Online appointment scheduling has become an important part of the modern business world. It allows your customers to book appointments online, which saves them time and hassle.
It also helps you automate your business processes and save money on staffing costs, all while giving your customers an easy way to schedule their appointments.
In this article, we will discuss some of the best free online appointment scheduling solutions available today.
Free Online Appointment Scheduling
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.
In your preliminary research, you can see whether the freemium plan has the essential features, like:
Essential features of an appointment scheduling app
Ability to set up work and off hours with flexibility
External calendar sync to eliminate double-booking
Ability to create different types of services, so customers can book the specific service they need
Booking page that lets customers see your availability and book appointments
Notifications and reminders, to keep you and customers updated about appointments
Built-in online meeting, so you can maintain social distancing and book appointments with clients across the globe
iPaaS (Zapier, Zoho Flow) integration, to connect to the other apps you use
Finding the best freemium plan from 50+ appointment scheduling apps based on these requirements is a tedious job. Here, we do that work for you. Today, we’ll find out the appointment scheduling app with the best freemium plan. We’ll be evaluating the free plans based on the following criteria:>
1Are essential features included in the freemium plan? If not, there will be gaps in your appointment scheduling abilities.
2Are there features available beyond the essentials? It’s one thing to provide the bare essentials, but another to add features that support the essentials. For instance, the ability to add available hours is less useful without the additional option to add buffer time between appointments.
3Is the free plan flexible? A common problem that free plans suffer from is having limits (on users, calendar connections, appointments booked, services you can add, etc.). If the limits are too low, you won’t be able to use the app for long.
Now that we’ve seen the criteria of a good free plan, let’s start comparing free plans. We’ll take apps that usually come on the first page of Google results for ‘free appointment scheduling software’.
We’ll include two other apps: Zoho Bookings, to use a benchmark, and Appointlet, featured as a good free app by Zapier. We exclude Square, because Square is not available outside of the US, Canada, and a few other countries.
Although Acuity is a popular appointment scheduling app, we have not included it in our comparison because it doesn’t have a free plan. We do not recommend free apps without an understandable revenue stream. Read about that here.
They apps that we’ll be comparing for the best free plan are:
- Zoho Bookings
- Appointlet
- Appointy
- Calendly
- Picktime
- Setmore
- SimplyBook.me
As part of the study, we went through the website of these apps, took a trial of their free plan, and interacted with their support staff to understand their product.
A brief background on the apps
Top appointment scheduling apps
Zoho Bookings is the online scheduler created to streamline the entire booking and appointment process. It syncs with 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.
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.
Picktime was started in 2017 with it’s headquarters in Austin, Texas. Initially started as a free appointment scheduling software, they have paid plans now and cater to scheduling needs across businesses with feature updates.
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. SimplyBook.me primarily targets businesses in the health and wellness industry.
SimplyBook.me vs Setmore vs Picktime vs Calendly vs Appointy vs Appointlet vs Zoho Bookings
How do the freemium plans fare on essential features?
SimplyBook.me
Setmore
Picktime
Calendly
Appointy
Appointlet
Zoho Bookings
Essentials
Setting up availability
2-way Calendar sync
(optional)
Creating services
Booking page
Email Notifications
Email reminders
Online meeting
(optional)
iPaaS Integration
(optional)
Optional: In the free plan, you can only opt 1 of these features in Simplybook.me’s custom feature list.
All apps offer availability-setting, booking page, services, and notifications in their Free plan. There are differences in the other features. Zoho Bookings is the only app that has all the essential features in its free plans.
SimplyBook.me has all the features, but with a limitation. Two-way calendar sync, online meeting and iPaaS integrations come under custom features, and you can have only one in the Free plan.
Calendly and Picktime don’t allow iPaaS integration and email reminders in their Free plan, and Picktime only offers a one-way calendar sync. Appointlet has all the bases covered, except for its restriction on email reminders in the Free plan.
Setmore and Appointy don’t allow two-way calendar sync in the Free plan. Without the two-way sync, you can’t automatically add new appointments to your Google/O365 calendar or block time on your appointment calendar for events in your Google/O365 calendar. This often leads to double booking and confusion when scheduling appointments. Setmore does offer one-way sync, from their appointment software to your Google/O365 calendar.
