The best appointment scheduling and booking software in 2021

Customers can book appointments electronically through online appointment scheduling software, and companies can monitor and manage those appointments. Businesses can use this program to schedule meetings, display calendamakers’nt schedules, and forms, configure schedules, and implement scheduling rules.

Additional features can include: 

• Built-in.
• Automated emails, reminders, follow-ups, cancellations, rescheduling, etc.
• Notifications.
• Online payment for services.
• Custom profiles.
• Calendar integrations. 

Health and fitness practitioners, salon and beauty professionals, skilled service providers, and medical professionals are among those who use these resources. Content management systems, website designers, email applications, and calendar software, among other things, can all be integrated with online scheduling software.

To qualify for inclusion in the Online Appointment Scheduling category, a product must:

• Have a scheduler that administrators and multiple users can access, monitor, and edit.
• Allow users to choose from a variety of calendar views.
• Compile a list of appointment makers’ contact details.
• Customers should be notified of their appointments.

What makes a great appointment or booking app?

Clients get more than just a list of available times for an appointment, care, or service when they use booking apps. They also allow your customers to reschedule and cancel appointments without having to contact you. They also make it simple for business owners and managers to do their jobs by allowing you to streamline communication, centralize payments, and manage your employees.

Here’s what you should expect from the very best appointment scheduling apps:

Flexibility: Your company is one-of-a-kind. The best appointment scheduling applications are aware that different types of businesses have distinct requirements. As a result, they give you a lot of control over how your bookings are handled. A community workshop that leases gardening equipment should provide a different booking experience than a small gym that offers one-on-one training sessions. Do you want your customers to be able to choose services from a menu? Should they be able to choose their appointment place, such as for services provided at their home? These features can be customized in the best appointment scheduling software.

Calendar syncing: Almost all appointment scheduling apps allow you to sync your schedule with your calendar. Some still insist on it. You’ll be able to see your business’s planned appointments, as well as other crucial details including when you’ll be closed for holidays or repairs.

Payment processing: You can receive payment at the time of booking with the best appointment scheduling software. You’ll be able to take a deposit for an appointment or make clients pay for their services upfront in this manner. Your company isn’t doomed if a customer fails to turn up.

Multiple points of access: How can your clients use your appointment scheduling service once you’ve set it up? The best applications provide you with a variety of choices. To show the appointment scheduler, you’ll probably want to add some code to your website, but you may prefer a custom URL that contains all of the booking resources in one location. Perhaps you just have a Facebook business page and no other online presence. You’ll want to be able to incorporate the booking tools on Facebook in that situation. In either case, the more choices you have, the better.

Meeting schedulers: Finally, stop conflating appointment schedulers with meeting scheduling software when selecting the right appointment schedulers. Appointment apps and meeting schedulers have some parallels. Meeting apps are designed specifically for meetings, while appointment scheduling apps are designed for a range of appointment forms that may or may not include a menu of services, but almost always require payment at the conclusion.

10 Best Appointment Scheduling Software for Businesses in 2021

When looking for the best appointment scheduling program, the one that’s just right for your business, there’s a lot to think about. At a minimum, your online scheduling platform should be able to do more than just book appointments.

If you’re going to spend the time and money to integrate a system, you want a scheduling app that blends into your daily routine and adds value in several places, not just one.

Whatever functions you need from your scheduler, you want one that goes above and beyond almost the entire time.

Acuity Scheduling

About Acuity Scheduling

It’s a cloud-based appointment scheduling program that allows business owners to schedule appointments from anywhere in the world. Acuity Scheduling meets the needs of small and mid-sized businesses, as well as individual business practitioners, by providing an easy-to-use and user-friendly software that allows for real-time scheduling. Great calendar coordination, real-time appointment booking, automatic calendar sync according to users’ time zones, and the ability to give users daily updates and reminders about their appointment schedules are just a few of the highlights.

Your Acuity scheduler can be integrated into your website, social media accounts, and marketing emails. Not just for you, but also for your customers, Acuity is intuitive. Aside from saving time, the simplicity with which you will schedule appointments can give you a competitive advantage.

