Last Updated on July 21, 2022 by Arif Chowdhury
In short, scheduling software helps a business automatically handle booking on their website without any manual command. It helps when a company has a large customer base and manually accepting bookings would take a large staff team. However, this software also works well for small businesses.
And this is why small to large business owners need scheduling software to reduce serious workloads and focus on other things.
Which software is best for an online booking system?
Hundreds of scheduling software are out there; you must use Google and search. However, among these hundreds, which one would be good for you? Which one has the best feature? Which one is affordable or even suits your business needs?
Finding these answers could be a challenging task. In this guide, I have written down several of my favorite scheduling software based on my personal experience. Some of them are free & some of them are paid. Some may be cheap other is expensive. It doesn’t matter; the “Best” term is subjective.
Sometimes what is best for me might be only a decent option for you because there are many factors, price, features, etc. Maybe some features are beneficial for me while those are useless to you.
In any case, ley me show you the best online booking system for small business and also for large organization.
1. SimplyBook.
Simple booking system – free account available.
SimplyBook is simple to use yet powerful appointment scheduling software. You just have to define your service and show when they are available; that’s it – software will do the rest 24/7.
A free demonstration account is available for you to test out for an indefinite time.
SimplyBook provides you a free & straightforward website to get started if you are new in business; however, if you already have your website, you can easily integrate their software and start immediately.
Maybe you have a popular Facebook page or Instagram page, don’t worry; they are giving you the option to make a booking directly from your social media page.
After you receive a booking from a customer, the software will instantly inform you via direct email reminders, SMS, or push notification, whichever you have chosen from settings.
Now, what about payment from a customer? They have a range of secure third-party payment processors available for you, i.e., PayPal, Stripe, etc.
And what about if you have a physical office, how do you collect? They have a POS (Point of Sales) system included in the software package; thus, you can collect cash or payment via debit/credit card.
Additionally, you can offer discount coupons, event offers, gift cards, and membership to your valuable customers.
Connect using an app from a remote location.
Now let’s see their subscription plans. As you can see below, they have four plans and a free plan that can only accept a maximum of 50 bookings per month. If you are serious about business, you should consider looking at other paid plans like Standard or Premium. Paid plans range from $9.9 to $59.9 per month.
There is one limitation if you have a large customer base, and your estimated bookings can exceed their highest limit of 2,000 per month.
2. Acuity Scheduling.
The best online booking system for small businesses – free plan available.
Acuity Scheduling is a robust system for taking bookings from customers from your site, like a virtual online assistant.
A free account is available with a limited feature for an indefinite period, enough to test their service.
What will you get with this booking software? If you have a website, you can easily embed this appointment scheduling software and start managing bookings automatically without any manual interaction.
However, they do not provide you with any website to get started, unlike SimplyBook.
Apart from this downside, they provide you with all the advanced features you are supposed to get, like clients can quickly view your availability and self-book their appointment: no boring talk, no wasting time from any side. Thus, we can call this customer based scheduling system.
Simple & structural way to organize.
The client can reschedule their time and pay online using the most secure third-party payment processors, i.e., PayPal, Stripe, and more.
And from your part, you can easily organize your schedule according to their and your time zone by auto-adjusting time zones. Clients will get a reminder for their booked schedule automatically.
Within an intake form, you can pre-design the information you need to know about clients; thus, upon booking confirmation, you will get all the necessary information about clients from one place.
Building a brand will make your business successful, and Acute Scheduling software provides you just that – after clients confirm booking through your website, they will receive a branded & customized confirmation automatically through their email or SMS, and also the software will automatically follow them up.
A systematic way to coordinate your booking with lots of scheduling features.
Now let’s talk about their subscription plan, they have four plans available, and Freebie is free with $0 cost but heavily restricted features. So if you want to test them out, it is enough for demonstration.
And for serious business, you should check out their other paid plans, Emerging, Growing, and Powerhouse, ranging from $15 to $50 per month.
They are also giving you a 7-day free trial period for their paid plans, no credit card, no strings attached.
3. Setmore.
Advance automate online schedule – free plan available.
Setmore offers advanced scheduling and booking through your desktop, laptop, and browser or even from android phones easily and quickly.
A free account offers enough room for a start-up business to test its service.
Using Setmore, you can get a virtual assistant to set up your customer’s booking 24/7 without getting any interaction from you. If you own a website, then you can easily integrate this software with your booking page to get started.
It has several seamless integration options with other networks; if you have a social media page on Facebook or Instagram, then your customer can book directly from there. You may also connect with Google calendar and other cloud based scheduling tools.
Get access from any device you want.
You can also connect with other popular applications like Teleport, Slack, Office 365, etc.
