Setora has won Digital StartUp of the Year for the East of England at the UK StartUp Awards 2026. The category recognises new businesses building digital products, and the win takes Setora through to the UK national final at Ideas Fest in Champneys Tring, Hertfordshire in September 2026.
The category was decided at the East of England regional final on 3 June 2026, following the shortlist announced in March. Category winners from each of the ten nations and regions progress to the national final.
What Setora is, and why we built it
Setora is booking and management software for independent UK shops, salons and hair professionals. Owners get a Booking Page for customers, a calendar for the team, customer records, payments, reminders and reporting.
It exists because the tools available to a small shop mostly asked for a cut of the till. Marketplaces take a percentage of what a shop earns and put their own brand between the shop and its customers. The alternative was a spreadsheet, or software built for a different kind of business and adapted afterwards.
Setora does neither. It sits behind the counter rather than between a shop and its customers, and it charges one flat rate whatever a shop books: £39/month per location, before VAT where applicable, with no Setora commission and no per-staff fee. The customer relationship, the customer data and the brand stay with the shop.
Why the recognition matters
Setora was founded in 2026. A first-year company has no track record to point at, which is the hardest part of selling to owners who have been let down by software before. Every claim is the company's own.
An award is not the company's own claim. It is a judged result, decided by people with no stake in Setora. More than 2,100 businesses entered the 2026 awards and more than 900 reached a regional final. For a young product, that outside judgement is worth more than anything written on this website.
Awards do not fill chairs. What a regional win does is put a product like ours in front of owners who would never otherwise hear about it, and that counts for something when you are up against platforms with marketing budgets we do not have.
Every useful thing in Setora came out of a conversation with someone running a shop. The judging panel was looking at a product that owners shaped, so the recognition belongs at least as much to them.
Ben Osborne, Founder, Setora
What happens next
Setora is one of more than 200 regional category winners through to the UK national final, held as part of Ideas Fest at Champneys Tring in Hertfordshire. The festival runs on 9 and 10 September 2026 and the organisers expect more than 6,000 entrepreneurs, founders and business leaders. Every national finalist is a business under three years old.
Nothing about the product changes in the meantime. The work is the same as it was before the shortlist: Booking Pages, staff schedules, customer records, payments, reminders and reports for independent shops and salons. Owners should judge Setora on what it does, what it costs and whether it fits how their business runs. More about the company and the people behind it.
About the UK StartUp Awards
The UK StartUp Awards were founded by Professor Dylan Jones-Evans OBE, who also co-founded the Ideas Community. The programme launched nationally in 2022, following the Wales Start-Up Awards he created in 2016. Entries are judged across ten UK regions, and regional category winners progress to a national final. Full details are published by the organisers at startupawards.uk.