Acuity Features 

Recurring Appointments, Automated Scheduling, Calendar Sync, Client Database, Group Scheduling, Mobile Access, Multi-Location, Online Booking, Online Payments, Room Booking Management.

Review: “The 2-way sync, timezone conversion, multiple appointment booking, multiple calendars/users, customization settings, and billing integration (to name a few) are all amazing features of this product that others simply lack. The superhuman support they provide continues to prove a happy and unexpected bonus.” – Jared Matthew Weiss

Specification Table

Vendor	Acuity Scheduling
Country	United States
Company Size	11 – 50
Founded	2006
Price	$15.00/month
Free Trial	Yes

Calendly

About Calendly 

Calendly is a powerful but simple automated appointment scheduling program that helps businesses save time, increase revenue, and enhance service quality. It can be used for both small and large businesses. For a smooth user experience, it integrates with Office 365, Google, and Outlook calendars, as well as applications like Salesforce and Zapier, as well as Stripe. It allows consumers to book or reserve their requirements from any remote location, allowing companies to be more versatile.

Calendly is a meeting scheduling program that saves you time by removing some of the most inconvenient aspects of scheduling, such as navigating availability and time zones. It works with your calendars as well as several other common business applications.

Calendly links are simple to include in marketing campaigns and on your website. Set meeting preferences, choose from a variety of meeting styles, submit email and SMS reminders, and collaborate with your colleagues.

Calendly Features

Appointment Reminders, Automated Scheduling, Group Scheduling, Online Booking, Online Payments

Review: “I honestly recommend Calendly to anyone who meets with external parties. This is one of those small things, that you had no idea existed, but once you start using it you never want to go back. It really can save you a lot of time and facilitate arranging meetings.” – Piotr B.

Specification Table

Vendor	Calendly
Country	United States
Company Size	51 – 200
Founded	2013
Price	$8.00/month/user
Free Trial	Yes

Appointlet

About Appointlet 

Appointlet is a competent online appointment scheduler. With a simple booking page that everyone can use, we help businesses book meetings more efficiently. Simply add your calendar, set your meeting availability, and tell the app what services you’re booking. The rest will be handled by our tools. We support online conferencing, payment collection, and Zapier for connecting to third-party applications, allowing you to send booking information to places like a mailing list or CRM. We offer live chat with fast answer times, unlike our rivals, so if you have any questions about how to use the app or get started, we’ll be happy to help!

Appointlet is a cloud-based scheduling system that integrates with other apps to make operations for almost any form of a company run more smoothly and seamless customer bookings.

Its streamlined functionality will help human resources professionals, office managers, business owners, and others. Customize intake questions to collect required data, communicate with existing systems to automate workflows, allow customers to book appointments themselves, minimize missed appointments with automatic reminders, and much more.

Appointlet Appointment Scheduling Features 

Appointment Reminders, Automated Scheduling, Calendar Sync, Multi-Location, Online Booking, Online Payments, Room Booking Management

Review: “Appointlet was a game-changer for us: it made our appointment scheduling scalable. The automatic email reminder feature almost doubled our conversion rate.” – François Raynaud de Fitte

Specification Table

Vendor	Appointlet
Country	United States
Company Size	02 – 10
Founded	2012
Price	$8.00/month/user
Free Trial	Yes

Appointy

About Appointy

Appointy is an all-in-one cloud-based scheduling platform that allows users to control their clients and market their services by word-of-mouth. This software is used by top organizations such as Google, The New York Times, and others for a variety of service-related processes. It helps customers to make online payments and repayments by accepting online appointments, sending automatic email/ SMS updates, and integrating with social media and Google Calendar. It saves real-time data and displays it on a single dashboard for users’ convenience.

Appointy is an online appointment scheduling program that allows users to arrange appointments (of course), lectures, seminars, meetings, tours, rides, and activities Appointy allows your clients to schedule whatever services they have. Appointy also offers a large number of customization options, which develop with each plan.

