parking management system vendors usually sell and what most people mean by the term: software that runs one operator's own sites. It typically covers payment, monitoring and enforcement, access control and reporting. Several of those vendors, Designa among them, also sell the barriers, cameras and pay stations the software drives.
The second is a marketplace. Many owners list their spaces under one brand — a garage, a hotel's basement, an office car park that empties at six — and drivers search all of them in one app. Whoever runs the marketplace approves who lists, sets the rules and keeps the customer.
Most guides describe only the first kind, but the two solve different problems.
| Site system | Marketplace | |
|---|---|---|
| Its job | Runs the spaces you have | Reaches drivers who don't know you |
| Who it serves | Drivers who already come | Drivers searching the area |
| What it improves | The cost of each visit | The number of visits |
| Whose spaces | Yours | Yours and other owners' |
Your site system is the problem when drivers arrive but serving them costs too much. Queues build at the barrier at nine. Permits live in a spreadsheet. Cash takings don't match the ticket count, and nobody can say which hours the lot is full.
Each of these is a cost problem, and the system on site is what fixes it. Faster entry, online permits and payment without a cashier make the drivers you already have cheaper to serve. Hourly occupancy figures show when the lot is full. A marketplace fixes none of this.
You need a marketplace when the lot runs well and still sits half empty. Spaces stay unused in the middle of the day. The entrance is hard to find from the road. You run several sites in one city. A neighbour — a hotel, an office block, a church — has spaces it would let by the hour.
These are demand problems, and a parking management system is not built for them. Some come with a booking page of their own: SKIDATA's online reservations page pitches its web shop on keeping the revenue, with "no need to share with a third-party web shop provider". But a web shop sells only your spaces, to drivers who already look for them.
A marketplace adds other owners' spaces to yours. A driver with one lot to choose from has no reason to download anything; a driver with a dozen lots near the stadium does.
Some of your regulars will book in the app instead of at the gate, so the gain is the drivers who would otherwise have parked somewhere else. Each of them is a visit you would not have had. A site system saves part of the cost of the visits you already get, while a marketplace with drivers adds new ones, which is why its return is the larger one.
Aggregators have the drivers today. SpotHero's page for parking operators offers the chance to "reach millions of drivers". JustPark's page for UK car park operators claimed "14M + drivers nationwide" in November 2026.
Each takes a fee from every booking, and neither publishes a current rate for operators, so ask for the rate, any fee drivers pay on top and the contract term before you sign. The driver is their customer, not yours, and that customer can change hands. Uber agreed in February 2026 to buy SpotHero to put parking inside the Uber app, and it now trades as SpotHero by Uber.
If your gates run on a system with a connector to these apps, bookings can reach the barrier without staff. Designa's PARKETPLACE, for example, links existing car park equipment to apps such as EasyPark and PayByPhone.
Your own marketplace keeps the brand, the booking fee and the customer, but it starts with no drivers, and its return depends on how many you win. You win them yourself:
With one garage and no neighbours to sign, an aggregator is the quicker route. You can also keep an aggregator listing while your own marketplace fills; hold separate spaces for each, because the two don't share a count.
Keep the system you have; it still runs the gate. BetterParking adds the marketplace beside it: a white label parking app for drivers and lot owners, with a dashboard for your team, all under your brand.
Owners list their lots from the app, with the number of spaces each one offers, and you approve every owner and every lot. Each booking is a request the owner accepts. A request nobody answers expires, and the driver's card hold is released. The free-space count drivers see covers app bookings against those spaces, so hold them back from drive-ups.
Drivers' cards are held when they reserve and charged when they leave, or they pay cash at the lot if you allow it. Arrivals are checked by QR code or licence plate alongside your existing gates, and each payment is split so every owner is paid their share. Occupancy and sales reports show which lots fill and which sit idle, and coupons help you win the first drivers.
You can run it in our cloud, host it yourself or buy the source code.
A parking management system is the software an operator uses to run its own car parks. It controls who gets in, takes payment, enforces the rules and reports what each site earned. A parking marketplace is the other kind of parking software: many owners list spaces in one app for drivers to book.
A driver enters with a ticket, a permit or a booking. The system times the stay, takes payment and lets the car out, and each stay feeds reports on occupancy and takings. Our guide to parking management software covers the features in more detail.
Start by deciding whether your problem is cost or demand. If drivers come but queues, permit paperwork and cash handling eat the margin, improve the system: faster entry, online payment, reports by the hour. If the lot runs well and still sits half empty, list it on an aggregator, where drivers already search, or run a marketplace of your own and market it in the area.
They take a fee on each booking, from the owner, the driver or both. JustPark says on its page for people renting out a space that it takes "a small service fee from each booking". On a marketplace of your own, the booking fee drivers pay comes to you rather than an aggregator, along with the full price of bookings at your own lots; what our plans charge is on the pricing page. Our post on parking system software as a revenue engine covers what else a lot can earn.
If your lot runs well and still sits half empty, try the BetterParking demo in your browser to see how a marketplace of your own would run beside the system you have.
