While appointment management is a cost-effective and time-efficient way to generate business, forget the basics and it’s easy to lose your edge. Whether you’re an entry-level or expert appointment scheduler, these seven elements of successful booking software implementation will help you improve your operations and drive revenue.
And the best part is that you don’t have to spend a dime. These services are entirely free for you to use to manage your business and stay in touch with customers.
Drift
Client scheduling and customer scheduling
Drift is the new way that businesses buy from businesses. They are the first conversational sales and marketing platform, with 50,000+ businesses using Drift around the world.
Drift is all about eliminating the barriers between you having 1-on-1 conversations with your best customers. Their chatbots, messaging and email tools are all built around this core commitment. And as you can imagine, going back and forth over email about scheduling is an experience that gets in the way of conversations.
Features
- Profile: Share a link to your Drift profile to give people a direct line to your calendar
- Chat: Talk to your clients and customers the same way that you would text with a friend using the chat function on your profile page
- Chrome extension: Used to track email opens and clicks
- Email sequences: Enable a series of pre-defined outreach emails
- BCC to CRM: Using the bcc feature automatically sends a copy of your emails into your CRM
- Calendar injection: Directly into composed emails or sequences
- Automated meeting facilitation: Reminder emails, rescheduling and cancelation options
- Advanced meeting reporting: Includes not only how many people you schedule with, but their LinkedIn profiles
- More details on the free vs. add-on features at the bottom of their Drift for Sales page
| Target audience | Pricing | Clients |
| Sales and marketing professionals, from very small businesses all the way up to enterprise teams | Free plan available. Paid plans start at $15/year. (See pricing options.) | Zenefits, Toast, MongoDB, AdRoll, Jebbit, Zuora, Vidyard, Rapid7, Onshape, Cybereason, Price Intelligently, Bandwidth |
Calendly
Client scheduling
Calendly helps millions of people schedule meetings without having to deal with back and forth emails. Calendly is a powerful yet simple scheduling tool that helps business professionals save time, control their schedule and delight invitees.
Setup is easy and pain-free, simply provide your availability and preferences and then the software will do the rest for you. Then all you have to do is share your personal link and clients can pick what time from your calendar that works best for them.
Features
- Calendar integrations: Integrate directly with your current calendar for real-time sync of scheduled events
- Customize your schedule: Spend more time on top priorities by preventing last-minute meetings and scheduling conflicts through buffer times, daily limits, secret event types and more.
- Flexible meeting options: Supports one-on-one, round robin, and collective availability meetings
- Time zone intelligent: Timezone detection so everyone’s on the same page
| Target audience | Pricing | Clients |
| People who don’t like sending multiple emails to find a meeting time. A lot of customers are in sales, customer success, recruiting, financial advisement, education, and consulting. | Free plan and trial available. Paid plans start at $10/per user/month. (See pricing options.) | Zillow, Marketo, Shopify, Uber, Zendesk |
vCita
vCita is an all-in-one online scheduling and client management tool. They help small business service providers gain a competitive edge and draw more clients by offering instant online appointment scheduling.
vCita connects to your website, social media, local listings and email marketing, inviting clients to schedule a free consultation, book a service or register for an event.
Clients see your team’s real-time availability as well as a list of the services your business offers and choose a time that works for them. Letting clients book your services online 24/7 means that you never miss a new lead, and you’re always open for business with returning clients.
vCita is actually much more than an online scheduling solution – it’s an all-one business management tool that helps small businesses manage their leads and clients, appointments, payments, invoices and even email marketing – all in one centralized hub.
Whether in the office or on the go, vCita keeps your business competitive and your calendar full.
Features
- A customizable, mobile-friendly scheduling page: For the business to list the offered services (along with the staff’s up-to-date availability) and allow clients to book appointments, schedule services and register for events and classes.
- A personal client portal: Clients can view their complete activity history online – previous appointments, pending payments, shared documents etc.
- Reminders to reduce no-shows: Automated confirmations, reminders and follow-ups are sent to clients via email and SMS, helping reduce no-shows and minimize last-minute cancellations.
- Payments collection: Let clients pay for appointments and services online via credit card or PayPal, create and email invoices, and track your income with a centralized dashboard.
- Client management: A built-in CRM allows you to store client information and share it across your team. You can add private notes, add clients tags to group clients together, and view the client’s history (appointments, payment, documents, interactions) in one place.
- Marketing tools: Get booked by sending announcements and promotions via email campaign and SMS marketing, capture leads on your website with a pop-up widget, fill up your calendar by offering clients discount coupons.
| Target audience | Pricing | Clients |
| Small service-based businesses, like business and marketing consultants, accountants, lawyers, coaches, fitness trainers, educators, etc. | Free trial available. Paid plans start at $12/month. (See pricing options.) | Pearson College, MassMutual, Texas A&M, Northwestern, Cornell University |
ScheduleOnce
Client scheduling
ScheduleOnce is a great solution for powering online scheduling with your customers and prospects. It helps you make more connections with it’s easily integrated scheduling platform.