Appointy Features

Appointment Reminders, Automated Scheduling, Calendar Sync, Group Scheduling, Multi-Location, Online Booking, Online Payments, Recurring Appointments, Room Booking Management

Review: “Appointy is a great scheduling software for managing a business. I like the reminders. Also, the software is user-friendly. There is nothing negative about this software at all. Amazing and useful software.” – Emeka O

Specification Table

Vendor	Appointy
Country	United States
Company Size	11 – 50
Founded	2008
Price	$19.99/month/user
Free Trial	Yes

10to8

About 10to8

10to8 is a cloud-based appointment scheduling platform that allows small companies, large corporations, and independent practitioners to handle client reservations, bookings, and schedule coordination for each customer. Companies that have used this program have rated it as a useful tool for increasing bookings and reducing administrative time. Customers can book, alter, and cancel their reservations using a single user interface that also displays client conversations in the calendar and allows remote access through mobile apps.

Clients schedule their appointments online after you’ve set your availability and preferences. Following that, 10to8 assists with clarification, reminders, keeping track of client records, and following up on customer review requests.

You should provide a link to your 10to8 scheduling page on your website and in emails and social media. You can easily configure the scheduler to match your brand with a variety of branding options.

10to8 Features

Appointment Reminders, Automated Scheduling, Calendar Sync, Group Scheduling, Multi-Location, Online Booking, Online Payments, Recurring Appointments, Room Booking Management

Review: With the ability to see an immediate history of all interactions with your client, the synchronization with external calendars & the Zapier integrations, I am thrilled I kept testing other programs until I found 10to8. I Love it!” – Paul Colaianni

Specification Table

Vendor	10to8
Country	United Kingdom
Company Size	11 – 50
Founded	2011
Price	Free
Free Trial	Yes

SimplyBook.me

About SimplyBook.me

SimplyBook. It is dynamic cloud-based booking software that enables service providers to accept customer bookings and reservations. It also has a mobile-friendly booking site. It is a completely customizable and user-friendly solution for travel and reservation businesses. It can be used by small, medium, and even large businesses. This app is one of the most trusted software since it has several automated functions such as sending SMS or emails to customers upon booking and canceling via a post.

Simplybook. I fits well into small and medium-sized companies, increasing customer loyalty, returns, and engagement with minimal effort on the part of the administrator.

It syncs with email, social media, and personal calendars to ensure that meetings aren’t overlapping. Bookings can be made across a variety of websites, and you can also build discounts and promotions to send to a client list to increase return rates.

Simplybook. I can ping customers to remind them of upcoming appointments using auto-reminder capabilities to reduce missed bookings.

Plus, you can collect deposits upfront if you choose, which helps make sure clients show up to appointments.

SimplyBook.me Features

Appointment Reminders, Automated Scheduling, Calendar Sync, Client Database, Group Scheduling, Mobile Access, Multi-Location, Online Booking, Online Payments, Recurring Appointments, Room Booking Management

Review: “SimplyBook.me has reduced our monthly costs, increased our number of online bookings, and has helped us better communicate to our patients by customizing the email and notification preferences to suit our needs,” states Jared. SimplyBook. I made it super easy for our patients to book appointments..” – Dr. Mitchell J. Mandel

Specification Table

Vendor	SimplyBook.me
Country	Iceland
Company Size	11 – 50
Founded	2001
Price	$10.00/month
Free Trial	Yes

Setmore

About Setmore 

Setmore provides you with a free online scheduling tool to communicate with your customers. Manage all of your appointments in one easy-to-use calendar system and allow your company the freedom to expand. Showcase your selection, facilities, and pricing online, and accept appointments 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With automatic booking notifications, the customers are kept informed. You’ll also get real-time updates on your laptop, tablet, iOS, and Android devices.

Setmore is a small-to-medium-sized company appointment scheduling program. It enables you to optimize and simplify appointment scheduling, personnel scheduling, reminders, and client details, and relationship management.

