For WordPress users, handling bookings and appointments is all too easy nowadays. All you need is to get your hands on a booking plugin.
They’re everywhere, and if you want to get the most out of a booking plugin for your WordPress website, you need to take a closer look at its features. You need to find out what it can do for the business you’re running.
If you need help finding an ideal WordPress booking and appointments plugin, this post will come to your rescue.
Here, you will learn nine useful WordPress appointments and bookings plugins. This way, you don’t need to worry about these things and can focus on attracting new customers.
1. Booking Calendar
It may be one of the oldest booking plugins for WordPress. But make no mistake: Booking Calendar is still as relevant today and remains one of the greats!
The free WordPress booking plugin version lets you accept basic bookings and appointments from your site. Block out dates and times you’re unavailable so you can accommodate clients whenever you’re ready.
The premium version (currently $31.6 at a 60% discount) lets you get more out of your appointments. Aside from the ability to create unlimited booking calendars, the higher plans allow you to accept payments and set season filters to modify availability.
2. StartBooking
StartBooking is the right appointment booking WordPress plugin for those after a complete booking form tool.
With it, you’ll have no trouble adding booking forms to any section of your site. Add them as blocks from your Gutenberg editor, edit the layout and colours, and you’re ready!
What makes it unique is that this booking plugin allows you to modify your entries. So after you add available time slots, multiple users and services, and more, you can edit away! You can adjust it any way you want to meet your business needs.
You can also add different services your business offers, complete with their descriptions and prices. People can then schedule appointments for the services that interest them–they can even book multiple appointments in a single checkout!!
This appointment booking plugin has a free forever plan for WordPress integration, as well as PayPal and Stripe integrations (for accepting payments).
The paid plans (starting at $25/month) let you create unlimited services, packages and bundles (to help push more sales), group bookings, and much more!
3. BirchPress Appointment Booking Calendar
If you want to step up your game with advanced WordPress booking plugins, it’s a smart move to turn to BirchPress Appointment Booking Calendar.
It has everything you need from a professional online booking system–create booking forms that sync with your preferred calendar, send notifications to customers regarding their appointments, and request payment to confirm bookings.
Your site’s visitors can easily check availability, make bookings on your site, and then pay for them using their credit cards or PayPal accounts. What’s more is that you can sync Outlook, Android, Google Calendar sync, and more with the plugin’s calendar!
BirchPress has a free version that you can use out of the gate. But its paid plans make this one of the pricier appointment booking WordPress plugins in this list, starting at $99 for its basic features.
Advanced features like booking cancellations, redirecting to a page after booking, setting booking availability for a particular time, and others will cost you $199.
On the upside, this appointing booking system is also built with developers in mind. They can create custom functionalities that best fit their business needs using action hooks and filters.
4. WooCommerce Booking & Appointment
If you’re in the e-commerce business and offering services on top of products, you’ll like WooCommerce Booking & Appointment.
The plugin works if you want customers or prospects to book an appointment with you or your customer service. You can also use it to sell subscription and bundled products on your online store by letting customers book for it.
This WooCommerce Bookings plugin also connects with multiple vendors (WC Vendor, Dokan, etc.)so customers can set appointments with them through your site.
Before they can book, you can set the plugin to collect the partial or full payment by connecting payment gateways compatible with WooCommerce to confirm their appointment.
This enables you to worry less about not getting paid and more on how you can help your customers.
Lastly, it has a two-way (built-in) feature of syncing Google Calendar that puts it above the rest. And other than letting you accept short bookings and longer tours, it also allows you to set custom time slots. Plus, you can customise it to suit your WordPress theme.
The plugin is available for $199/month with basic features. If you have more than one store, you can purchase its higher plans starting at $299/year for five (5) sites and includes vendor and WooCommerce subscription integration.
5. WP Simple Booking Calendar
This booking plugin is like its name suggests: a simple WordPress plugin that works as a booking calendar.
To get the ball rolling with WP Simple Booking Calendar, all you need is a shortcode to start creating a calendar that you can add to a post or page.
What sets it apart is that it’s a straightforward booking plugin. It’s clean and simple, and it won’t confuse you with too many features.
You can then connect your iCalendar feeds with the plugin to align your schedule across all platforms. The availability you set up here will reflect on your calendar and will appear on sites like Airbnb and Google Calendar.
Its Search Widget feature allows customers to find products and services from your site that they can book. This makes searching what they’re looking for much easier.
Finally, its customer support ensures that any issue you encounter with the plugin, from bugs to setting up the plugin on your site, will b e resolved quickly.
You get all these features from the plugin for just $39/year. For more sites, you can sign up for its Business ($69/year for five sites) or Develop ($139/year for unlimited sites) plans.
6. Easy Appointments
This WordPress booking plugin is known for its flexibility in managing bookings and appointments. It’s a promising fact that it’s free, too!
With Easy Appointments, it’s easy-peasy to add and customise appointment booking forms to any post or page on your WordPress site.
Create your business workflow in the plugin so customers can only schedule appointments on days and times when you or your team are available.
