Software for Scheduling Appointments

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What is Appointment Scheduling Software?

Appointment Scheduling software allows businesses and professionals to book appointments through an online calendar. Also known as appointment booking software, or online booking software, appointment scheduling is offered as a marketing tool for small businesses. Scheduling software is designed to bridge call-to-actions in ads or on landing pages to real booked appointments.

Advanced appointment scheduling software includes more than an online calendar. They may scale to include backend automation (e.g. inventory management, workforce management), or front desk tools (e.g. Point of Sale). Alternately, some very small and sometimes free appointment scheduling tools are built around simple convenience. Free calendar tools supply a simple means for a customer to book a one-on-one appointment fast. Free online calendars may be preferred by solo practitioners and individual professionals.

Many appointment scheduling tools, even the free ones, integrate with web and video conferencing software. This allows the user to allow clients or other individuals to schedule video conferencing meetings with them.

Features of Appointment Scheduling Software

Online appointment scheduling tools provide the following features:

  • Integration with popular calendar tools (e.g. Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.)
  • Booking button on website or email linked to calendar
  • Calendar may manage multiple locations, rooms, and employees
  • Book one-on-one meetings and group meetings
  • Workforce job assignment rules (e.g. Round Robin)
  • Suggest a time to customers based on availability & their needs
  • Request & input customer information (e.g. email, phone number, etc.)
  • Time zone detection
  • Appointment reminders (e.g. SMS or email)
  • Customizable appointment calendar and notifications
  • Subscription or membership scheduling and booking/sales
  • Ability to book multiple or repeating events
  • Mobile booking app
  • Social media site booking (e.g. Facebook)
  • Integrated Point-of-Sale (PoS) and payment processing
  • Marketing or ad tech integration to connect ads to an online calendar

Appointment Scheduling Software Comparison

Before deciding to invest in an appointment scheduling software solution, consider the following key factors:

  1. Scope: Are you a freelancer or individual practitioner looking for a free online scheduling tool? Or do you need a more robust appointment booking system for your whole business to use? Certain tools cater more to individual users or small teams that only need basic functionality, while others work better for larger organizations that require workflow automation and other additional features.
  2. UI design: Is the user interface of the tools you’re considering easy to use and navigate? Some tools may have a more modern or professional-looking design. This can help add an extra element of professionalism to your business if potential clients will be booking meeting times with you through the tool.
  3. Value for cost: Many appointment scheduling software products have a free version you can use. But the functionality and limitations of the free versions may vary. For example, some free versions limit the number of meetings you can book per month, or limit the duration or type of meetings you can schedule. If you’re planning on using a free tool, compare the pros and cons of the free version of a few different products.

Pricing Information

Online appointment scheduling software is cloud-based and available via subscription. Free plans supporting a limited number of event types are available. Vendors offer plans that can vary from $8 to $400.

Lower-priced plans focus on providing calendar features while higher-priced plans may offer integrated marketing automation, PoS, and workforce management features. To that extent, higher price tiers may represent a total small business solution for appointment-driven businesses such as clinics or spas. Most vendors offer discounts for annual or multi-year subscriptions.

Free Scheduling Apps

1. HubSpot Meetings Tool

Price: Free

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.

2. Calendar

Price: Free for one calendar (Basic), $6/month for three calendars (Standard), $8/month for 10 calendars (Pro)Calendar Meeting App Example of Analytics

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Calendar is an AI-enabled digital calendar, scheduling, and time management solution for individuals and teams. It brings together your Google Calendar, iCal (Apple Calendar), and Outlook Calendar into one dashboard view that you can customize and share. The digital calendar syncs across devices as well as offers a virtual assistant that can learn your schedule and begin taking over meeting planning, invitations, and scheduling changes. The paid versions also add meeting transcriptions and a wide range of analytics so you can see how you spend your time in meetings and with people.

3. Setmore

Price: Free

Setmore scheduling software homepage featuring photos of people smiling and a sample of the app interface

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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.

4. SimplyBook

Price: Free, $9.90/month (Basic), $29.90/month (Standard), and $59.90/month (Premium)

SimplyBook scheduling app home page featuring Google maps, charts, and graphs

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SimplyBook is an online booking system specifically designed for service-based companies. You can integrate SimplyBook with your existing website, or you can create a custom booking page within the platform. They also have social media integrations that allow you to accept bookings directly from Facebook and Instagram.

5. Square Appointments

Price: Free for individuals, $50 + 2.5% + $0.10/month for 3-5 calendars, $90 + 2.5% + $0.10/month for teams of 6-10 calendars, contact for pricing of 11 or more calendars.

Square apointment scheduling app with an image of a woman sitting in a chair drinking a cup of coffee

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If you’re looking for a flexible booking and payment platform, Square Appointments is worth your consideration. Through Square Appointments, you can set up a free customer booking website, activate automated text and email reminders, charge cancellation fees for no-shows, and accept integrated payments from within one platform.

6. Appointlet

Price: Free, $8/month (Premium)

Appointlet scheduling app homepage showing a view of a calendar

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This appointment booking software allows salespeople to customize their availability, create booking pages, and send them to prospects and customers. The booking page can integrate into your website, landing pages, and emails. While Appointlet does offer a paid pricing tier, the free version is free forever. It includes unlimited bookings, meeting types, and form fields.

7. Doodle

Price: Free (Basic), $6.95 one user/month (Starter), $44.75 for 5 users/month (Team), contact for enterprise pricing.

Doodle scheduling app homepage featuring animated characters managing time and meetings

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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.

8. Calendly

Price: Free (Basic), $8 per user/month (Premium), $12 per user/month (Pro)

Calendly scheduling app homepage featuring line art with two animated figures communicating via email

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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. In addition, there are plenty of Calendly alternatives you can try and test out depending on your use case.

Conclusions

Video editing is not just for professionals anymore! Consistent, steady growth in smartphones and tablet usage has created a new medium- video. People are increasingly able to record video with their phones and tablets, but they don’t know how to effectively edit videos on their devices or turn these videos into polished products. Though Video Editing was once reserved for the most avid of filmmakers, free tools that provide simple but powerful video editing capabilities are becoming more common.

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