This is a world that wants to know that things are going to be organized, and there is a peace of mind in knowing that you can get what you really need. In today’s world, it takes but a few taps on the phone or clicking on a link on your desktop or laptop before you can find what you want. The information age has been amazing. It has been one of the fastest growing periods ever in history.
Will you be selling, renting, or leasing the real estate? Boy there are a lot of ways to make money! I bet you’re thinking if you’re looking for business plan writers it’s because you want to know which one suits your needs the most. Well the answer is none of them. If that was true, then someone would just buy all three and be set for life. Your decision really depends on what you want to do with the property after your business turns off.
Calendly: Best for Scheduling Meetings
Overall Score: 3.76 OUT OF 5 i
- Easy to use
- Integrates with video software
- Automatic email reminders on all plans
- Book multiple people to one meeting
- Unlimited appointments
- Text reminders only available in the highest plans
- App can be laggy
- No phone support
Calendly Key Features
- Monthly fees: $0 to $12
- Available on: iOS, Android, and browser
- Supported calendars: Google Calendar, iCloud, and Microsoft 365
- Supported payments: Stripe and PayPal
- Apple App Store rating: 3.9/5
- Google Play Store rating: 3.9/5
Calendly is likely the best-known meeting scheduling app. It offers four different plans, including a free one that gives you a lot of features and really only limits you in working with teams or multiple calendars. If you want to add more than one calendar for scheduling purposes, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan. However, Calendly’s paid plans are some of the most affordable on this list.
In our evaluation, Calendly earned a 3.76 out of 5. The app makes it easy for you to send a scheduling link to someone via email or text—then they can choose the time and date that works best for them through your booking site. One of the standout features of Calendly is the ability to create multiple meeting types. It’s helpful for tutors, hiring teams, work meetings, and consultants, for example, who need to offer 30-minute or 60-minute video or in-person meetings.
What Calendly Is Missing
Calendly is simple to use yet feature-rich, which is why it makes our list. We did notice the app loaded slowly at times and seemed to lag here and there. Acuity and Square both have higher user review ratings, offer unlimited appointments, and automated reminders.
Quickbooks Simple Start
Best for: Simple, affordable bookkeeping that works for almost all hair and beauty professionals.
Says Michelle, “I just think they’re awesome. I generally recommend the Simple Start version online to my clients.”
Free IRS Tax Software
Best for: Anyone who makes less than $72,000 per year.
“A lot of people don’t know this, but the IRS has free software out there to file your tax return. If you make less than $72,000 a year (and when I say ‘make,’ I mean your profit, not your sales), then there are free options for you,” says Lando.
HoneyBook
Price: $9/ month (Starter), $34/month (Unlimited), $390/year (Unlimited Annual)
HoneyBook allows you to manage bookings throughout the entire sales process. You can book initial meetings with prospects and even send proposals, contracts, and invoices when they’re ready. It helps you manage your clients and HoneyBook integrates with other tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, and more.
20. Bookeo Appointments
Price: $14.95 per user/month (Solo), $29.95 per user/month (Small), $39.95 per user /month (Standard), $79.95 per user/month (Large)
If you’re looking for a tool that provides appointment setting and advanced tracking for how your meeting contacts move through the sales pipeline, Bookeo Appointments is the tool for you. This platform automatically updates your schedule in real-time for optimal booking and integrates directly with HubSpot to keep your contact list up-to-date based on booking reservations.
GenBook
Price: $25/month for 1 user, $49/month for 2 – 5 users, $83/month for 6 – 12 users
For small businesses that need to schedule several meetings and manage multiple calendars, GenBook offers an affordable scheduling app and booking solution. This app is great for small to medium size businesses looking to consolidate customer reviews, client management, and payments all from one app.
Setmore: Best for Teams With Multiple Staff Members or Needing to Book Classes
Overall Score: 4.14 OUT OF 5 i
- Free plan available with up to 4 staff members
- Unlimited appointments on all plans
- Custom booking site for all plans
- Integrates with social media, video software, CRMs
- Automatic appointment reminders only with a paid plan
- No intake forms
Setmore Key Features
- Monthly fees: $0 to $9 (per user)
- Available on: iOS, Android, and browser
- Supported calendars: Google and Microsoft 365
- Supported payments: Square, Stripe, and PayPal
- Apple App Store rating: 4.7/5
- Google Play Store rating: 4.4/5
Setmore is a popular appointment scheduling app for many types of small businesses, but its most notable feature is that it allows for up to four team members and unlimited appointments in the free plan. Most other apps, including Square, limit you to one team member in the free plan.
Setmore earned a 4.14 in our evaluation. It offers multiple types of appointment booking, including classes and one-click video calls. It also integrates with software like Salesforce and Zoom, so it’s great for software companies; and it offers unlimited appointments for all plans (unlike SimplyBook.me, which also offers a free plan but is capped at 50 monthly appointments).
What Setmore Is Missing
Setmore is lacking a couple of integrations, such as iCloud Calendar. Plus, unlike SimplyBook.me, Booker, and Acuity, there are no intake forms, so you can’t easily gather the info you need on clients unless you do it through another platform and then apply the info to your client list in Setmore (or your CRM). Setmore is easy to use, though, and fairly affordable for small teams. Like SimplyBook.me, Setmore includes social media integrations, so customers can book right from your Facebook or Instagram page.
SimplyBook.me
SimplyBook.me makes appointment management easy and hassle-free. It offers a standalone booking website, your personal booking management app, and booking widgets to add to your website.
