Searching for the best WordPress scheduling plugin so that you can let users book appointments or rentals via your WordPress site?
Whether you offer online or in-person services, a scheduling plugin makes it easy for your customers to book the times they need and for you (or your staff) to stay on top of your calendar and availability.
Because scheduling plugins can be useful for everything from online coaching to yoga studios, lawyers, and even podcasts, you can find a range of different plugins on the market.
To help you narrow down your options to only the best, we’ve collected the eight best WordPress scheduling plugins. Let’s dig in!
Eight Best WordPress Scheduling Plugins in 2021 and Beyond
Below, we’ll share the eight top scheduling plugins, along with a look at their key features and pricing details. Most of these plugins offer free versions at WordPress.org that you can test out, though the free versions can be quite limited in some situations and you’ll often need to upgrade to the premium version to access the most useful features.
1. Simply Schedule Appointments
Simply Schedule Appointments is an easy-to-use appointment scheduling plugin that’s active on over 10,000 sites according to WordPress.org with a perfect 5-star rating on 55+ reviews.
With a five-minute setup process, Simply Schedule Appointments makes it easy to get up and running with your first appointment scheduling form. You can offer different services, define durations and buffer times, add multiple staff members, and more.
Once you go through the setup wizard, you’ll be able to manage everything from a simple dashboard:
Then, your visitors will be able to schedule their appointments via a user-friendly front-end form.
You can place your scheduling form(s) anywhere on your site, but Simply Schedule Appointments also includes dedicated integrations for popular page builder plugins like Elementor, Divi, and Beaver Builder so that you can easily include booking forms in your page builder designs.
Other notable features in Simply Schedule Appointments include:
- Unlimited appointment bookings.
- Unlimited appointment types.
- Customizable email notifications and even text messages.
- Style options to customize booking forms to match your brand.
- Accept payments for bookings – works with PayPal and Stripe.
- Support for class bookings and group events.
- Built-in goal and conversion rate tracking to analyze and optimize your scheduling forms.
Simply Schedule Appointments also integrates with a range of services and plugins including:
- Google Calendar
- Zapier (which lets you connect your scheduling forms to the thousands of apps on Zapier)
- Mailchimp
- PayPal
- Stripe
- Gravity Forms
- Formidable Forms
- LifterLMS
- Elementor
- Divi
- Beaver Builder
If you need help with anything, Simply Schedule Appointments offers prompt support responses and can even jump on Zoom calls to troubleshoot issues. With the Business Edition license, you’ll even get a live Zoom onboarding to help you configure the perfect setup for your business.
Price: Simply Schedule Appointments has a free version at WordPress.org that you can use to test it out. To access the premium features, paid plans start at $99 and range up to $299 for the Business Edition.
2. Booking Calendar
Booking Calendar is one of the oldest appointment scheduling plugins at WordPress.org, where it’s active on over 50,000 sites with a 4.7-star rating on over 450 reviews. It’s primarily used for booking full-day rentals (such as vacation homes). However, with the premium version, you can also use it for time-specific bookings, which enables appointment scheduling.
With the premium version, you’ll also get more advanced features for controlling the rates for your bookings, such as setting custom rates for high and low seasons (another feature more geared towards full-day bookings).
Price: Booking Calendar has a limited free version at WordPress.org. The paid version starts at $47.40 and ranges up to $389.40 for use on a single site depending on the features that you need. That comes with only six months of support and updates.
3. Amelia
Amelia is another popular freemium appointment scheduling plugin. It’s active on 20,000+ sites according to WordPress.org with a 4.2-star rating on over 100 reviews.
The free version can work for simple booking systems, but most of the advanced scheduling features are only available in the premium version. If you pay, you’ll get access to features like:
- Unlimited services with custom schedules.
- Unlimited employees, each with custom schedules.
- Unified or individual employee booking forms.
- Paid appointments.
- Automatic email notifications.
- Integrations with Zoom, Google Calendar, and more.
Amelia also supports multiple locations, including features to let you display all of your locations in a front-end directory or create dedicated booking forms for specific locations.
