Using Online Booking Sites
Managing your time is critical – regardless of your business size. So as you think about the new year, and new beginnings, maybe it’s time to re-think how you leverage the web to manage your time – particularly how you manage the interaction between you and your clients. Online booking sites are available at low monthly fees (some are free) and it’s worth looking into them.
Here’s a quick list of the six I recently reviewed: GenBook, Acuity, Bookfresh, Setster, Clickbook, and ScheduleThing.
Soon I’ll be adding a seventh to my list: bookd.
So, to cut to the chase, now that you have links and can review their sites and prices, which is best? The answer depends on what’s most important to you. Here’s my simple breakdown:
To get the most GUI interfaces – from a badge to put on your website, to a plugin that integrates to your site, to a schedule site all on it’s own, you’ll want to look at Bookfresh. But the free account limits incoming appointments to 3 a month.
To get the one that integrates best into your sidebar so that it’s easy to have appear all throughout your WordPress site, I’d pick Setster (which I have).
When free is the most important thing – Genbook offers a solution that doesn’t limit how many users (which Acuity does). It won’t integrate into your site the same way as others will, but when free counts, it’s a good option.
If you want an overall ease of use experience, I really enjoyed using ScheduleThing and you may as well.
What sets ClickBook apart is the potential of using text messages effectively to remind clients of upcoming appointments.
And if you only have one schedule you’re managing, the cheapest “paid” account that opens up personalization is brought to you by Acuity, for only $10, rather than the traditional $19.99 that most paid accounts start off at with the others.
Have you used one? What was your take?
hitAppoint is online appointment software installed at your website and it fully integrates with WordPress including theme, users database and single sign-on.
Hi! We’d love to add a further website to your list…. http://veribook.com. We’re new, we’re free, and we’re looking forward to getting comments as to how we can improve!
What about timetrade.com?
29$ a YEAR
does seem to work
what do you think?
I’m glad you found ScheduleThing easy to use! We pride ourselves in our flexible, simple, powerful interface, and since you wrote this article we’ve made it even better. Highlights include:
-iCal integration
-PayPal integration
-An embeddable widget for your website
-Resource blackouts
-Crew-size designation
-Fully customizable notifications
…and we’re always working on more! Thanks again for your support, and check us out at http://schedulething.com for more information.
Hello Chris,
Thanks for the list and distinguishing reviews.
Cheers,
Dustin
Does anyone have feedback regarding integrating Appointy on WP?
emma – as far as I remember appointy doesn’t integrate with WP as such, you create an account with appointy on their server and the WP appointy plugin displays your schedule within an iframe within a WP page. If a user’s browser is not set to accept third party cookies then appointy will choke and request the user to enable TPcookies or access your schedule on the appointy server at something like http://yourusername.appointy.com.
Thanks for this. I was looking for a few good options and now I have a place to start.