A free, customizable booking page is included with every Setmore account and can be used as a standalone website. You may also incorporate the booking page into your website and publicize your exclusive URL on social media, in newsletters, and printed materials.

Clients self-book appointments, programs, or classes after you set your availability and scheduling rules and preferences. Both clients and employees can receive automated email confirmations and updates, and Premium users can also receive text reminders.

Setmore Features

Appointment Reminders, Automated Scheduling, Calendar Sync, Group Scheduling, Online Booking, Online Payments, Recurring Appointments

Review: “I recommended this at my workplace to be used for booking different healthcare services. So far it worked wonders. We didn’t have double bookings (unless deliberately done so lol), we didn’t have clashing appointments. And best of all we save a whole lot on diaries and pens. Perfect product.” – Clarisse C.

Specification Table

Vendor	Setmore
Country	United States
Company Size	51 – 200
Founded	2011
Price	From $0.00 – $12.00
Free Trial	Yes

SuperSaaS

About SuperSaaS

SupperSaaS, as an online booking app, allows companies, large and small, to accept online reservations from any online device at any time, with versatile and customized software that works with any form of scheduling need. It is easy to use and has a user-friendly GUI. Reservations can be made via the Facebook page, the official website, or even the Instagram page. It deals with all major payment gateways, accepts all currencies, and is available in 29 languages.

SuperSaaS is one of the best online appointment scheduling services available. Our platform is inexpensive, extremely scalable, and extremely simple to use. You can build the ideal appointment schedule for your needs thanks to a variety of customizable features.

From resources to capabilities, color schemes, and logos, as well as incorporating waiting lists, repeat bookings, and payment options, any part of the booking process can be personalized. You have the option of requiring users to register or omitting this move entirely.

One of the best features of SuperSaaS is the ability to connect several schedules so that an appointment can be tested against the availability of all the resources and people needed for the booking all at once.

SuperSaaS Features

Appointment Reminders, Automated Scheduling, Calendar Sync, Client Database, Group Scheduling, Mobile Access, Multi-Location, Online Booking, Online Payments, Recurring Appointments, Room Booking Management

Review: “SuperSaaS is Super! So far I have been able to create any kind of schedule to meet any needs I have. It’s very customizable. I also like that I can upgrade and downgrade (or even cancel) my subscription as my needs change. SuperSaaS has been a real gold find for me. I have recommended to several other people.” – Matt Pickard

Specification Table

Vendor	SuperSaaS
Country	Netherlands
Company Size	11 – 50
Founded	2006
Price	$8.00/month
Free Trial	Yes

Qudini

About Qudini

Appointment Scheduling Software, Waitline/Queue Management System, Event Management Software, and Task Management Software are all part of the Retail Choreography Software Suite, which helps retail banks, retailers, and telecoms brands improve profitability and brand relevance.

Qudini is a cutting-edge queue management system that also handles appointment scheduling, job management, shop floor management, event management, and a whole lot more. The app is used by some of the world’s most well-known brands. To order a sample, fill out the form below.

Qudini Features

Appointment Reminders, Automated Scheduling, Calendar Sync, Mobile Access, Multi-Location, Online Booking, Room Booking Management

Review: “We have used the Qudini software for appointment booking for several years in our Brown Thomas and Arnott’s department stores; primarily for our Beauty Halls which drove our appointment booking numbers by up to 50% in some brands.” – Sarah Esler

Specification Table

Vendor	Qudini
Country	United Kingdom
Company Size	11 – 50
Founded	2012
Price	Not Specified
Free Trial	Yes

BookSteam

About BookSteam

BookSteam is an online booking software for small and medium businesses that are hosted in the cloud. Appointment scheduling, class scheduling, resource booking, course and workshop schedule are all available through BookSteam. Personal trainers, fitness centers, yoga studios, tattoo parlors, car shops, first aid courses, barbershops, RMT practitioners, mobile service bookings, tutoring schools, music schools, and other top industries use a wide range of features.