Price: Amelia has a limited free version at WordPress.org. The paid version starts at $59 for core premium features or $109 for all features.
4. Bookly
Bookly is one of the most popular appointment scheduling plugins at Envato’s CodeCanyon marketplace, where it has 37,000+ sales and a 4.54-star rating on over 1,000 reviews.
It lets you set up unlimited services for unlimited staff members, including options to set individual working schedules for each service and staff member. With additional premium add-ons, you can also add support for multiple locations, group bookings, chained bookings, booking packages, and more.
You also get the option to accept free bookings or charge for bookings via dedicated payment add-ons or a WooCommerce integration.
Price: Bookly has a limited free version at WordPress.org. The core Pro version costs $89 for use on a single site. There are also a large number of premium add-ons that cost $29+ each, which can add to the price depending on which features you need.
5. Appointment Hour Booking
As the name suggests, Appointment Hour Booking helps you create appointment scheduling forms with specific start times and defined durations. It’s active on over 20,000 sites according to WordPress.org with a 4.9-star rating on over 300 reviews.
You can create multiple services, each with its own price and duration. You can also set up your own custom schedules, complete with holidays and black-out times.
With the premium version, you’ll also get access to other useful features such as built-in payments, integrations with external services such as Mailchimp, and custom notification emails and SMS messages (via Clickatell and Twilio add-ons).
Price: Appointment Hour Booking has a limited free version at WordPress.org. To unlock all of the paid features, the premium version starts at €54 for use on a single site.
6. Easy Appointments
Easy Appointments is another popular scheduling plugin at WordPress.org, where it’s active on over 20,000 sites with a 4.5-star rating on over 110 reviews.
It can support multiple locations, services, and workers. You can either create one unified booking form or create separate scheduling calendars for each service, location, and/or worker. You’ll also be able to customize the booking forms with your own custom fields if needed, which lets you collect additional information from your customers.
The free version is fine for basic booking forms, but you’ll need the paid version to accept payments (WooCommerce or PayPal) and/or integrate with calendar services such as Google Calendar (two-way sync) and iCalendar.
Price: The core Easy Appointments plugin is available for free at WordPress.org. The premium extension starts at $39.
7. Salon Booking System
Despite the name, Salon Booking System is not only for beauty salons – you can also use it to manage any type of appointment scheduling (though it obviously does market itself mostly towards salons). It’s active on over 8,000 sites according to WordPress.org with a 4.5-star rating on over 125 reviews.
With it, you can create unlimited staff members and unlimited services. You can create your own custom scheduling rules for services to keep your schedule organized and you’ll also be able to accept payments online, including support for coupons and discounts.
One unique thing is that Salon Booking System has its own mobile app for iOS and Android that lets you manage your appointments on the go. The app is for employees/managers, not for customers.
Price: Salon Booking System has a limited free version available at WordPress.org. The premium version starts at €76 for use on a single site.
8. Booked
Finally, we have Booked, another popular premium option at Envato’s CodeCanyon marketplace where it’s been purchased over 12,700 times with an adequate 4.24-star rating on over 360 reviews.
Booked lets you create your own custom time slots that visitors can book via a front-end form. You can define availability, such as only allowing a single booking per slot or allowing multiple bookings. You can also assign calendars to specific agents if you have multiple employees. Employees will also be able to manage their own calendars from the front-end of your site, which is nice if you don’t want to make employees use the WordPress dashboard.
If you want to accept payments, there’s a built-in WooCommerce integration to help you do so. You can also customize the booking form with your own custom fields if needed.
Price: Booked only comes in a premium version. It costs $49 for lifetime updates for a single site.
Which Is the Best WordPress Scheduling Plugin for Appointments?
Not sure which is the best scheduling plugin for your needs?
All of these plugins have something to offer – but if you’re still on the fence, Simply Schedule Appointments makes a great start point because it’s easy to use and has all the features most people need in a scheduling plugin. It also has a free version that’s pretty generous with its features.
Many of the other plugins also offer free versions that you can test. However, they can be quite limited in some cases and are mainly just useful for trying out the interface.
Do you still have any questions about these appointment scheduling plugins? Let us know in the comments!
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