TTO vs Bloom: Which Is Better for Wedding Planners? [2026]
Kat Trefilova — CEO & Founder
Key Takeaways
Bloom is built for photographers.
TTO is built for wedding planners.
If you're a wedding planner evaluating both platforms, Bloom lacks the tools you need most — there's no guest management, no seating charts, no dietary tracking, no timelines, and no vendor CRM.
It's a genuinely excellent product for its intended audience; it's just not built for you.
TTO vs Bloom: Which Is Better for Wedding Planners?
Table of Contents
Why This Comparison Exists
Bloom has gained significant momentum in the wedding industry — especially after HoneyBook’s dramatic price increases in February 2025 pushed photographers toward alternatives. The platform is polished, reasonably priced, and has won over a large portion of the wedding photography community.
That success has led some wedding planners to ask: “Should I be using Bloom?” It’s a fair question, especially when you’re seeing it recommended everywhere in wedding professional communities. The honest answer is: almost certainly not, and this post explains exactly why.
What Bloom Is and Who It’s For
Bloom is a CRM and studio management platform designed primarily for photographers and creative freelancers. Its standout features are built around the photography workflow: client galleries, image delivery, scheduling, and beautifully designed client portals.
Bloom Pricing
Plan | Monthly | Billed Annually |
|---|---|---|
Starter | $14/month | $7/month ($84/year) |
Standard | $34/month | $17/month ($204/year) |
Plus | $66/month | $33/month ($396/year) |
The pricing is genuinely competitive, especially on annual plans. The Starter plan is useful for early-stage photographers, though it’s limited to 3 active projects and adds a 1.5% Bloom platform fee on payments — the Standard plan at $17/month annually is the practical minimum for working professionals.
What Bloom Does Well (for photographers)
Client galleries — Upload and deliver photos directly to clients through beautiful, branded galleries
Scheduling — Built-in scheduling for consultations and shoots
Proposals and contracts — Clean, branded proposals with e-signature contracts
Invoicing and payments — Accepts payments via Stripe, Square, PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, and bank transfers across 135+ currencies
Workflow automations — Automated follow-ups, reminders, and workflows (Standard and Plus)
Client portal — Polished, modern client experience
Website builder — Professional websites included
For a wedding photographer, Bloom is an excellent platform. It handles the core photographer workflow elegantly.
What Bloom Does NOT Have (and Why It Matters for Planners)
Here’s where the comparison becomes definitive. Wedding planners have needs that simply don’t exist in the photography world, and Bloom hasn’t built for them.
No guest management. There’s nowhere in Bloom to manage a guest list of 200 people. No RSVP collection. No dietary tracking. No accommodation management. These are not edge cases for a wedding planner — they’re central to the job.
No seating charts. Bloom has no floor plan builder and no seating chart tool. Creating a seating arrangement for a 20-table reception is a foundational wedding planner task. You’d be doing this in a spreadsheet or a separate tool.
No timeline builder. Wedding day timelines — the detailed, vendor-coordinated schedules that keep a 12-hour event running — don’t exist in Bloom. A photographer needs to know when ceremonies start; a planner needs to build the document that tells everyone what’s happening minute-by-minute.
No dietary tracking. A photographer doesn’t care whether the couple’s grandmother is vegetarian. A wedding planner managing catering absolutely does. Bloom has no place to record or track dietary requirements.
No vendor CRM. Managing a roster of 10–15 vendors across 20 active weddings — tracking contacts, contracts, notes, and communications — requires a purpose-built vendor management system. Bloom’s CRM is client-facing; it’s not designed for vendor relationship management.
No wedding websites. Bloom includes a website builder for photographers’ own portfolio sites, but it doesn’t build event-specific wedding websites for couples and their guests.
No catering report exports. TTO’s seating plan integrates directly with guest RSVP and dietary data, generating a comprehensive catering report at the click of a button. This is a feature that solves a very specific, very real problem for wedding planners. Bloom doesn’t have an equivalent.
TTO: Built for What Wedding Planners Actually Do
TTO (thatstheone.com) was designed from the ground up for wedding and event professionals. It’s not a photography platform that added planning features; it’s a planning platform that understands how planners work.
TTO Pricing
£45/month (~$57 USD) — Unlimited weddings, unlimited collaborators, free for clients and couples. 30-day free trial.
