The 6 Best Appointment Scheduling Software for Small Businesses

Appointment scheduling can be a surprisingly daunting task for small business operations; between the back-and-forth emails to agree on a meeting time and various manual booking tasks, scheduling appointments can consume invaluable time that nobody, especially smaller outfits, can afford to waste.

If you agree with that sentiment or feel intimidated by the time-draining world of scheduling, then you aren’t alone.

A whole host of appointment scheduling software has popped up to solve that exact problem, from Acuity Scheduling to Square Appointments and many other business apps all with similarly catchy names.

If there were just one option then choosing an appointment scheduling software would be easy; because there are so many of them, picking the best appointment scheduling software out of the group can be nearly as daunting as manual appointment scheduling itself. So, in that case…

What should I look for in appointment scheduling software for small businesses?

The first thing anyone should look for in appointment scheduling software is ease of use.

If you and whoever you are making an appointment with find it difficult to work with whatever software you’ve chosen, then that option should be scrapped.

Because of what an appointment scheduling software is, there isn’t really a process to go through when transferring your appointment history from one app to another. Maybe you’ll have to manually transfer your already-scheduled appointments, then you can just move on to another platform.

The best appointment scheduling software options share that friendly user interface, plus additional features like:

• Online scheduling: Online scheduling is a must-have feature for any appointment scheduling software. It allows clients to book appointments online, saving time and reducing the risk of double-booking.
• An X-day free trial: Simply put, being able to try free scheduling software lets you get a better idea of what you actually need as a part of your business operations.
• Automated reminders: Automated reminders are an essential feature that helps reduce the number of no-shows. Reminders can be sent via email or text message, and they can be customized to suit your business’s needs.
• Mobile apps: A mobile app is a great feature to have, especially for business owners who are always on-the-go. With a mobile app, you can manage appointments, send reminders, and communicate with clients from anywhere.
• Personalized email: Custom branding is an important feature for businesses that want to maintain a professional image. It allows you to customize the software’s interface with your brand’s colors, logo, and other visual elements.
• Payment integration: If your small business accepts online payments, payment integration is a must-have feature. It allows clients to pay for their appointments at the time of booking, reducing the risk of missed payments, and allows you to process payments in-platform.
• Group scheduling: If your small business offers group meetings of any sort, group scheduling is an essential feature. It allows clients to book appointments for multiple people at once, saving time and reducing the risk of confusion.

That may sound like a lot to ask for, but many of the big-name appointment scheduling software brands offer those features and more, a handful of which we’ll be going over below. From personal trainers to beauty salons and any other business types, these are the best online booking software on the market.

Here is our shortlist for the best appointment scheduling software for small businesses:

1. Setmore
2. Chili Piper
3. Simplybook.me
4. Calendly
5. Honeybook
6. Zoho Bookings

Setmore is an exceptional appointment scheduling software that streamlines appointment booking and enhances business productivity. It offers a robust platform that is simple to use, flexible, and scalable for any size of business.

With Setmore, you can easily manage your schedule, book appointments, and automate reminders, so you never miss a meeting or appointment.

One of the standout features of Setmore is its accessibility. It offers both mobile and web-based applications, which make it convenient to access your schedule and manage your appointments from anywhere.

Additionally, the platform integrates with various payment gateways, so you can collect payments directly from your clients without hassle.

The platform’s design is also very accessible, with an intuitive interface that makes it easy to navigate and customize. You can customize your booking page with your business branding, add custom fields, and set up booking policies that suit your needs.

Key Features:

• Website plugins, so people can book appointments independently from any site page.
• A booking page with reviews, to encourage new bookings based on feedback from previous customers.
• Facebook and Instagram integration, so you can get likes, comments, and new appointments directly from your social media pages.
• Virtual meetings, so your video conferencing can be done in-app and reduce the size of your tech stack.

Pricing:

Setmore has a free option which it advertises as for small business and start-ups which allows for up to four users, unlimited appointments, payment processing, a custom booking page, mobile apps, customized notifications and reminders, and more. All this together makes for an incredibly appealing plan for users on a budget.

Pro: Their “Pro” plan, starting at $12/mo, has all of the features of their free service, plus recurring payments, 2-way calendar sync, and removing Setmore’s branding from booking pages and email. However, this plan is only meant for 1-2 users, so at most it’ll cost $24/mo.

Team: The “most expensive plan”, their “Team” plan, costs $9 per user per month, and allows infinite users. That’s the only difference between the “Pro” and “Team” plan, and it doesn’t really seem like a contest between which is a better deal.

Chili Piper is a powerful sales engagement and appointment scheduling software that streamlines the process of booking sales appointments and meetings.

The appointment scheduling software integrates seamlessly with popular CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Marketo, and enables sales teams to easily book appointments with prospects and customers, while automating follow-up and reminder emails.

Chili Piper also provides detailed analytics and reporting, allowing sales teams to track performance metrics and identify areas for improvement. The software is user-friendly and easy to navigate, making it an ideal choice for businesses of all sizes.