Winners of this round: Zoho Bookings
Zoho Bookings wins the first round
How do the freemium plans fare on convenience features?
SimplyBook.me
Setmore
Picktime
Calendly
Appointy
Appointlet
Zoho Bookings
Convenience
Buffer time
Last-minute booking window
Cancellation window
(optional)
Add time off
Automatic time zone conversion for customers
Embed booking page on your website
Add custom fields to the booking form
(optional)
Buffer time: This feature allows you to add a break between appointments to rest, or prepare for the next meeting. This time isn’t shown to the customer. Appointy doesn’t have buffer time as a feature. You need to make your customer slots larger to accommodate your buffer time . Then, you have to choose another setting to hide slot duration from the customers. It’s not straightforward, but you can do it. In other apps, you can add buffer time without making it part of the appointment slot duration.
Last minute booking window: This lets you set a time window between the appointment date and the booking date where customers can’t book your services. This will help you avoid last minute hassles and be fully prepared for the appointment. All apps have included this feature in their free plans, due to the importance of this functionality.
Cancellation window: This allows you to limit the time window during which customers can cancel their appointment. This helps prevent last minute cancellations, which cost you time and money. This feature is present in all apps.
Add time-off: You can mark a leave or a vacation on your schedule with this feature . All of the apps, except for Appointlet, have this feature in their free plan.
Automatic time zone conversion: This lets you show your availability and booking page to customers in the local time zone. This is another fundamental feature, and except for Picktime, it is included in free plans of all other apps.
Embed booking page on your website: All apps allow you to embed your booking page on your website. This provides a seamless booking experience to your customers.
Add custom fields to the booking form: Except for Appointy and Picktime, all other apps allow you to add custom fields to your intake form. With custom fields, you can ask specific questions to customers to qualify and prepare for your appointments.
All apps stand fairly equal in terms of features that add convenience. Picktime, Appointy and Appointlet miss out on one or two, but they have workarounds available. Whereas, Simplybook.me has two features under their custom feature section, and with the free plan you can only opt for one of those features.
Winners of this round: Zoho Bookings, Setmore, Calendly
Zoho Bookings, Setmore, Calendly
How do the freemium plans fare on limits?
SimplyBook.me
Setmore
Picktime
Calendly
Appointy
Appointlet
Zoho Bookings
Limits
Maximum bookings
50
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
100
Unlimited
Unlimited
Users/staff allowed
5
4
3
1
1
1
1
Calendar connections per user
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Event types/services
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
1 event type
5
Unlimited
Unlimited
Email reminders
50 per month
100 per month
–
100 per month
Unlimited
Each app has placed a limit on one or more features. Zoho Bookings and Appointlet offer everything unlimited, except for the number of users.
Calendly has more restrictions. The event types are limited to one. You can only create one type of 1:1 meeting. For example, you can set up 30 minute 1:1 meetings, but then you cannot set up 15 or 60 minute 1:1 meetings. This makes it difficult for people who has multiple meeting types.
SimplyBook.me does not have restrictions on calendars, event types, or reminders. They allow up to five staff/users. However, they’ve capped the maximum bookings to 50. For anyone taking 10 appointments a day, this will be over in five days.
Setmore offers unlimited bookings, up to four staff, two calendar connections, and unlimited event types. However, they have an unusual limit on reminders. That’s an indirect way of limiting the maximum bookings to 100 or less. Any bookings made without reminders are mostly no-shows.
Appointy has limited bookings to 100, staff to one, and event types to five. When compared to the other five apps, there are more limits in Appointy.
Winners of this round: Zoho Bookings, Setmore
Setmore and Zoho Bookings
Comparing seven free appointment scheduling apps
Picktime vs Appointy vs Setmore vs SimplyBook.me vs Calendly vs Appointlet vs Zoho Bookings
Let’s put our findings into a table. Since all apps fared equally on convenience features, those features aren’t in the table.