BookSteam is a service that allows you to schedule appointments online. It has both company and customer-facing features, allowing consumers and partners to arrange appointments remotely while companies handle them on the backend. Online scheduling, database management, email and text message alerts, and online payments are all included in this solution.

The database management tool enables businesses to gather and maintain contact information for customers and clients, as well as appointment details and history.

BookSteam Appointment Scheduling Features

Appointment Reminders, Automated Scheduling, Calendar Sync, Client Database, Group Scheduling, Mobile Access, Multi-Location, Online Booking, Online Payments, Recurring Appointments, Room Booking Management

Review: “Booksteam has made a huge difference in the efficiency of booking appointments. Clients can schedule their appointments at any time of the day or night.” – Nancy N.

Specification Table

Vendor	Booksteam
Country	Canada
Company Size	02 – 10
Founded	2013
Price	$19.95/month/user
Free Trial	Yes

What The Blueprint looks for in a great appointment scheduling software

There is no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” online scheduling application. They must, however, follow certain criteria to earn the coveted “top choice” designation. Setting the bar a little higher than “completes client bookings successfully,” we believe there are a few characteristics that any good booking program should have.

Seamless integration

You’ve probably already got a fleet of office, operational, sales, and other applications running by the time you put in a scheduling app. Your scheduler should be as unobtrusive as possible because it interacts with both the customer and administrative back ends.

It should be capable of pulling consumer data and keeping track of progress in your CRM. You should also be able to sync it with your current calendars to cover any pre-planned blocks of unavailability or other existing standing appointments as well as personal time.

Your scheduler should also integrate with your email platform so that you can connect with customers. Great apps also allow you to be where your customers are by integrating with Google, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms to build “book now” buttons for a broader appointment net.

Customization

If you’re running a professional, stand-alone company, you’ll want to get rid of any external branding you can. Your scheduler must allow you to configure the client-facing pieces for brand cohesion and a smooth customer experience.

It all helps to make the booking experience feel seamless, from uploading your company logo to choosing brand colors for your booking buttons.

You should be able to tweak it on a more technical level as well. Since every business is different, you’ll need to set up your own automation rules, employee approvals, scheduling block lengths, and appointment forms to suit your needs.

Ease of use

While it will seem to be self-evident, not every method is intuitive. Since your company’s mission is to have as many customers complete the booking process as possible, you must make it as simple and painless as possible.

A good scheduler should have a few steps, load quickly, be simple to use, and send confirmations and reminders to customers without you having to do any additional work.

How your business can benefit from using appointment scheduling software

Leaving the fallibility of analog booking behind and entering the digital era comes with a range of advantages that you can’t get with pen and paper.

A good booking app will not only make your life simpler, but it will also have a positive effect on your market, thanks to reports on the back end and built-in catches on the front end.

Reduce missed appointments

Not only is it one less thing for you to think about doing manually when you can set all confirmations and reminders to automatic, but it also helps keep upcoming appointments top of mind for customers so they don’t forget. You may also have termination policies in the notifications so that if they must cancel, they give you ample warning.

Many software solutions would also allow you to collect a deposit in advance or securely store a credit card number. Clients who are aware that they are putting their money on the line are more likely to keep their appointments.

Maximize time efficiently

You’ve got a lot on your plate running your company, so sitting down every day and optimizing schedules isn’t going to be the most efficient use of your time. You run the risk of unintentionally overbooking if schedules aren’t configured, which results in disappointed customers and missed sales.

The ever-present threat of human error is practically eliminated, and appointment schedules are up to date and reliable, thanks to the electronic tracking of all bookings.

Increase customer familiarity

Customers are more likely to be satisfied with online schedulers that treat the booking as an all-in-one operation. You can have past data on an individual in a moment because they store all knowledge and history, making them feel attended to and valued. Your clients can also complete bookings and checkouts quicker and more willingly if you store data such as payment details and appointment preferences.

The data you’ve collected and monitored will help you market your company more effectively. Getting all of the information about them in one location is a huge help, whether you’re offering customized promotions to current customers or highlighting add-on services they might appreciate.