The key to creating the best possible automated employee scheduling system is evaluating your business needs, identifying solutions that are right for you, and getting them implemented.
All appointment scheduling apps have a freemium plan. The idea of a freemium plan is that it helps solopreneurs and small businesses get started with automated appointment scheduling, without worrying about subscription costs. However, not every freemium plan is the same in their capabilities. Businesses should do as much research on them as they do on paid plans.
CalendarHero
Price: Free (Basic), $8/mo (Pro), $12/mo (Team)
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CalendarHero offers all the common meeting scheduler features such as scheduling links and internal group scheduling. However, its advantage is the powerful connections it has with your tech stack and its notification system and smart time settings for meeting buffers so you never run late to another meeting.
Doodle
Price: Free (Basic), $6.95 one user/month (Starter), $44.75 for 5 users/month (Team), contact for enterprise pricing.
Create meeting polls to send to clients and prospects, suggest meeting dates and times, and allow voting on dates that work all with Doodle’s free version. While the free version might be helpful enough for most individuals, you’ll need to upgrade to the premium pricing tier to remove ads from your polls, set a deadline for the poll, and collect contact information from meeting guests.
The paid version of Doodle’s scheduling software helps you find a time to meet that works for all attendees. The meeting host suggests meeting times, invites participants to indicate their availability, then the meeting host picks a final time. When the time is finalized, a calendar event is added to the host and meeting invitees’ calendars. Plus, there’s a dashboard feature where you can manage all the meetings you have.
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.
Calendly
Price: Free (Basic), $8 per user/month (Premium), $12 per user/month (Pro)
The free version of Calendly allows you to connect one calendar, book unlimited meetings, create a custom Calendly link, and send out automatic email notifications and reminders to invitees who book with you.
The paid version of Calendly provides multiple meeting types like one-on-one, round-robin, collective, and group meetings. It’s great for teams and provides team pages, metrics and reporting, and administrative features to manage bookings.
10to8 is an online booking application with a unique instant chat feature. It can be integrated with more than 500 of the most popular apps and programs out there, including Microsoft Office, Google Calendar, Zoom, Slack, Stripe, Paypal, and Xero. Not all of these integrations are available with the 10to8 free plan, but it still earns a place at the top of our free appointment scheduling software list because of its third-party software integration.Read Review
- Excellent for small business
- Live-chat feature
- Software integrations
Taskeo is a free scheduler software with a rich integration library that includes products like CRM, marketing tools, project management tools, and time-tracking and billing apps. The free version enables you to create as many appointment forms as you want. You can design unique forms by using different colors and fonts and adding your company logo. The software is compatible with both iPhone and iPad, allowing you to manage your online bookings wherever you are.Read Review
- Unlimited appointments
- Excellent customer support
- Mobile-friendly platform
Square Appointments is a great example of appointment scheduling software that’s free for single users. It offers access to all of Square’s business management software, including invoicing, CRM, and payment processing, without any charge. The catch is that it’s only free for one user. Multi-user options cost money. This makes the software best suited for solopreneurs.Read Review
- Free package for solopreneurs
- Access to Square’s business management suite
- Excellent mobile app
ScheduleOnce
Price: $0/month (Solo), $9 per user/month (Teams), contact for enterprise pricing.
ScheduleOnce is a comprehensive tool that allows you to create nearly any scheduling scenario you can think of. Everything from group sessions to one-on-one calls, to in-person meetings, can be booked through ScheduleOnce. You can also directly connect ScheduleOnce with your website, email provider, and payment system.
Forget the back-and-forth and choose the meeting scheduler that makes the most sense for your situation. Using scheduling and booking software can save so much time, increasing your productivity on the tasks that actually matter.
EngageBay is so much more than simply appointment booking software. The fact that they offer a whole suite of CRM, outreach and marketing tools is a major benefit to those in need of these additional services as everything is combined in one tool.Read Review
- Unlimited bookings and services across all plans
- Excellent CRM platform
- Integration external calendars available across all plans
For all-in-one online appointment scheduling that’s free, EssentialPIM is just what the doctor ordered. EssentialPIM combines appointment scheduling with a password manager and CRM features. While many basic features are available with the free plan, it is the paid plans that truly unlock this software’s potential.Read Review
- Unlimited bookings and services across all plans
- Excellent CRM platform
- Integration external calendars available across all plans
Yocale is an excellent, all-in-one web-based solution to growing your business, which comes with an integrated automatic online appointment-scheduling feature. This software is entirely free for a limited set of features, such as a lightweight CRM solution, scheduling, and custom booking profile. Of course, those who want to upgrade and boost their organization further can do so with one of the three premium plans.Read Review
- Comprehensive free version
- Fully customizable calendars
- Exceptional Google integration
Setmore
Price: Free
Setmore is a free appointment scheduling and payments platform that allows you to create a public-facing booking page. The free account supports up to 20 staff calendars and logins so your team can begin booking meetings. And you can send automatic appointment notifications to people who book time with you.
Appointlet is a scheduling app for business owners who value unlimited monthly appointments and meeting types but don’t need a dedicated smartphone app. It offers plenty of competitive features in the free plan, but has only a web-based interface.Read Review
- Unlimited monthly bookings available in all plans
- Google and Office 365 calendar integration in all plans
- Automated notifications for booking, cancellations and rescheduling
MeetFox is the best free booking software for managing meetings and appointments online. It has an easy-to-use dashboard that enables you to customize booking options. There are lots of features available with the free version, but the more comprehensive solutions come with its paid models.Read Review
- Great for online video call meetings
- Create customized emails
- Live chat support
HubSpot Meetings Tool
The HubSpot Meetings Tool lets you sync your Google Calendar or Office 365 calendar, set your availability, and have prospects and customers book time with you. Add form fields to your meeting page to capture contact information like name, phone number, email address, and more. The meeting page can be sent as a link in an email or embedded on a website or landing page.
When they book time with you, the time is blocked off on your calendar and a confirmation email is sent to the prospect or client who booked. This simplifies the scheduling process so you can book more meetings in less time. Plus, it integrates directly with the CRM so you can keep track of your contacts and meetings. As prospects schedule meetings, HubSpot automatically creates records for new people.
Appointy is a scheduler app that’s been around since 2009. It offers a lot of useful features in the basic free plan, such as Zapier support for third-party software integration, booking directly from Google Calendar, automatic reminders, and accepting payments through Square.Read Review
- Square Payments integration in the free plan
- Zapier provides thousands of app integration options
- Google bookings and automatic reminders
Arrangr
Price: Free (Basic), $10/month (Pro), $29.99/month (Pro Plus)
Arrangr is an intelligent scheduling platform that allows users to book a meeting in under 30 seconds. In addition to helping users find the best agreed upon time to meet, Arrangr seeks to prevent all meeting miscommunication by letting contacts determine places and ways to meet all within the platform. Bonus: Arrangr is a part of the HubSpot ecosystem, so you can launch and send invitations to contacts from directly within HubSpot.
Rallly
Price: Free
Rallly (with three Ls) is an appointment scheduler with classic polling functionality where the members of your group can vote on the best times for the meeting or event. It also supports chat and messaging within the interface so that meeting attendees can discuss the best time to connect.
Woven
Price: Free (Basic), $15/month (Premium)
Woven allows you to sync all of your calendars to get a complete picture of your availability. Its scheduling features are extensive, including a poller, scheduling links, and availability sharing.
Conclusion
Whether you run a small business and your employees work for you part-time or you’re a large business with multiple branches and departments, scheduling your workforce – that is, the people who work for you – is something that needs to be well managed and coordinated. And you can get started today!