Thanks to integrations with apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Google My Business, you can accept bookings via multiple channels. To make sure you don’t miss an appointment, SimplyBook.me sends notifications for bookings, rescheduling, cancellations, and reminders.
Other features include coupons and gift cards, a waiting list, customizable emails, and templates. SimplyBook.me is a great option for freelancers who work with international clients as it supports multiple language and payments options. It has four subscription plans, including a free one.
Download: SimplyBook.me for Android | iOS (Free)
Picktime
Picktime offers a simplified appointment scheduling experience, both for you and your invitees. It’s completely free software for managing bookings, receiving payments, invoicing, and reporting.
After you create your booking page and rules, your clients can visit the page and schedule appointments anytime they want. You can sync all your calendars to avoid clashes. Integration with payment processors allows you to request a partial deposit or full payment in advance.
For online meetings, you can set up meetings in Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams right from within the app. Moreover, it also allows bookings for classes and memberships.
Besides reminders and time zone conversion, it provides insightful reports and graphs to give you an overview of your schedule and revenues. Best of all, you can visit the help pages to see exactly how Picktime can help different people and businesses. At the moment, Picktime is completely free, but may get paid plans and add-on soon.
Digit
Best for: Anyone who struggles with setting aside personal savings.
This recommendation comes from our Head of Content, Kit Warchol, who’s been using Digit for years. “You hook up your bank account to the app, and it pilfers a few dollars here and there when it knows you won’t miss them,” says Kit, “I’ve used it to save up for new furniture, for a vacation, and I’ve even used it to pay off credit card debt — there’s a setting for that.”
And don’t worry, Digit has an overdraft guarantee — it won’t take money when you don’t have any, and it will pay for an overdraft if it somehow does manage to cause one.
Booker: Best High-End, All-in-One Appointment Booking for Salons and Spas
Overall Score: 3.74 OUT OF 5 i
- Feature-rich
- Includes POS, client management, and reporting
- Intake forms available
- Marketing tools included
- Expensive scheduler
- Lowest-priced plan very limited
- No free plan or trial
- Apps seem to have frequent glitches
Booker Key Features
- Monthly fees: $129 to $549
- Available on: iOS, Android, and browser
- Supported calendars: Outlook and iCloud calendar
- Supported payments: Mindbody, TSYS, Elavon
- Apple App Store rating: 4/5
- Google Play Store rating: 3.2/5
Booker is a bit of an anomaly among the other best appointment scheduling apps. It’s more of an all-in-one salon or spa suite of apps that happens to include booking, which could be because Mindbody (the all-in-one solution) acquired Booker for scheduling in 2018. If you’re willing to pay the steep price, it could be great for a full-service salon or spa that requires management of multiple staff members, appointment types, and clients.
In our evaluation, Booker earned a 3.74 out of 5. From what we can tell, the Booker app seems to work better on iOS than Android. It’s helpful that you can manage your calendar, take payments, and apply discounts directly from the mobile apps.
There are few integrations for Booker available, so it isn’t quite as useful as other appointment schedulers that work well for salons and spas, like Setmore. Also, you have to commit to at least one year with the app, which is a lot of money upfront for something that may not work for you (and no free trial to test it out before signing on the dotted line).
Acuity Scheduling (Android, iOS, Web)
Now a part of Squarespace, Acuity Scheduling is the appointment scheduling app to choose when you need to customize your booking process to a fine degree. When you design your booking page, you can allow your clients to choose recurring appointments, if it’s applicable, complete an intake form, and pay in advance for services. You can also offer coupons and give clients the ability to add on services when they book, such as adding a 15-minute foot massage to a pedicure.
On the backend, the level of detail for customization continues. You can choose to let clients reschedule or cancel their appointments—or not. You can change the interval for start times of appointments, which is by default every 15 minutes. You can put a limit on how far in advance or with how much short notice clients can book an appointment. And you can even enable an option called “Make me look busy,” which automatically hides some available times so you don’t seem desperate.
When you’re ready to make your booking page live, you can share it via a direct link, embed it into your website using a few different options (including an easy embed option for Squarespace sites), or create a booking button, booking bar, or QR code. Acuity also has mobile apps to access your account from the business side, letting you update your availability from an Android or iOS device, and a client app for mobile booking.
In addition to offering so much customization, Acuity Scheduling is easy to use. It goes a long way toward making your business run smoother. You can even integrate Acuity Scheduling with Zapier, which lets you connect Acuity to other business tools you use. Here are some examples of how you can automate your scheduling-related tasks.Create Salesforce tasks from new Acuity Scheduling appointmentsUse this ZapCreate Mailchimp subscribers from new Acuity Scheduling appointmentsUse this ZapSee more Acuity Scheduling integrations powered by
Supported Payment Systems: PayPal, Square, or Stripe; with additional options to use two services: Stripe and PayPal or Square and PayPal
Supported Calendars: Google Calendar, iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Outlook.com; with the option to choose between 2-way and 1-way syncing
Acuity Scheduling Pricing: Paid plans from $14/month for 1 staff member and location, payment processing features, and more
Conclusion
There are two ways to go about booking appointments online: you can go for a simple solution like Doodle, which doesn’t include numerous extra features, or you can try something more advanced, like Acuity Scheduling. The former is better for small and mid-sized businesses, the latter – for the ones that already have a lot of appointments and require a detailed system of looking after them.