Key Features

• Integration with CRMs, in order to make booking appointments quicker and more efficient for more customers.
• Lead distribution, based on availability, region, language, and more, to quickly respond to incoming leads.
• Analytics, to allow sales teams to track performance metrics and identify areas for improvement.

Pricing

Instant Booker: The “Instant Booker” plan, their lowest priced plan at $22.50/user/month, makes booking meetings and demos much simpler through 1-click scheduling over email, plus if the meeting doesn’t work out, there is also no-show and cancellation management included in the plan. Plus, the plan boasts a 45% faster meeting scheduling rate as a part of a case study at BuilderTrend.

Handoff: The “Handoff” plan, boasting a 15% increase in show rates at $37.50/user/month, includes all of the features of the “Instant Booker” plan, plus integrations with CRMs like Salesforce and Hubspot, round-robin based on your CRMs or custom rules, and even a browser extension to assign meetings from anywhere.

Form Concierge: The “Form Concierge” plan will run you $45/user/month, plus an additional fee based on how many inbound leads you intend to receive per month, and includes real-time lead qualification, email and SMS reminders, real-time lead and meeting routing, automatic CRM lead updating, and the ability to schedule meetings from any web form. According to Krishan Patel at Apollo, their company has seen a 300% increase in revenue and 5x more meetings scheduled since using Chili Piper, even though their team has halved in size.

Distro: The “Distro” plan, at $30/user/mo, offers automated CRM routing and assignment in Salesforce in particular, allowing you to instantly route and assign leads, qualify those leads in real time, then sort them based on custom fields of your choice.

In addition, Chili Piper offers a product bundle of the “Form Concierge” and “Distro” plans, offering a 20% reduced cost per user if you choose the bundle.

Simplybook.me is a free appointment scheduling software designed for service-based businesses, no matter the service industry.

Designed for mobile optimization, Simplybook makes sure that, wherever you or your clients are, the scheduling process is as simple and hassle-free as possible, being able to set up recurring appointments and get appointment reminders from your mobile device.

Simply define your services and providers, display their availability, and you will have clients both old and new making bookings 24/7.

Simplybook makes sure that booking process will be as smooth as possible for maximum customer satisfaction.

Key Features:

• Booking page & widget templates, to make beautiful website design achievable by anyone.
• Custom features, so you can integrate anything you could ever want into your booking page.
• Payment processing, so you can reduce the number of platforms you need to use during business hours.
• Admin & client mobile apps, so both parties of a meeting can schedule appointments and get reminders wherever they are.

Pricing:

Simplybook’s free appointment scheduling software software allows up to 50 bookings, 1 custom feature (includes things like Paypal integration to accept payments, Google Calendar integration to see upcoming appointments and avoid schedule conflicts, and other add-on services), only one employee/user, an admin app, a booking page, and a booking widget to put on your company website.

You can also choose their 14-day free trial which includes most of the features from the paid plans below and 50 bookings along with it.

Basic: The first of their paid plans, the “Basic” plan, offers up to 100 bookings, 3 of the aforementioned custom feature, 5 users, a branded client app, and the ability to accept payments online via credit card and manage appointments and sales in one system, all for $9.9/mo.

Standard: Their next plan, the “Standard” plan, ups the price to $29.9/mo and includes 500 bookings, 8 custom features, up to 15 users, coupon codes/gift cards for your clients, and, for companies in the medical industry, HIPAA privacy standards.

Multiple services plus multiplying the total bookings by five at only three times the cost is very cost-effective, not even mentioning that their pricing model isn’t dependent on the number of users.

Premium & Premium Plus: Their highest-tier plans, their “Premium” ($59.9/mo) and “Premium Plus” ($99.9/mo) plans, are very similar, catering to business needs far in excess of what may be needed.

They add the ability to remove the Simplybook.me branding from the booking page and widget, up to 2000 bookings for the “Premium” plan and 5000 for the “Premium Plus” plan, unlimited custom features, and up to 30 users and 60 users for their respective plans.

There is also an enterprise tier not listed on their website, but you’ll have to schedule a meeting to get a price quote for that plan.

As the #1 appointment scheduling software in the world, Calendly is clearly recognized as one of the best appointment scheduling software options, with over ten million total users.

Founded in 2013, Calendly has been on top of both paid and free booking software lists for over a decade.

That’s right, for over ten years. Plus, you can test-drive Calendly for free for as long as you want; of course with some limitations, but that’s to be expected of any freemium booking platform. Additionally, with the higher-tiered plans they offer, you can make use of their free trial period for a spell and see how it fits you and your team.

Calendly’s user-friendly feature suite is designed to help automate scheduling and managing appointments, plus is accessible through their mobile app on iPhone and Android devices.

Key Features:

• Single-email appointment scheduling, to cut out the back and forth emails when scheduling.
• Customizable booking page, for making bookings more personalized.
• Multiple staff calendars, so parties can manage their schedules separately.
• Automatic reminders and recurring bookings, so once you’ve set something up, you never need to touch it again.
• Website integrations, so you can make your booking page as simple as possible for clients.