What TTO Covers for Wedding Planners
Feature | TTO | Bloom |
|---|---|---|
Guest management & RSVP | ✓ | ✗ |
Dietary tracking | ✓ | ✗ |
Hotel accommodation management | ✓ (discounted rates) | ✗ |
To-scale floor plan builder | ✓ | ✗ |
Drag-and-drop seating charts | ✓ (clients can do this too) | ✗ |
Catering report export | ✓ | ✗ |
Event day timelines | ✓ | ✗ |
Budget & payment tracking | ✓ | ✗ |
Vendor CRM | ✓ | ✗ |
Wedding websites | ✓ | ✗ (photographer portfolio only) |
E-cards | ✓ | ✗ |
Task/to-do lists | ✓ | ✗ |
Video & voice comments | ✓ | ✗ |
Unlimited client collaborators | ✓ (free for clients) | ✗ |
Client galleries (photo delivery) | ✗ | ✓ |
Scheduling/booking calendar | ✗ | ✓ |
Workflow automations | Reminders only | ✓ |
Proposals & contracts | ✓ | ✓ |
Invoicing & payment processing | ✗ | ✓ |
The table tells the story clearly: Bloom is built around the photographer’s studio workflow — client galleries, scheduling, and automations — plus native invoicing and payments. TTO covers the full wedding-planning toolkit and now includes a native client CRM with proposals and e-signed contracts. The one business-management gap on TTO’s side is built-in invoicing and payment processing, which planners handle with Maroo.
Recent Planner-Workflow Improvements
TTO keeps shipping planner-workflow features that have no equivalent in a photography CRM:
AI-assisted imports. Upload an existing timeline or to-do file and TTO’s AI-assisted import converts it into structured, editable items — useful when migrating events from spreadsheets or older tools. You can also import to-dos directly into an event from a CSV file, and save reusable task and checklist templates for the event types you run most often.
Zoom meeting recaps. Connect Zoom to TTO and your meeting and call recaps land in TTO Notes. From there, you move each recap to the relevant event, so discussion points become actions. Recaps don’t create tasks or timeline items automatically — you stay in control of what becomes an action.
Floorplan improvements. The floor plan builder now includes an unassigned-guest tray for faster seat assignment, individual seat deletion, ceremony seating presets, a read-only floorplan share link for vendors and venues, and single-PNG export at 1x, 2x, or 3x resolution.
Timeline improvements. Timelines now support bulk time shifting — move the whole schedule or just selected items — and TBD placeholders for details you haven’t locked in yet, alongside the AI-assisted timeline import described above.
See it for yourself — start a 30 day free trial or book a demo.
The Missing Piece: Invoicing and Payments
The one area where TTO doesn’t compete with Bloom is invoicing and payment processing. TTO now includes a native client CRM with proposals and e-signed contracts, and it tracks budgets and payment schedules — but it doesn’t send invoices or process payments directly.
This is exactly where Maroo (maroo.us) comes in.
Maroo is built for wedding and event professionals and handles the money side: invoicing, payment processing, contractor payouts, and 1099 filing — purpose-built for the wedding industry rather than primarily for photographers. Paired with TTO’s native CRM, proposals, and contracts, it completes the financial workflow.
TTO + Maroo vs. Bloom: Financial Features
Feature | TTO + Maroo | Bloom |
|---|---|---|
Lead capture forms | ✓ (TTO) | ✓ |
Branded proposals | ✓ (TTO) | ✓ |
Contracts & e-signatures | ✓ (TTO) | ✓ |
Invoicing with payment schedules | ✓ (Maroo) | ✓ |
Payment processing | ✓ (Maroo — cards, ACH) | ✓ (multiple processors) |
Pass fees to clients | ✓ (Maroo) | ✓ |
Contractor payouts (free ACH) | ✓ (Maroo) | ✗ |
1099-NEC e-filing | ✓ (Maroo) | ✗ |
QuickBooks integration | ✓ (Maroo) | ✗ |
Free plan available | ✓ (Maroo Starter, free to $10K/mo) | ✗ (7-day trial only) |
Maroo’s free Starter plan covers planners processing under $10,000/month with no monthly subscription cost. Processing fees start at 3.5% for cards and 1% for ACH — and you can pass those fees to clients. For photographers on Bloom who are currently paying $14/month (plus a 1.5% platform fee on Starter), Maroo is actually both free and better on payments.
Together, TTO + Maroo match Bloom’s financial features while adding the full planning toolkit that Bloom will never have.