Upon booking, customers will receive an email notification and follow-up emails regarding the appointment. The plugin’s Google Calendar sync enables you and your secretary to keep track of the bookings conducted from your plugin.
You can also add custom fields, multiple services, locations, and workers to your entries. It even sends customisable email notifications your way!
As an open-source plugin, you can download it straight from the website and upload it to your site at no cost to you.
Despite this, Easy Appointments is constantly updated by its developers, thanks to its vibrant community of passionate users.
7. WPForms
If you want a user-friendly WordPress appointment booking form plugin for beginners, you can have it with WPForms.
It may be a contact form plugin. But you can also use it to make custom booking forms. Thanks to Zapier. This means it also has Google Calendar integration to help organise your schedule, among others.
It features a drag-and-drop builder that lets you create whatever form you have in mind within minutes. Add fields or options that you want customers to fill out and answer to learn more about them.
WPForm’s smart conditional logic also enables you to create branching paths to customise the user experience. They can progress through the form based on their answers so you can increase conversions and engagement.The plugin’s free plan lets you access its basic functionalities but without the Zapier integration. This is only available in the Prop plan ($199.5/year) and above.
8. Amelia
Amelia is a very powerful automated booking specialist as it caters to all types of business across all industries.
First, customise the services you want people to book on your website. Filter the times and days of the week that each service is available. Add fields like text area, radio buttons, and others to customise your booking calendar.
You can also create recurring booking schedules for services that require multiple appointments. This saves you and your customers from booking appointments one at a time.
Its vast variety of native integrations (Zoom, Google Meet, WooCommerce) and synchronisations (Google Calendar, Outlook) lets you provide more personalised appointments with prospects and manage bookings more efficiently.
You can use it to take care of your customers with SMS notifications to help you. From here, all your customers need to do is go to your site, book appointments, and pay for them online (via PayPal, Stripe, or Mollie).
Other features include the ability to manage multiple employees and locations, group appointment bookings, and others.
It comes with a free version. But if you’re past being a small business and you’re now on the receiving end of too many visitors, it looks like you could use its Basic plan ($79/year).
9. Creative Minds Booking Calendar
Create Minds Booking Calendar plugin may not be yours for free. But its advanced online system is worth the price.
This tool can have your back as the ideal scheduling plugin. If you’re scheduling system is messed up, you can use it to create many responsive front-end calendars with different time slots, set the number of seats, and more!
Its intuitive calendar interface also entices more people to book appointments with you. You can add the calendar on any part of your web page to get more responses.
Its User Interactions features are what makes this plugin stand out. You can require customers to discuss the booking with your first before finalising it.
There’s also an option for you to rebook appointments if an emergency comes up. Upon changing the dates, the tool will send a notification to the client about the change.
This WordPress event calendar plugin costs $49/year for a single site. For at least five (5) sites, get its Advanced plan ($69/year) with payment integrations.
10. Salon Booking System
This plugin is the best WordPress booking plugin for salon owners. It helps automate appointment bookings so you can focus on giving customers the best experience.
First, you can create rules on how clients can schedule appointments with your shop. Choose the best days and times that customers can make reservations with specific staff members and services in your salon.
To confirm the appointment, the plugin lets you receive full payment or deposit via Stripe or PayPal. It also automatically cancels unpaid reservations to free up your schedule for customers who will actually pay before their sessions.
Once the appointment has been finalised, customers will receive an email or SMS notification via the plugin so they won’t forget it.
Other features include the ability to collect feedback, create discount coupons, and others.
The Salon Booking System plugin costs €69/year for the Basic plan, which includes all the features above.
However, the Business plan (€79/year) is where the money’s at.
It lets you manage bookings much easier thanks to its app. It allows you and your team members to view upcoming online reservations to help you schedule the weeks ahead.
11. MotoPress Hotel Booking Plugin
If you’re renting out properties or in the hospitality industry, this MotoPress plugin for WordPress is just what you need.
Unlike other plugins in this list, you can showcase photos of your properties for rent. This enables you to present your hotel, villa, or cabin in the best way possible to encourage more people to book their stay there.
You can also set up the plugin to filter the types of properties prospective guests want to choose from. This enables them to find what they’re looking for, resulting in higher conversions.
Another cool feature is the ability to set up seasonal prices to your properties. Increase prices during peak seasons and lower them during non-peak seasons. Use this to maximise your sales and revenue.
The plugin is available for $99/year. Aside from the features mentioned above, you can adjust rates based on the amenities available in the property and length of stay.
Final thoughts regarding the best WordPress appointment plugin
Booking plugins for your WordPress site can do wonderful things for you. They can help unload your burden at work regarding bookings and appointments.
Let’s put it this way:
Imagine yourself as a dentist, business coach, restaurateur, or similar. You need to organise your schedule and make reservations and appointments via phone calls.
But instead of talking on the phone all day and hunting down leads, why not enable your website to accept bookings using any of the plugins above?
This way, all your customers need to do is visit the site and schedule an appointment. You will receive a notification via email, which you can confirm. It’s that easy!
Because they can automate the booking process, you can streamline and cause your operations to go faster. And with them, you can pay attention to other aspects of your business!