Pricing:

As mentioned previously, Calendly offers a free plan that allows you to connect one calendar, create one active appointment type and the ability to schedule unlimited appointments with it, and customize your booking page & link, plus integrating with other platforms like Google Calendar, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack, and other apps.

Essentials: Their “Essentials” plan asks a mere $10 per user per month, which allows you to connect two calendars, create unlimited appointment types with unlimited appointments, create group events, and send email reminders to make sure rescheduling appointments won’t be needed if clients reschedule or someone no-shows.

Professional: Another step up, their “Professional” plan starts at $15/user/month, including the “Essentials” features plus more advanced features like creating collective event types, building automated workflows with custom email or SMS reminders, and connect to even more third party tools like Gmail, Google Analytics, Hubspot, Paypal, and dozens more.

Teams: Calendly’s second-highest-tier plan, their “Teams” plan, allows users to create round robin event types, lock and sync managed events across your team, and allows integration with Salesforce, the world’s #1 CRM (customer relationship management) software. This plan costs $16/user/mo, but you can also try it free.

Enterprise: Finally, the “Enterprise” plan, meant for teams of 30+, enables SSO (single sign-on), ensures compliance with an activity log (audit), lets you use Calendly’s Data Deletion API, and gets you expedited support in both the platform’s setup process and in any issues you may have in the future. You’ll have to talk to sales for the price, as there is no explicitly stated figure on their website.

Honeybook is an online appointment scheduling software with the features to match the big names in its field, like Acuity Scheduling or Square Appointments.

One of the best qualities of HoneyBook is its user-friendly interface, designed for maximum customer satisfaction. It’s designed with simplicity in mind, so you can quickly navigate the platform and access the features you need.

Additionally, the platform integrates seamlessly with other tools you may already be using, such as QuickBooks, Google Calendar, and Zapier.

HoneyBook also offers a range of customization options, so you can tailor the platform to your unique needs.

You can customize proposals, contracts, and invoices with your branding and use automation to send out reminders and follow-ups, saving you valuable time and resources.

Key Features:

• Clientflow management software, to keep all your client info and projects under one roof.
• Contact forms, to funnel leads from a link or your own website into HoneyBook and get notified of each new inquiry.
• Online booking, so clients can book appointments quickly and easily from wherever they may be.
• Automatic confirmations, reminders, and notifications; so a person at your company doesn’t have to spend time managing appointment updates themselves.

Pricing:

Honeybook’s pricing model is pretty simple: three plans at three price points with the option of a 7-day trial, no credit card required. Each plan can either be billed monthly or billed annually, and if you choose to bill annually, you get two months of service free.

Starter: The “Starter” plan, at $19/mo, includes unlimited clients and projects, a project pipeline for you to view your booking system from see where your projects stand, contact/intake forms which notify you of every new inquiry, integrated credit card payment processing, and much more; a surprisingly robust feature set for its price.

Essentials: The next step up, the “Essentials” plan, offers all the features of the starter plan, plus scheduling software to manage availability and let clients schedule online, automated appointment reminders and confirmations or if clients reschedule, up to two team members, standard reports, plus you can remove the “Powered by HoneyBook” text from activity emails, contact forms, and the client portal. All of these features and more are billed at $39/mo.

Premium: HoneyBook’s final plan, the “Premium” plan, costs $79/mo, including all previously mentioned features plus unlimited team members, priority customer support, multiple companies, advanced reporting (coming soon as of writing this article) and a dedicated account manager for your business.

Zoho Bookings is an online appointment scheduling software that simplifies the process of booking appointments for businesses. With its user-friendly interface, Zoho Bookings allows customers to easily schedule appointments with businesses at any time, from anywhere.

In addition, Zoho Bookings offers integration with other Zoho products, such as Zoho CRM and Zoho Invoice, making it easy for businesses to manage their appointments and billing in one place.

Key Features:

• Customization, so your booking page, emails, and domain all reflect your brand.
• Being part of the Zoho suite, so other apps (ex. CRM, email marketing, etc.) can integrate with Zoho Bookings cleanly.

Pricing:

Zoho Bookings only has two paid plans on top of their free plan, with monthly fees of $8 and $12 per user for the “Basic” and “Premium” plans respectively.

Basic: The “Basic” plan, at $8/user/mo, includes two-way calendar sync with other Zoho apps, Google, and Office 365; one-on-one service booking, online meetings through Zoom or Zoho Meeting, plus customization features for confirmations, reminders, cancelations, booking page, and booking forms.

Premium: Zoho’s “Premium” plan, at $12/user/mo, includes all of the basic plan’s features plus online payment processing, Zoho CRM sync, and 3 workspaces with room for more at $15/mo for additional workspaces; in addition, you get portal sign-up for customers, a booking page hosted in your domain, recurring group events, book resources, revenue reports, and Zoho Assist integration for scheduling remote support sessions.

So there you have it; my top picks for appointment scheduling software.

Now if you’re looking for something a little more broad which encompasses scheduling software, then I recommend you look at my top recommendations for project management software, some of which include appointment scheduling.