SimplyBook.me
Setmore
Picktime
Calendly
Appointy
Appointlet
Zoho Bookings
Essentials
Setting up availability
2-way Calendar sync
(optional)
Creating services
Booking page
Email Notification
Email reminder
Online meeting
(optional)
iPaaS Integration
(optional)
Limits
Maximum bookings
50
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
100
Unlimited
Unlimited
Users/staff allowed
5
4
3
1
1
1
1
Calendar connections
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Event types/services
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
1 event type
5
Unlimited
Unlimited
Email reminders
50 per month
100 per month
–
100 per month
Unlimited
Winners of the final round: Zoho Bookings, Setmore
Setmore and Zoho Bookings
The best free appointment scheduling apps are Zoho Bookings and Setmore.
They have all the essential features in their plan, and with fewer limits on their features. That makes them the best apps for small businesses looking to get started with automated online appointment scheduling.
Here are the best free appointment scheduling apps, in order of their usefulness:
- Zoho Bookings
- Setmore
- Appointy
- Appointlet
- Picktime
- Calendly
- SimplyBook.me
We compared the apps objectively for this study. However, the best app for you is subjective. We recommend that you take a trial of these apps, ask questions, and go with the one that fits you.
best online booking system
Staying organized is one of the biggest challenges business owners face. With more and more online meetings, webinars, virtual client calls, and in-person events happening every year, are you sure that you won’t miss an important appointment? If you’re not already using one of the best appointment booking apps for small businesses, now’s the time to start.
What are online appointment booking apps?
Appointment schedulers are web-based tools that allow you to invite or collaborate with other users through a calendar interface. They also prevent double-booking when you use multiple online calendars as well as some of the unnecessary back-and-forth that happens when multiple parties coordinate meeting times.
Plus, they’re often accessible on both mobile devices and desktop, so you can book the appointment in your office, then check for directions or details in the car on your way.
What does an online appointment scheduling tool do?
These tools are primarily calendars with a scheduling function, but they often integrate with other apps, such as your email or video conferencing app. Some tools even work with payment processors, so you can charge and collect fees before the meeting takes place. The tools may also serve as a lead magnet on your website for people who want to know more about your services.
Who needs an appointment scheduling software?
All business professionals can benefit from these tools, but they’re particularly beneficial for sales and marketing teams, media and PR professionals, consultants, and anyone who makes more than a few calls per week (virtual and in-person). If you charge for your time, then you may lean toward platforms with booking fee and no-show cancellation fee options.
The 12 best appointment booking apps
There are numerous apps that claim to keep your calendar tidy, but here are the top business booking software picks for any industry.
- Calendar
Calendar with Coffee
If you want to combine all of the calendars on your desktop and phone – Google Calendar, Apple’s iCal, and Outlook, for starters – Calendar is a solid pick. It simplifies scheduling, easily syncs across all devices, and includes meeting transcriptions in the paid version.
The best part is its AI function, which monitors your schedule and can automate certain tasks without your input. Plus, you’ll receive valuable analytics that tell you how you spend your time. The paid version starts at $6 per month, and there’s also a free limited version. - Calendly
For those who want to collaborate with multiple team members, check out the Calendly online booking system. It has many of the same features as other tools on our list, but it also comes with unique features, like round-robin, collective, and one-on-one meetings. Plus, the custom meeting link makes it easy to invite others to pick a date and time.
The free version offers basic booking and a single calendar view. Paid plans, which feature team solutions, cost $8 to $12 per month.
- HubSpot Meetings
HubSpot is a powerful CRM platform that comes with an enterprise price tag, and their online scheduling for small business is one small part of their overall offerings. If you’re looking to buy only a calendar solution, this may be too robust.
However, if you want all of your contact tools, lists, sales funnels, and email trackers in one place, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better option. There is a free “lite” plan for you to check out, and the full-featured scheduler is free for paid HubSpot users. The templates alone make it an incredible solution. - Acuity
Acuity is an appointment app that lets you block out the times that work for you, allowing your meeting attendees to pick from available slots. It’s sparsely designed but is loaded with options. For example, you can accept payments via Stripe, Square, or PayPal, vault credit cards for charging later, accept tips, offer coupons, schedule group workshops, and upsell with add-ons at checkout.
