Setster Appointment Scheduling Platform

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Role
3. Problem
4. Goal
5. Solution
   • Platform Features
   • Integrations
   • Developer Tooling
6. User Impact
7. Challenges and Learnings
8. Final Thoughts

Overview

Setster is a robust appointment scheduling platform built for businesses needing advanced availability logic, calendar syncing, and client engagement. As the lead full stack developer, I helped scale the system over nearly a decade of development.

The platform powers enterprise-level bookings with integrations for email, video conferencing, and subscription billing.

👨‍💻 Role

Full Stack Developer

• Developed and maintained backend services using NestJS and Node.js
• For the Legacy code I also had to maintain different parts of the backend services using PHP
• Built responsive UIs using React.js and integrated third-party tools
• Created CLI tools for internal automation and configuration
• Integrated Chargify for managing customer subscriptions and billing
• Worked closely with the DevOps team to establish a modern, reliable CI/CD pipeline
• Helped monitor and manage deployments on AWS using Docker and Nginx

❓ Problem

Businesses needed a customizable scheduling solution that could:

• Handle complex appointment logic
• Connect with existing calendar and conferencing tools
• Manage recurring payments for subscription plans
• Deliver consistent performance at scale

🎯 Goal

• Build a developer-friendly appointment platform with powerful APIs
• Enable teams to manage services, schedules, and billing in one place
• Ensure uptime and speed through reliable CI/CD and DevOps collaboration

✨ Solution

🧩 Platform Features

• Multi-service and multi-user scheduling with buffer time support
• Custom business hours, overrides, and appointment rules
• Admin dashboards, analytics, and reporting tools
• Embedded widgets and white-labeling options

🔌 Integrations

• 📅 Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook calendar sync
• 📤 SendGrid for transactional emails and notifications
• 🔁 Zapier to automate workflows with CRMs and custom systems
• 💳 Chargify for subscription billing, upgrades, and plan management

🛠️ Developer Tooling

• CLI tools to generate appointment templates and service presets
• Admin CLI for batch updates and report generation
• CI/CD pipeline integrated with GitHub Actions and Docker
• Monitoring deployments with structured logs and health checks

🚀 User Impact

• Supported thousands of businesses across industries
• Handled millions of appointment requests with near-zero downtime
• Streamlined admin operations and account management with powerful APIs

⚙️ Challenges and Learnings

1. Subscription Logic
   Building flexible, Chargify-based billing that worked with custom appointment logic and user tiers.

2. CI/CD Collaboration
   Working with DevOps to establish safe and scalable deploys using GitHub Actions and Docker containers.

3. Availability Engine Complexity
   Balancing global timezones, business logic, buffer rules, and edge cases made appointment calculation a rewarding challenge.

4. Resilient Syncing
   Handling sync failures or webhook retries for third-party tools was essential for a reliable user experience.

✨ Final Thoughts

• 🧠 Flexibility, automation, and integration are the cornerstones of modern SaaS products
• 🤝 Dev collaboration and CI/CD maturity were key to scaling this platform successfully
• 🔐 Subscription systems require precision — we built it right with Chargify and custom automation