Starting a new business, going back to school after a decade, or planning a vacation can be daunting tasks. With so many things to organize, managing your personal calendar planning can be almost impossible. You may already have an online calendar set up but is it giving you the facilities you need? Perhaps you are working on more than one project at one time which means you need to look far and wide for ideas to help keep control of your diary. A good personal desktop calendar planner will help you stay organized with your schedule and ensure that nothing slips through the net!
Zoho Bookings
Zoho Bookings is the online scheduler created to streamline the entire booking and appointment process. It syncs your calendars while letting customers self-schedule and pay for appointments. You can bid goodbye to double booking, no-shows, endless emails, and delayed payments.
Acuity Scheduling was founded in 2012 by Gavin Zuchlinski. Acuity targets businesses from the health and wellness industry. They support their customers via email and through Acuity Certified Experts.
Appointlet was founded by Jared Moses in 2012. Appointlet tries to help business turn more prospects into leads by reducing the email ping pong associated with appointment scheduling.
Appointy was founded by Nemesh Singh in 2006. They’re from Bhopal, India, and have most of their workforce there. They target businesses in the service industry. Appointy has Square payment and Reserve with Google in their free plan.
Calendly helps you schedule meetings without the back-and-forth emails. It’s founded by Tope Awotona in 2013. They’ve been targetting teams in sales, recruiting, and the education industry.
Setmore started in 2011 as an offshoot of parent company Full Creative, seeking an online scheduling solution to address our customers’ need for an online scheduling solution. Bryce Morrow is the CEO of Setmore.
SimplyBook.me appointment scheduling software was created in 2011 by Ingvar Gudmundsson. The company headquarters are now in Cyprus, with three external offices—two in Ukraine and one in Iceland. SimplyBookMe primarily targets businesses in the health and wellness industry.
Acuity
Professional services, especially in the medical field
PROS
- Unlimited Bookings
- HIPAA compliant-ready
- Intuitive interface
CONS
- Most features require a paid plan
- One user only
Overall Score3.03OUT OF5
| RATING CRITERIA | FREE PLAN LIMITATIONS | 2 | OUT OF | 5 |
| APOINTMENT BOOKING TOOLS | 3.75 | OUT OF | 5 | |
| BACK OFFICE FEATURES | 2.75 | OUT OF | 5 | |
| EXPERT SCORE | 3.75 | OUT OF | 5 |
Acuity is a good-looking and smooth platform both for visitors booking appointments and users managing them on the back-end. It’s loaded with handy features, including custom intake questionnaires that are useful for medical practices and other businesses that need detailed information from clients before confirming appointments. It’s also designed to be HIPAA compliant.
As a top-shelf program, however, Acuity does not give away much. The free version is quite limited compared to the other programs, and thus it loses points as a free scheduling program. It earned a 3.03 out of 5 in our evaluation. However, the paid versions are worth exploring if you have specific needs, such as clients who need payment plans.
Acuity Pricing
- Free: Book an unlimited number of appointments with intake forms, but there are no automatic reminders, payments, or calendar syncs. Acuity branding. One user
- Emerging ($14 per month): Advanced features including calendar sync, saving credit cards, tips, video meetings, follow-up emails. Acuity branding. One user
- Growing ($23 per month): All the above features plus text reminders, appointment packages, subscription, and custom branding. Up to six users
- Powerhouse ($45 per month): Adds gift certificate management, custom CSS, API support, and Sign BAA for HIPAA-compliance. Up to 36 users
Acuity Features
- Simple booking with an attractive, minimalist booking page that can also be embedded on your website.
- Create custom questionnaires with text fields, drop-down lists, yes/no buttons, and more.
- Unlimited bookings and services with the free plan.
- Paid plans offer excellent features for the medical and professional field, including
- Appointment packages with payment plans
- Subscriptions, memberships, gift certificates
- Customizations
- HIPPA Compliance
- Integrations with video chat software, calendars, CRM and email marketing, QuickBooks, and more
Calendar
Calendar is a tool that combines all of your scheduling and appointment needs in one user-friendly interface. Calendar has a unified dashboard that integrates with all popular calendar services including Google, Microsoft, and Apple.
The Calendar dashboard displays what your day has in store. You can quickly create meetings and edit scheduled events with ease. Its analytic tools offer insight into how you and your team are spending your time, allowing you to adapt and be as time-efficient as possible.
This app can answer all of your scheduling needs by creating smart links that automatically assess your availability across all of the different calendars you have synced to the dashboard. This feature ensures that you never get double-booked. It allows your meeting participants to select and click a link and book a time that works for both parties.
Calendar also has scheduling tools for creating the different types of links you might want, including group meetings, one-on-one discussions, or training sessions that require multiple attendees to sign up for the same time.
Square
Square is one of the most popular free services. Square is not just a scheduling service. You can run a business through this service, too as it allows you to take payments and keep track of your clients.
If you are a personal trainer, a coach, teacher, hairdresser or any other business that requires your customers and clients to schedule appointments with you, then Square is a great option to go with.
Square integrates with Google Calendar and has a mobile app for both iOS and Android to manage your appointments wherever you are.
Bookafy
Bookafy is another free service that has a lot of power under the hood. You can schedule unlimited appointments and types. Appointment types could be the length of the appointment (30 mins, 60 mins etc.) or, if you are a beautician, the type of service being booked.
Bookafy’s website is beautiful, which is an important consideration for your own business branding. It is intuitive for your clients and makes the whole scheduling experience a joy.
You can make sure your customer or colleagues receive all the meeting login details when they schedule the call, and you can also accept payments from your clients through the Bookafy interface.
Conclusion
The time you spend organizing your life can save you valuable minutes, hours, days and years. While the Internet offers some great tools for planners, it does not offer the personal touch. Using an online calendar is virtual, virtual reality.