By integrating with a popular application, you can take it to another level; for example, if you combine Setmore with Teleport, whenever a customer places a booking through your website or social media platform, you will be able to start a video conference with just 1-click.
Your customer also gets a reminder notification right before the scheduled time when they place a booking.
Setmore also offers you their “Live booking” option, as whenever a customer places a booking order or calls, professional staff will receive it on behalf of your organization and confirm that order for you. However, this facility is only available in the USA and Canada.
Professional staff will take care of your booking.
Now let’s see their subscription plan. They have three types of plans available for you. 1st one is free and at no charge whatsoever for an indefinite time. 2nd one is a Premium plan with all features available that cost you $25 per month.
And the last one is Live Booking & it’s only available within the USA and Canada, and you have to call them to get custom pricing.
4. Calendly.
Best appointment scheduling tool – free forever.
Calendly offers you flexibility and hands-free automation for your scheduling task with high accuracy.
Though their free version has some limitations; however, it is enough for you to do a test drive.
You can invite people, and they can set a schedule with you based on your availability themselves; no need to have a lengthy conversation.
For a group of people, it’s even better; Calendly will find availability and automatically distribute meetings between team members, and complex and time-consuming schedule fixing days are long gone.
The personal assistant will take care of your schedule.
You can invite a large group into your meeting, webinar, training, live chat, and so on. Calendly scheduling app will send reminders via email, SMS, or push notification if enabled automatically before a schedule.
Therefore, no-shows and missing an event are not going to happen.
For a team, the appointment scheduling can also be helpful as all team members can share a single place filled with their past, present, and future workflows.
For webinars or training purposes, you can use Calendly to collect subscription fees for premium content. If it is a fundraising community, you can collect payment from a single place using secure transactions, i.e., PayPal or Stripe. You do not need to talk with each person about that.
Customize your automation scheduling software.
Let’s see their available subscription plan; they have three subscription plans, and apart from a free plan, they have only two plans. Premium and Pro plans range from $8 to $12 per month if billed annually. The Premium or Pro plan would be best if you need an advanced feature and unlimited options.
Otherwise, stick with the basic plan if you want to test their platform for free.
5. Findmyshift.
One of the best employee scheduling apps and management systems – free forever.
Findmyshift is specially designed to track and manage an organization’s employees and other personnel with the utmost accuracy and flexibility.
A free plan is enough to test out their service for an indefinite period.
There is no need to invest money in an attendance tracking device in your organization; using this employee management software, you can set up a time clock within a minute, and tracking employees is free, no extra charge needed.
You can even track the location of off-site employees with advanced features to track the exact location and when employees clock in and out in real-time. With their simple user interface monitoring your employees are easy.
Advance schedule management for employees.
No need to waste and invest hundreds of hours in fixing the schedule of thousands of employees, you can set up service based rules and available time, and software will do It automatically.
Staff no longer need to manage employees’ timesheets; the software can do it automatically; you have to print out the timesheet report and set payroll according to it.
Saved time and investment by using Findmyshift.
Track employees from a single tool.
How about pricing plans? They have a free plan for an indefinite time to justify their system. But for serious business, you have to choose other paid plans as a free plan has a maximum of 5 employees. The business plan costs you $35 per team, and the Volunteer plan costs you $26.25 per team.
6. Bitrix24.
One-stop software solutions for your company – free plan.
One of the oldest one-stop solutions for your company, whether it is scheduling, communication, CRM, Contact center, or website, Btirix24 has it all.
It has a free plan with an indefinite period to demonstrate its service.
Bitrix24 has flexibility on deployment, a hassle-free instant cloud-based solution, and complete control of on-premise deployment.
No matter which service you need, from Marketing, HR, Project Management, Customer Service, Scheduling, Telephony, Calendar, CRM, etc. It can provide you with all.
For internal group communication in a large organization, Bitrix24 has a perfect solution, i.e., intranet, chat video conference, sharing files, and all other communication tools in one place.
Whatever you need, bitrix24 can provide you.
You have a full-featured HR management system within their software like attendance management, workflow automation, work report, employee directory, and many other features.
You will also get cloud-based unlimited storage for your company documents with military-grade security.
Besides communication, they also have CRM solutions; more than 6 million organizations are using their service, and they are still growing.
Your sales team can benefit tremendously by using this CRM platform with a sales funnel, pipeline management, sales report, and a 360-degree view of the entire sales channel.
Run bitrix24 on your server.
They have two deployment solutions 1st one is cloud-based, and 2nd is on-premise-based. Cloud-based means you will get full access to all solutions; however, the software will be hosted on their clouds. On the other hand, on-premise means you will install their software on your server and get complete control.
The cloud-based solution has several plans that start from $19 per month to $159 per month. If your organization is small, you should begin with Project or Standard plan.
