Remember those days when managing client appointment bookings was almost a nightmare? You had to go over hurdles of spreadsheets, paper calendars, telephone calls, reminders, postcards, RSVPs, more spreadsheets, and so on.
Thankfully, a lot has improved over the years. And currently, all one needs is a handy appointment booking plugin to do all the work in much less time on your WordPress website. It’s really that simple.
By adding a WordPress appointment booking plugin to your site, you will be able to set up and manage appointments either for yourself or for a whole team. Plus, some of the appointment tools available can be used to set up and manage accommodation bookings and rentals too.
Now let’s take a closer look at six of the best WordPress appointment booking plugins.
WooCommerce Bookings
A good place to start with is the WooCommerce Bookings plugin. If you have already installed the WooCommerce on your WordPress website, then you can install the WooCommerce Bookings extension, which can be purchased from the WooCommerce store. This will enable your customers to book rentals, appointments, and reservations on your site. Plus, it is very user-friendly, even for someone new.
WooCommerce Bookings allows your clients to book for a guided tour, appointment, class, reservation, etc, and allows them to select the best time slot that is ideal for them.
You can also give discounts to a specific number of bookings or set limits for the number of people who can make bookings. Plus, it also indicates your availability to the customer in the customer’s time zone.
The plugin also allows you to create special pricing for certain days, groups, or individuals, so you can create some discounts early-birds, holidays, age ranges, etc.
Furthermore, this plugin offers you complete control over whether to accept or reject bookings you receive, send essential reminders, prevent the possibility of double booking, and more.
Cost: $249 USD per year for 1 site license.
YITH Booking and Appointment
The YITH Booking and Appointment plugin is an extension for WooCommerce, and comes with a simple and easy-to-use interface that allows you to implement an appointment or booking system in order to manage things such as booking of “accommodation facilities, rooms, services, and so on”.
With this plugin, you can easily configure all of your daily or even hourly bookings. It offers a lot of flexibility of usage, so that, regardless of the kind of business or services you offer, you will be able to easily manage the appointments and bookings for your services.
You can easily create bookable products without limits, configure all-day bookings, and allow users to set the duration of their bookings.
The plugin is backed by 98% customer satisfaction plus an average rating of 4.5 out of 5.
Cost: $168 USD per year for 1 site license.
Amelia
If you are looking for an enterprise-level booking manager for your business, then look no further than Amelia. Amelia offers fully automated appointment booking features that offer you the opportunity to provide a simple booking system to your customers or clients at the enterprise level.
Amelia will easily integrate with your WordPress powered website and allow you to set up, manage, maintain bookings, and pay online with ease. Amelia’s platform is easy to use and is ideal for all manner of businesses, including consultants, spa and gym operators, repair centers, you name them. Amelia features an interactive plugin that makes it possible for clients to easily select the right employees and services.
There is also a real-time SMS reminder feature that employees and clients can use to cancel appointments on short notice. Amelia also offers complete flexibility when it comes to scheduling. This means that you can add special days, add multiple employees, configure working hours, and so much more.
You can also configure repetitive events such as classes, conferences, etc. Set up a comprehensive attendance management in the back-end in addition to a booking interface in the front-end.
Amelia can also be integrated with WooCommerce in order to use the payment gateways it offers, and be synchronized with Google calendar so that employees can synchronize their working schedule with their calendar.
You can also view key performance indicators (KPIs) through diagrams and graphs. An upgraded feature makes it easy for customers who like to make bookings on a regular basis, to schedule recurring appointments. In all, Amelia offers a very professional and yet, easy-to-use system.
Cost: $59 USD per year for 1 site license.
Bookly PRO
Bookly is a great booking plugin for almost every type of business – and it is not difficult to see why. This plugin allows you to accept bookings online on your WordPress website with features that make it possible to automate your reservation system.
Just like the other plugins reviewed so far, it also comes with an easy-to-operate interface.
When it comes to the important features, Bookly boasts several. To begin with, it allows you to send SMS notifications, on-top of emails. Also, the administrative panel is very easy to navigate, when adjusting, approving, or declining appointments. You can also set up automation for online scheduling.
Bookly PRO can also accommodate an endless number of staff members. This is very important, for example, a gym that has several different personal or group trainers. You can create several numbers of staff personnel and make it possible for each of them to create their own different or unique pricing.
The plugin also has simple integration with several online payment gateways including PayPal and Stripe.
This appointment booking plugin currently has a rating of 4.5 out of five stars with over 30,000 active users.
Cost: $89 USD for a single lifetime license and free support for the first six months.
Booked
Up next on our list is Booked. Booked is a slightly more simplistic booking plugin, that which can be configured to support almost any kind of booking or appointment through your WordPress website.
Booked makes it quick and almost effortless for your clients to make a booking using your website. It comes with an easy-to-use interface that allows your clients to book all sorts of appointments into your system in just a few clicks.
This plugin synchronizes easily with Outlook, Google, as well as with other external calendar feeds. Visitors to your website will also have the freedom to use the Add Calendar button to create their appointments into their preferred tool.
The settings give you complete control over who and how many visitors to your website are able to make appointments. You can also manage the online profiles of your registered visitors by logging in. Here, you can edit or add important personal information, such as personal information and contact details.
Booked also makes it possible to accept online payments. You can integrate with WooCommerce plugin to collect either partial or full payments from your customers.
This plugin also allows you to color-code different calendars on your website to make for easy identification and prevent double booking.
Price: $45 USD for a single lifetime license and free support for the first six months.
LatePoint
Moving, on we have LatePoint – an appointment booking and reservation plugin for WordPress. Currently registering over 1,500 sales, LatePoint has an average rating of 4.89 out of 5 stars.
Even with the comparatively fewer sales, LatePoint is one of the most competitive and easy-to-use appointment booking and reservation systems for WordPress websites.
Whether you are trying to manage a single account for yourself or multiple accounts for your staff on your WordPress website, LatePoint offers almost all the important features you need. Because of its support for multiple platforms, you can create different user accounts for your staff and allow them to manage their accounts independently. Each account user can create and manage their own schedules and create their own service hours for customers to pick the most convenient for them.
When it comes to interface, LatePoint offers more style than the other plugins already reviewed. However, that takes nothing away from the ease with which it can be navigated. Booking appointments and making reservations are more straightforward, with tools that make it possible for you to communicate with those who use your platform.
Regarding tools, this plugin also offers important metrics, graphs, and charts on the dashboard, which display the number of users, booking, reservations, and so on.
This plugin also has a zone selector feature that helps to reduce the possibility of booking misunderstandings.
Cost: $41 USD for a single lifetime license and free support for the first six months.
While there are several WordPress appointment booking plugins available to choose from, the ones mentioned above are some of the best to provide your business with an excellent booking platform, to help automate your business.
What is your favorite appointment booking plugin?