If you’re looking for a way to grow your business with more sales through appointment setting, Acuity scheduling may be your best bet. Plans start at $14 per month for one calendar. - Appointlet
HP Calendar
Designed for salespeople but easy enough for anyone to use, Appointlet offers customized booking pages you can send to clients and prospects. It integrates easily into your existing online real estate, too, including websites and email subscriber lists. The free forever option may be enough for casual users, but the paid version offers unlimited bookings, coordination with Zoom, and field customization.
Plans for this online scheduling software start at $8 per month. You can integrate it with Google Calendar, Office 365, Unbounce, Leadpages, Wishpond, Zapier, and more. - Doodle
Doodle makes it easy to get a group of three or more people on the same page, even across time zones. Simply send out a poll for meeting attendees to answer with their availability. Then, pick the time that works best, and communications will synchronize for all attendees.
Anyone who struggles to find a time that works for everyone will love the reduction in back-and-forths along with the user-friendly interface. Doodle offers a free trial for its plans, which start at $6.95 per month. - ScheduleOnce
If you need your teams on one page, ScheduleOnce is worth considering. Features include group meetings, one-on-one calls, and video conferences. It syncs across your website, email, and payment processor, so you’ll always have the most up-to-date schedule view.
ScheduleOnce’s branding preferences are impressive, letting you put your own special touch on any of your customer-facing tools. Plans start at $10 per month, with a free plan that lets 25 users collaborate at no cost. - Bookafy
Bookafy offers similar perks to other entries on our list, including synchronized calendars, time zone recognition, and rules for how you want to set up your meetings.
However, business owners love the unique feature that lets you assign meeting requests to the most appropriate team member. This streamlined approach ensures that anyone scheduling a meeting gets facetime with the appropriate department or expert, such as a customer needing IT help versus a prospect looking for a marketing demonstration.
You also get custom forms and templates featuring your company colors and forms, so you can make Bookafy your own. The plans start at $7 per month for the Pro plan and $11 for the Pro+ plan. - SimplyBook.me
SimplyBook.me is a favorite among those with a global client base because it lets your clients book online meeting times in 32 languages. It also seamlessly integrates with more than 20 payment processing apps, so you can make sure you get paid for your time.
You can pick your industry to see pre-loaded default fields, such as those for gym owners or consultants, among other roles. Then, be sure to check out all the reporting features, including a rundown of your appointment statistics and a log of SMS reminders. Prices range from free to $59 per month. - YouCanBook.me
With YouCanBook.me, you create a booking grid that you can share anywhere, including on social media or your website. Pick your display preferences, including custom fields, and view your meetings as they’re requested by your staff or clients.
This tool works well with Google and Apple calendars, and it integrates with Zapier, Zoom, and other related platforms. Plus, you can reduce your monthly no-shows by sending out customized notifications and reminders. As for the cost, you’ll pay $10 per calendar per month. - Dubsado
As part of a larger small business platform that also handles invoicing, project management, and reporting, Dubsado’s scheduling tools are as beautiful as they are functional. With this platform, you can collect booking fees at the time of appointment setting, attach forms to meeting confirmations, and pad your meeting slots.
It also integrates with most major tools, and there are minimum notice settings to prevent overscheduling. Dubsado offers a free trial of their entire suite, and it costs $35 per month or $350 annually. - Square appointments
For businesses that already use the Square payment services suite of tools or their POS system, Square’s appointment booking tool is an easy choice. The service lets you charge no-show fees for cancellations and accept payments at the time of booking, among other features.
The automated text and email reminders are helpful as well, especially for those with the busiest calendars. Paid plans start at $50 per month. There is a free plan with a single calendar, but it comes with payment processing fees of 2.6% + 10¢, which applies to all paid plans, too.
What is the best booking app for your business?
The best scheduling tool is the one that best fits your unique needs. If you’re a heavy Square user, for instance, it only makes sense to use their booking tool. And if you have a global footprint, Simplybook.me will help you keep everything in check from one week to the next.
Techno Calender
If you already use one of the more robust CRM tools, like HubSpot, you may have access to this scheduling feature included. And in that case, all you have to do is start using it today to take advantage of the perks you’re paying for.
When you pick from the tools on our list, keep in mind that too many bells and whistles could actually prevent you from consistently adding appointments and managing your time. This means that the overall price may not be the best indicator of quality or functionality, so instead sift through these options after you know exactly what you need.
Conclusion
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