And on the premise plan start from $1,490 to $24,990 one-time payment based on users.
7. Appointy.
Simple scheduling software – free plan included.
Appointy is one of the simple and effective solutions for your communication process, including customer self-scheduling, intelligent automation, and more.
The free plan has some limitations, but it is enough for you to try out their service.
What type of business are you running from health & wellness, fitness, education, or medicine? It doesn’t matter; they have a perfect scheduling solution for you to suit them all.
Customers can schedule themselves whenever they want 24/7 and can fix and reschedule again repeatedly.
The long conversation is over; make it digitalized & grow.
The day of boring conversation is long gone; in a recent survey, it appears that 55% of bookings are confirmed outside of business hours.
By using their scheduling solution, you can increase your productivity more efficiently.
You will have access to powerful analytics of your with a few clicks of a button, which is automated. A dashboard represents your whole business process and can be seen at a glance, i.e., how many customers were appointed this month/week, estimated new clients, compared with the previous month’s performance, customer retention rate, and more.
And the good thing is that you can even access these valuable data from anywhere on any device, including your mobile.
Connect remotely from anywhere and securely.
Now, let’s talk about their subscription plans. They have Free, Growth, Professional, and Enterprise plans ranging from $0 to $99.99 per month. However, if billed annually, then a discount will apply automatically.
If you want to test their service before purchasing, you should use their free plan without any time limitations. But, severe businesses and large organizations should look for a Professional or Enterprise plan to take full advantage.
8. Supersaas.
Fully customizable scheduling – free forever.
More than 120,000 businesses use SuperSaaS for their online reservation scheduling more flexibly and affordably.
They have a free plan with some limited functions but no time limitation enough for you to test them out.
With SuperSaaS, you have the option to get a fully customizable online booking system to suit your needs. Clients can book themselves through the online portal without lengthy, boring conversations, thus reducing time consumption and increasing effectiveness.
After booking an appointment, the system will instantly send a customizable confirmation email and follow up with an SMS or push notification if they choose to enable this feature.
Digitalized flexible & innovative booking system.
Primarily by using this software, you will be able to reduce enough investment in staff salary. Not only that, time will save with no room for errors as everything will be done by machine, from accepting a booking to receiving payment.
If you are a personal trainer or run a consulting service, you can get a one-on-one appointment booking using this application.
If you have a website, you can easily integrate this application to start receiving a booking from the customer, or if you do not own a website, you can even integrate with social media platforms like Facebook to collect bookings.
Real-time analytics report at your fingertips.
With all those features and even more, they have a vast range of subscription plans for you. From package A to J, they have all kinds of features available. Prices range from $8 to $186 per month.
If you want to test their system before making a purchase decision, then a free plan would be best and if you are a large organization with a considerable customer base, go for a package I or J.
9. Ganttic.
Smart scheduling & resource allocation system.
Ganttic is capable of visually representing your resource planning structure to give you a more flexible and accurate view to manage and maintain.
A Free plan is available for an indefinite time to test out their services.
Using this application, any organization will be able to schedule their workflows and manage their resource effectively and efficiently.
Efficient resource planning is one of the most complex tasks for an organization, but if you can visually represent all of your resources and projects, then it becomes simpler to distribute.
Visualization of planning & management.
Within a large organization, maintaining a schedule of workflows effectively and timely is also another big challenge; thus, using this application, you will be able to maintain employees’ workflows no matter how large and complex it is.
Team members within an organization can also collaborate on their workflows between them; with a drag-and-drop easy-to-use tool, anyone can create a task and assign and edit them easily.
Have the ability to view all projects at once from a single dashboard to reduce workloads, create graphs and custom reports, and analyze projects from the same place.
Now let’s talk about their pricing plans; they have seven different subscription plans available to choose from, Pro 20 to Pro 1000, with prices ranging from $25 to $599 per month.
If you want to test their service first, then go for a free plan, as it does not have any time trial. And small organizations or firms should choose Pro 50 or 150, and large organizations may need Pro 1000.
Executive Summary.
Everything needs to be on schedule, whether your life task or business. Without tracking your job, you cannot do it on time. And in this competitive era, it is not necessary; it is essential.
In my above guide about Scheduling software, I tried to write down all I know until today. I hope this helps you a lot. Which product do you think would be best for your daily business task? Don’t forget to let me know by commenting below if you need to know further about it. Let’s discuss it.
Recommended readings on for your business from sales to marketing all tasks can be done in automation, would like to know more? Then read my other guide – “Best CRM Software,” & if you want to start a hassle-free dropshipping business from your home without any inventory holding trouble, then I recommend you to read – “Best eCommerce Platform.”