Most popular online appointment scheduling solutions are mainly available through hosted SaaS solutions, like MindBody, Appointlet, Setmore, Acuity and Appointy (probably many others as well). These solutions work great and if you don’t mind giving away control over your customer data, emails and paying a recurring monthly fee (which might go up over time), we recommend you to go for it.
However, if you want to have Appointments fully integrated into your WordPress website, you should use a proper native WordPress plugin that works on your server. You will have a lot more control over your customer data, will be able to fully match booking form styling with your site’s design and integrate any payment gateway or service.
Here is a list of 5 best WordPress appointment booking plugins:
1. WooCommerce Appointments
Probably a bit biased, since we developed it, but we strongly feel it is the best WordPress appointment booking plugin you can currently buy. It has 2-way Google Calendar synchronization, amazing availability filters and dedicated staff management. It’s built on top of WooCommerce and pretty much all WooCommerce extensions work with it.
2. WooCommerce Bookings
Plugin allows you to offer bookings for vast variety of services, including rentals. It is not focused on appointments only and is thus very flexible and offers a lot of availability rules, cost management and display options. As Appointments, it’s built on top of WooCommerce and pretty much all WooCommerce extensions work with it.
3. Bookly
Plugin is fast, touch optimized and has a clear booking process. Though not a native WooCommerce extension, it still integrates with it as well as with Google Calendar. Design is simple and easy to use.
4. BirchPress
BirchPress Scheduler plugin was designed for small businesses that want to accept bookings on their site. It is integrated with WooCommerce and Google Calendar, but doesn’t offer native WooCommerce support.
5. Appointments+
This plugin has been on the market for some time now and is thus highly ranked in WordPress directory. It is a powerful, flexible and feature-rich plugin that allows you to accept, set and manage your bookings on your site.
Comparison table (Updated 03.18.2020)
- Appointment Pluggins
- WooCommerce Appointments
- WooCommerce Bookings
- WordPress Bookly
- WordPress BirchPress
- WordPress Booked
Built on WooCommerce
It is WordPress appointment booking plugin built on top of WooCommerce, so you can use all WooCommerce features and extensions, without compromising your shop's integrity. You can accept all payment gateways WooCommerce supports.
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Quick Setup
Plugin is very simple to use and install. It works fast and no programming knowledge or training for staff is required.
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Extra Form Fields New!
Add-on fields (extra fields like checkboxes, options, inputs, color swatches and uploads) are included with Appointments. Each add-on field can provide additional cost and duration. You can also reduce appointment cost and duration with each field if you want.
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2-way Google Calendar sync
Synchronization works both ways. Events from your Google calendar will be automatically synced with your site and vice-versa. Staff can also sync 2-ways to their own Google calendar with their appointments only.
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Staff Management & Login
Assign multiple staff to appointments, manage calendars for each employee and allow them to login and set their availability however they like.
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Flexible Availability Rules
Set custom availability for each calendar date, day or hour and set breaks for holidays. Set priority for each availability rule and override global availability for product and staff.
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Flexible Capacity Rules
Increase or decrease available places for specific slot. Accept more customers, when you can or decrease available capacity when you are too busy.
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Flexible Pricing Rules
Set custom pricing rules that for any date, day, hour or combination of both. Also set pricing that is different for each staff or quantity booked.
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Timezone Conversion New!
Available time slots are automatically converted to vistior's timezone. Timezone can also be changed manually. Customer will see appointments in their selected timezone (in emails, orders, account,...), whereas staff will always see appointments in site's timezone. See a demo →
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REST API New!
Appointments plugin is fully integrated with the WordPress and WooCommerce REST API. This allows all Appointments data to be read using requests in JSON format. WooCommerce REST API Authentication method is used and standard HTTP verbs which are understood by most HTTP clients.
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Extended / Reduced Duration
Offer extended duration with add-on fields. You can extend duration for months, days, hours or minutes and also offer reduced duration for selected options. Schedule appointments for multiple days at a time.
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Charge for Service Delivery
You can apply custom shipping and delivery costs, based on location of your customer. Use default WooCommerce shipping zones that automates service delivery cost calculation.
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Scheduling window, Lead time
Set how much in advance customers can schedule an appointment. Scheduling Window prevents scheduling too far in advance.
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Padding / Buffer time
Specify how many days, hours or minutes of padding (additional time) you need between appointments. Useful if you need extra time to prepare for next session.
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Confirm / Cancel / Reschedule New!
Allow you customers to cancel or reschedule their appointments without your assistance. You can also require staff approval before appointments are confirmed and paid for by the customer.
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Insert as Shortcode
Insert your appointment forms wherever you want (blocks, widgets, pages, posts,..) with a simple WordPress shortcode.
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Multilingual / Multi-currency
Use WooCommerce Appointments plugin with the best-known multilingual plugins such as Loco, MultilingualPress, WPML, qTranslate or Polylang.
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Developer Friendly
Code developed according to WordPress and WooCommerce standards. Clean, commented with hooks for developers to easily make customizations.
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White Label
Customize the plugin to your brand by changing primary calendar color inside Customizer. Our brand isn't outlined anywhere in admin or front.
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Conclusion
WordPress appointment booking is clearly on a rise and if you want to offer appointment booking on your site, it should be a no-brainer to choose a native WordPress plugin for the job. We offered a curated list of best appointment booking plugin, so you can decide for yourself, which one will work best for you.
I’ve checked out most of these, and for my money, WooCommerce Appointments reigns supreme. The set up is super easy, the tech support is extremely responsive, and I just love the way the theme functions on my site. If you have a client or a website that requires a Booking function, I highly recommend WooCommerce Appointments.
Thanks for the kind words. We’ll make sure to not disappoint you, Daryle.
Hi! Does it support time zones for both customers and the company’s website team?
Customers can choose their own timezone and it will show times in their own timezone everywhere (site, account, emails etc.). Staff and admin see the times in site’s timezone. We’ll shortly add option for staff to choose their timezone the same way customers do.