Head-to-Head: The Key Scenarios
Scenario 1: You’re a wedding planner who also does some photography
If planning is your primary work and photography is secondary, TTO + Maroo is clearly the right call. You need seating charts, guest management, and timelines far more than you need a photo gallery tool.
For your photography work, you can use a purpose-built gallery delivery platform like Pic-Time or ShootProof alongside TTO — they’re inexpensive and do that specific job far better than any all-in-one tool.
Scenario 2: You’re a wedding photographer who also coordinates some events
Bloom + a separate planning tool is probably your setup. Bloom handles your photography business. When you step into planning roles, you’ll need to either use TTO for those specific events or use a spreadsheet-based approach.
Scenario 3: You’re a full-service wedding planner evaluating CRM options
Bloom is not a serious option for you. It doesn’t have the planning tools your job requires. Look at TTO for planning and client CRM, with Maroo for invoicing and payments.
Scenario 4: You’re moving away from HoneyBook after the 2025 price hikes
If you were using HoneyBook primarily as a payment and invoicing tool — not for its planning features — Maroo is the right replacement. It costs less, has a free tier, and is purpose-built for the wedding industry. If you also need planning and a client CRM, add TTO.
Pricing Comparison
Stack | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
Bloom Starter | $14/month (+1.5% payment fee) |
Bloom Standard | $34/month (or $17/month annually) |
Bloom Plus | $66/month (or $33/month annually) |
TTO + Maroo Starter | £45/mo (~$57) TTO + $0 Maroo = ~$57/month |
TTO + Maroo Business | £45/mo (~$57) TTO + $50-85/mo Maroo = ~$107-142/month |
For a wedding planner processing typical volumes under $10,000/month, TTO + Maroo Starter is approximately $57/month — more than Bloom’s Standard but less than Bloom’s Plus. More importantly, you’re getting a complete planning platform that Bloom simply can’t match.
For planners processing over $10,000/month in client payments who need Maroo’s Business plan, the combined cost is higher — but so is the capability, and you’re comparing against Bloom Plus ($33/month) which still has zero planning features.
The Honest Assessment
Bloom is genuinely good software. It’s well-designed, reasonably priced, and the wedding photography community has embraced it for good reason. This post isn’t arguing that Bloom is a bad platform — it’s arguing that it’s the wrong platform for wedding planners.
The difference is as fundamental as this: Bloom doesn’t know what a seating chart is. It doesn’t have a concept of a guest list, dietary restrictions, or a day-of timeline. These aren’t missing features that might get added — they’re absent because Bloom was designed for a different profession with different needs.
TTO was designed specifically for wedding planners. Every feature in the platform exists to solve a problem that wedding planners face. That focus is why it has features like hotel accommodation management with discounted rates, catering report exports, and client drag-and-drop seating — features that no photography CRM has or would think to build.
Related Reading
FAQ
Can I use Bloom as my CRM if I also use TTO for planning?
Not really anymore. TTO now includes a native client CRM with proposals and e-signed contracts, so you don’t need Bloom for that. Bloom’s remaining edge is built-in invoicing and payment processing — and Maroo covers that for free (up to $10K/month processing), purpose-built for wedding pros. Between TTO’s native CRM and Maroo’s payments, there’s no strong reason to add Bloom’s subscription.
Does Bloom have a guest management feature I might have missed?
No. As of April 2026, Bloom has no guest management, seating chart, dietary tracking, RSVP collection, or event timeline features. These are simply outside Bloom’s scope.
Is TTO more expensive than Bloom?
TTO is £45/month (~$57). Bloom Standard (the practical minimum for working professionals) is $34/month — or $17/month billed annually. TTO is more expensive as a standalone subscription, but Bloom doesn’t have the features you need as a planner. You’re paying for different things.
What about Bloom’s website builder? Does TTO have that?
Bloom builds portfolio websites for photographers. TTO builds event-specific wedding websites for couples and their guests — they’re different products serving different purposes. Both platforms include their respective website builders in their base pricing.
Does Maroo integrate with Bloom?
Maroo and Bloom overlap on invoicing and payments. They don’t integrate because they do the same job there — you’d choose one or the other. For wedding planners, Maroo is the better choice: it’s purpose-built for the wedding industry, free to start, and includes contractor payments and 1099 filing that Bloom doesn’t offer. Pair it with TTO’s native client CRM, proposals, and contracts for the full workflow.
Try your 30 day free trial here or book a demo.
Read similar posts
Best Dubsado Alternatives for Wedding Planners