ScheduleOnce is an end-to-end solution for scheduling with prospects and customers through all phases of the customer lifecycle. The software is robust, yet functional and intuitive. And within in three steps your customers can start adding meetings to your calendar.
It connects with all major calendar platforms and provides feature-rich integrations with your CRM, web conferencing, and other online channels.
Features
- Multiple event types: ScheduleOnce allows you to accurately model your scheduling scenarios by adding event types to your booking pages.
- Pooled availability: Pooled availability is a powerful feature that combines the availability of multiple team members and displays it to customers as a single booking calendar.
- Custom themes: You can fully customize the look and feel of your customer scheduling experience.
- Website integration: All website integration options are brandless, fully integrating with your website without any mention of ScheduleOnce.
| Target audience | Pricing | Clients |
| Everyone, regardless of business type or industry | Free trial available. Paid plans start at $5/user/month. (See pricing options.) | Targetprocess, TopHat, Nexonia, Webgility |
10to8
10to8 Appointment Scheduling Software is trusted by thousands of businesses worldwide, regardless of size or industry. 10to8 Appointment Scheduling Software is an all-in-one online booking and scheduling system that helps business owners rid their calendars of wasted time, reduce admin time and costly appointment no-shows.
Setting up the software is a breeze. You can easily customize the booking page with your own branding, providing customers with a convenient online booking platform. With automated SMS and email reminders, your clients will always be aware of their upcoming appointments, and thanks to the intelligent reporting features, you can spot appointment no-shows before they happen.
Features
- Automated SMS and email reminders: Reduce costly appointment no-shows by up to 90%.
- Flexible availability: Coordinate with multiple staff members in multiple locations and time zones, manage irregular and recurring working hours with ease.
- 1-on-1 and group services: Set up an unlimited number of services, be it one to one or group sessions.
- 2-way calendar sync: Integrate your 10to8 calendar with Google, iCal, Outlook.com, Exchange and Office 365
- 500+ app integrations: Integrate all your favorite apps including email marketing, accounting, social media and CRM
| Target audience | Pricing | Clients |
| Solo beauty professionals, consultants, medium-sized clinics, and even large enterprises | Free plan and trial available. Paid plans start at $9.6/month. (See pricing options.) | Expedia, US Bank, Mercedes-Benz, Yale |
EngageBay
Client scheduling
EngageBay is a simple, affordable, integrated, all-in-one marketing, sales and service automation platform with a free CRM, built to grow small businesses and startups. EngageBay is one of the best CRM for small businesses that helps you grow your business. The marketing automation suite helps you save time, nurture your audience and automate routine, manual tasks.
With the free CRM and sales automation, you can organize all your email contacts, track deals, and the sales pipeline to grow your sales. Further, you can build meaningful customer relationships that stay for life. And finally, with the free live chat and helpdesk features, provide real-time assistance to convert visitors to happy customers. Track, prioritize, and solve customer support tickets in minutes.
Features
- EngageBay allows up to 10 users to gain access to the unified platform absolutely free.
- The software offers a marketing automation platform with features such as lead capture forms, landing pages, email marketing, rich email templates, email broadcasts, and more.
- There is also a sales automation platform that gives you features such as targeted marketing to companies, visual deals pipeline, task management, appointments scheduler, unlimited mailboxes (2-way sync), and more.
- A service automation software is also available with features such as ticket views, help desk, SLAs, macros, unlimited groups, canned responses, and more.
- The CRM also has features such as simple contact management, telephony, automated tasks and appointment scheduling, lead nurturing, CRM analytics, sales gamification, custom reports, and more.
- The entire platform is cloud-based and the learning curve for users is very low, with absolutely no technical help required.
- Bulk email and instant message sharing options to help you save time.
| Target audience | Pricing | Clients |
| B2B, startups, small businesses, solopreneurs, medium-sized businesses | Free trial available. Paid plans start at $8.99/month. (See pricing options.) | Small- and mid-sized businesses to agencies |
FieldVibe
FieldVibe is a scheduling app for field service professionals. It helps small HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Cleaning, Lawn Care, Handyman, Appliance Repair, and other field services businesses schedule, dispatch, and manage their entire field operation from a single app.
Features
FieldVibe allows you to schedule, dispatch and track your jobs and field staff, offering real-time GPS tracking, time tracking, job creation, job calendar, notes and photo attachments, task lists, and time and revenue reporting.
Key marketing features include automated SMS reminders and typing-free late-to-job texts. They also provide different educational materials on their blog
| Target audience | Pricing | Clients |
| Service-type businesses, including HVAC, electrical, lawn, plumbing, cleaning, handyman, and pest control | Free plan available. Paid plans start at $19/user/month. (See pricing options.) | Small- and mid-sized businesses, and solopreneurs |
Conclusion
Having the right tool to run your business can save you a lot of time and money. One of the most efficient ways of saving money is by eliminating all the back-end clerical tasks associated with your business. Most of these tasks can be replaced by automating different functions with targeted business solutions. These solutions bring together various tools and make them available to you from a single location, making it easier for you to reach your business goals in a fast and cheap manner.