Services · Ecommerce development · Taxi booking and payment sites
We build online taxi booking website development Edinburgh firms rely on when the phone lines cannot keep up: a site on your own domain where a passenger books and pays for a car from the airport, Waverley, a Leith hotel or a Morningside flat, sees the whole fare first, and receives a confirmation straight away. It is set up for operators licensed by the City of Edinburgh Council and written to Scottish rules, not borrowed wholesale from a London template.
Edinburgh demand swings harder than most UK cities. The festivals, Hogmanay and match days at Murrayfield fill every car, then quiet weekday afternoons follow. A booking platform that takes payment in advance lets you sell busy slots early and keep cars moving when the city is calm.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
What the booking platform covers
Most Edinburgh trips are short, but the expensive mistakes happen on the longer ones: an airport pickup when the flight is late, a festival venue drop-off where the road is closed, a group of six that needed a larger car. The booking website is where those trips are priced, paid for and described properly, before a controller has to sort them out.
The platform below is shaped around the way Edinburgh operators work. Taxis and private hire cars are licensed separately under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, and the council's conditions apply to both, so the site keeps the two products distinct where it needs to. We scope the first release around the trips that earn you most, usually airport and station transfers, and add the rest in order.
Edinburgh Airport pickups with flight number tracking and clear meeting points, plus Waverley and Haymarket station pickups. The flow explains where the driver will wait, which matters at an airport where many passengers arrive unsure whether to take the tram or a car. Waiting time after a delayed landing follows the rules you set.
Drivers and passengers find each other first time.
Booking caps by time slot for the Fringe, the International Festival, the Tattoo, Hogmanay and rugby internationals, so you only sell what your fleet can carry. Closed roads and drop-off points can be set per event, and bookings for those nights close when capacity is reached. Staff can open extra slots if more cars come on shift.
Busy nights sell out cleanly instead of overbooking.
Fixed prices for airport, station and longer runs to St Andrews, Gleneagles or North Berwick, charged at booking by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. Metered local trips can be booked with a card saved for payment after the ride where your licence conditions allow.
Visitors pay before they travel, with no currency confusion at the kerb.
Cancellation windows you choose, shown before payment and repeated in the confirmation, with automatic refunds that follow them. Different terms can apply to event nights, when a late cancellation costs you a fare you could have sold twice.
Refund decisions match the policy every time.
Many festival and summer bookings come from overseas. Address search that copes with Old Town closes and New Town crescents, plain English with optional translated screens, international phone numbers, and full prices in sterling shown from the first quote. Confirmation emails explain where to meet the driver in plain language.
Fewer abandoned bookings from visitors who are unsure of the city.
Taxi booking website design in Edinburgh has to work for someone on a wet pavement outside the Usher Hall, phone in one hand and umbrella in the other. Large tap targets, a short form, wallet buttons first and a confirmation page that stays readable in bright sun or at two in the morning on the Grassmarket.
Passengers finish the booking rather than giving up and hailing.
Concierge desks, guest houses and venues book cars for guests on account, pick the room or event name, and receive a monthly invoice. Each booking still carries the guest's details for the driver.
Hospitality work arrives in your system, not on a scrap of paper.
Wheelchair accessible vehicle requests, assistance dogs and help with luggage captured at booking, with screens built to WCAG 2.2 AA. Many Edinburgh taxis are wheelchair accessible; the site makes that easy to book rather than something to ask for on the phone.
Disabled passengers can book the right car without a call.
Each booking stores time of acceptance, route, passenger, driver, vehicle and fare, searchable and exportable. Vehicle records can also note emissions standard, so only cars cleared for the city centre Low Emission Zone are offered for trips inside it.
Compliance questions are answered from records you already hold.
An admin screen where your office sees every online booking, its payment state and its assigned car, can change a pickup time, issue a partial refund or move a job to another driver. Notes stay on the booking so the next shift knows what happened.
Your controllers manage web work without leaving their usual routine.
Who this is for
Edinburgh's taxi trade has long relied on radio circuits and phone bookings, and many firms still do most of their work that way. A booking website does not replace that. It adds a paid channel for the trips that suit online sale, especially visitors and longer transfers, and gives regular passengers a way to book without waiting on hold during the busy weeks.
The four situations below are the ones we hear about most. Each one changes what the first release should contain, so we start by working out which describes you, or which mix of them does.
Your passengers know your number, and many of them are older residents who will keep phoning. The people you lose are the younger professionals and students who will not call. A booking site with saved cards and favourite addresses brings them back, while your controllers keep working the phones as before. Online bookings appear in the same dispatch queue, flagged as paid.
We design for both groups rather than pushing everyone online.
Airport runs, golf trips, wedding guests and cruise passengers arriving at Leith or South Queensferry make up most of your diary. These are booked days or weeks ahead, often from abroad, and they suit prepayment. The site sells them at fixed prices with luggage and vehicle size options, and sends reminders before pickup. Drivers receive the flight or ship details with the job, so they know when to set off.
Your cars run between the city, Livingston, Dalkeith and Musselburgh, and each council licenses its own vehicles and drivers. The booking platform records which licence a job sits under and only offers vehicles licensed for that work. Fares can vary by zone without making the checkout harder to follow. Passengers in Midlothian or East Lothian book on the same site as city residents.
You book transport for guests rather than run cars yourself, and you want that work handled by one reliable licensed operator. We can build the account side for the operator you partner with, so your team books through a portal and every trip is invoiced together at the end of the month.
The operator remains the licensed party for each trip.
How we work together
We have no office in Scotland. Our team works with Edinburgh operators remotely: discovery, design reviews and testing sessions run by video call, and you see progress on a shared board. Most firms take a fixed scope first release, then a retainer for fare changes, event settings and payment updates. A larger group running several brands may prefer a dedicated team that stays with the platform.
A taxi booking online booking system development Edinburgh project works best with three people on your side: someone who owns the fares and terms, someone who knows the dispatch software, and a controller who can tell us where passengers get stuck today. Short weekly calls with that group keep decisions moving.
A defined build with a deadline
We agree what the product has to do, write it down with a price and a date, and build exactly that. Changes are priced before they are made, not discovered on the invoice.
A product that keeps evolving
Named engineers who work your hours, join your standups and stay on the codebase. You direct the backlog; we own the quality of what ships.
Something live that needs looking after
A monthly block of hours for improvements, fixes and the small requests that otherwise wait months. Unused hours carry for a quarter.
Technology
We pick tools that suit your dispatch system and the people who will manage the site. That usually means a modern web framework, a UK card acquirer or Stripe, address and mapping APIs that handle Edinburgh's streets well, and UK hosting. You receive full documentation and admin access, so the platform does not depend on us.
01Web
02Commerce
03Data and cloud
04Marketing and tracking
Your dispatch link, fare rules and the number of booking types.
A site selling fixed airport fares into a dispatch system with an open API is the simplest case. Costs rise with custom tariffs, event caps, hotel accounts, translated screens and separate taxi and private hire products. We price after discovery, against a written scope, so you can decide what goes in the first release and what waits. Ongoing costs depend on hosting, payment provider fees, SMS volumes and how much support you want after launch, and we set those out separately so nothing is hidden in the build price.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
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