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I had three Splacer-booked shoots queued for spring last year. Then the email landed. The platform was closing, accounts would stop working April 4th, and any booking past that date was on me to sort out.

One of those shoots was a watch brand campaign in a Hackney loft I'd booked twice before. The owner wasn't on Peerspace. Wasn't on Giggster. Had no website worth mentioning. Just a Splacer listing, a phone number, and a really good north light.

I tracked her down via Instagram in the end. We did the shoot. But it took me a working day of detective work, and I lost two other studios that month entirely — gone, no forwarding address, just a phone that rang out.

So. Where am I booking now? Honestly, it's been a year of trial and error, and the answer isn't 'just use Peerspace'. Here's what I've actually been doing.

What Splacer was good for, and why losing it stung

Splacer was always a bit weird in the UK. The big platforms — Peerspace, Giggster — never really cared about smaller, quirkier London spaces. A 90sqm loft above a print shop in Deptford, with one window and a kitchenette? Not really their thing. Splacer hoovered up exactly that kind of space.

I shot watches in a converted Victorian schoolroom in Stoke Newington off Splacer. Cookbooks in a Hackney warehouse with a 4m ceiling and one beautiful skylight. A jewellery campaign in a Peckham basement that had genuinely no other internet presence. None of those listings exist anywhere now.

The other thing Splacer did well was the long tail of one-off owners. People who had a space, listed it once, took bookings sporadically. The platform didn't push them to professionalise. That's a feature and a bug — the listings were patchy but the prices were sane and the people were often the actual artists or designers who owned the building.

When the platform closed in April 2025, the official line gave users until April 4th to manage existing bookings. After that, accounts went dark. No data export, no host directory, no breadcrumb trail. Hosts who'd built their entire booking flow around Splacer just… vanished from the discoverable web.

Where the bookings actually went

Most of the better hosts I knew migrated to one of three places. Some went to all three. A few quit the platform game entirely and went back to a basic website plus an Instagram DM workflow.

Peerspace, with caveats

Peerspace got the lion's share of the migration. Bigger budget, bigger UK presence, better mobile app. If you've not booked through them recently, the host service fee is 20% — confirmed on their support docs and itemised on every quote. That comes off the host's payout, not added to your bill, but it absolutely shapes the rates.

Practical effect: a £100/hr Peerspace listing nets the host £80/hr before tax. So studios that used to be £75/hr direct have crept up to £95–£110 on Peerspace to keep the same margin. You're effectively paying the platform's cut at the door even though it doesn't show up as a line item on your invoice.

I still use it. The catch: I always check whether the listing exists elsewhere. Half the studios I've booked on Peerspace have a direct booking page and will knock 10–15% off if you find them. It's not breaking any T&Cs to ask — they've already paid the cost of acquisition the first time.

Giggster

Giggster's UK catalogue isn't as deep as Peerspace, but it's grown a lot since Splacer's exit. Where Giggster shines: production-friendly listings — bigger spaces, drive-in access, location-style bookings. The interface tells you crew sizes and vehicle counts upfront, which Peerspace still buries three clicks deep.

Where it falls down: smaller daylight studios. The kind of 70sqm Hackney space where you'd shoot a knitwear lookbook? Thin on the ground. I use Giggster for film and bigger commercial; I use Peerspace or direct for small-team photo days.

Direct booking, which is back

Here's the thing nobody saw coming. After Splacer collapsed, a chunk of those host-side relationships just went bilateral. People built single-page Squarespace sites, posted them in their Instagram bio, and ran their bookings off a calendar plugin.

I now have a notes file with about forty London studios I book direct. Some I found by remembering them and DMing the owner. Others I found by walking into estate agent windows in Hackney Wick and Park Royal. The shoot diary is messier — no central dashboard — but the rates are 15–25% lower and the relationships are better.

The four-step rescue I run when I lose a studio

This is what I did when Splacer pulled the rug. It still works for any platform that suddenly disappears, gets bought, or quietly nudges hosts off.

One. Search the studio name plus 'instagram'. Most owners use the same handle as the studio. Even if their website is gone, the Insta is usually live.

Two. Cross-reference the postcode with Companies House. UK studios are often run as Ltd companies registered to the building. Free to search. You can find a director's name, sometimes their personal email.

Three. Reverse image search the listing photos. If the studio has any kind of online presence elsewhere — a Pinterest board, a tagged shoot, a Bloggers' lookbook — the same hero image usually shows up.

Four. Walk in. Genuinely. If you've shot there before and you know the postcode, just go on a Tuesday afternoon. Half the studios I've rebooked post-Splacer were rebooked in person.

The platforms I tried and quietly stopped using

Splacer isn't the only one. A few others I gave a shot in the last twelve months and then dropped:

Spacebase. Heavily skewed toward meeting rooms and event spaces. Photo studios are a tiny minority of the catalogue and the search filters don't really work for shoot needs (no ceiling height filter, no daylight orientation filter).

Headbox. Same issue. Beautiful UI, mostly weddings and corporate events. The few photo studios on there are also on Peerspace, usually cheaper.

Tagvenue. Same again — weddings and parties. Worth a look only if you're doing a hybrid event/shoot like a brand launch with photography.

Pricing, post-Splacer

What I'm paying in 2026 versus what I was paying through Splacer in early 2024, on roughly equivalent spaces:

A 70sqm daylight studio in Hackney: was £45–£60/hr on Splacer, now £75–£95/hr on Peerspace, or £55–£70/hr direct.

A 200sqm cyc room with infinity wall in Park Royal: was £85/hr on Splacer (rare listing), now £110–£140/hr on Peerspace, or £85–£105 direct with a full day commit.

A small product table studio with strobes included in Tottenham: was £35/hr on Splacer, now £55–£75/hr platform, or £40–£55 direct.

The platform-to-direct delta is real and it's grown since Splacer left. My read: with one fewer platform competing for hosts, the remaining ones have less pressure on commission and the rates have firmed up.

What I wish I'd done differently

I'd kept a spreadsheet of every studio I'd booked, with the owner's name and a non-platform email, since 2018. After Splacer closed I added a column called 'platform-only?' and went through it. Sixty percent of my Splacer studios had no other touchpoint. I lost about a third of those forever.

If you're booking studios as a regular part of your work, my one piece of advice: every shoot, get the owner's direct email. Even if you booked through a platform. Even if it feels rude. Pretend you need it for a delivery, an invoice query, a future date. Whatever. Just have a non-platform line of contact.

Because the next platform that goes the way of Splacer might be the one you book half your work through. And the morning the email lands, you'll wish you had that direct line.

What's next

I think we're still mid-consolidation. Peerspace will keep growing the UK catalogue. Giggster will keep eating production-tier work. The direct-booking long tail is going to get bigger because hosts have learnt the lesson — don't bet your business on someone else's platform.

If you want a starting point on direct booking that isn't dependent on any single marketplace, the studio listings on creativestudiohire.com are owner-managed and link straight through to direct contact. No platform commission baked in. That's the whole point.

The Splacer shutdown was painful, but it pushed a healthier ecosystem. Smaller, more direct, less commissioned. That's not a bad outcome.

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