If you are providing services that require appointments and bookings, then you can benefit from online booking and arrangements on your website. Many WordPress booking plugins can add this functionality to your site. In this article, we will review the top free as well as paid WordPress booking plugins.
Businesses that require booking and appointments include accommodation (hotel rooms, apartments, houses, villas, rooms, etc), healthcare professionals, dentists, lawyers, beauty salons, spas, events, conferences among many others. The plugins discussed in this article will help you add online booking and appointment scheduling to your WordPress website.
Here are our top picks:
Free WordPress Booking Plugins:
Premium WordPress Booking Plugins:
Free WordPress Booking Plugins:
The free booking plugins are available in the official WordPress plugin repository. These plugins provide essential functionalities such as online appointments, client management, available time slots, notification emails, calendar, booking forms ,and some level of customization. Some of these plugins even come with payment gateway integration. You can definitely try these free plugins before switching to premium plugins.
1. Booking Calendar
Booking Calendar is perhaps the oldest WordPress booking plugin. The first beta version was released in 2009 ,and the plugin has continued to develop ever since. The plugin has more than 50,000 active installations. It works on WordPress 4.0 or higher. You will require PHP version 5.2.4 or higher to run this plugin.
Features:
- Flexible and easy to use
- Stores bookings and settings in your database so avoid the need for third-party services
- Sleek and customizable calendar designs
- Responsive design
- Booking Admin Panel with Calendar Overview and listing table
- Easy integration with Booking button and shortcode
- Booking Calendar Blocks in Gutenberg
- Timeslots bookings
- Prevent double booking
- Allow multiple bookings
- Check bookings for a day, a month, a year
How to Get Booking Calendar?
Here is the link for Booking Calendar from the Official WordPress plugin repository.
2. Bookly
Bookly is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for online booking and scheduling. It has more than 30,000 active installations. It works with WordPress 3.7 or higher. The plugin requires PHP Version 5.3.7 or higher. Bookly also has a premium version.
Features:
- Easy online scheduling
- Responsive Booking Form
- Email and SMS notification for appointments
- Option to select category, service and employee while booking
- Booking interface with easy navigation
- No coding experience to set up online bookings
- You can automate online scheduling
- Manage customer list and appointment from Admin panel
- Fully customized booking form
- Multi-language support with WPML integration
- Intuitive admin area
How to Get Bookly?
Here is the link for Bookly from the Official WordPress Plugin Repository.
3. Pinpoint Booking System
Pinpoint Booking System is a feature-rich WordPress plugin. It works with WordPress 4.0 or higher. You can add more payment gateways with paid add-ons.
Features:
- AJAX booking calendar with nice and clean interface
- Intuitive administration area
- WooCommerce Integration
- Clients can view availability and book accordingly
- Responsive design
- Display data as per the timezone of the customer
- Clients can select booking period in hours
- Sidebar with optional booking details
- You can limit the minimum or maximum booking period
- You can synchronize with Google Calendar, iCalendar, and Airbnb
- You can add, approve, edit or reject a booking request
How to Get Pinpoint Booking System?
Here is the link for Pinpoint Booking System from the Official WordPress Plugin repository.
4. Appointment Booking Calendar
Appointment Booking Calendar is an appointment calendar plugin that allows you to accept online bookings. The plugin has received more than 5,000 active installations. It works with WordPress 3.0.5 or higher.
Features:
- You can define time slots as per availability
- The Booking Form is connected with PayPal Payment page
- You can define appointment booking capacity
- Notification email after booking
- Confirmation email with details of booking
- You can grant ‘Editor Access Level’ to some users for booking calendar
- Export appointments
- Captcha validation
- Printable list of bookings
- You can edit the text of notification and confirmation emails
- You can define product name, currency, and price for booking with PayPal
How to Get Appointment Booking Calendar?
Here is the link for Appointment Booking Calendar from the Official WordPress plugin repository.
5. Booking Ultra Pro
Booking Ultra Pro is a WordPress Appointment plugin with a great suite of features. The plugin has more than 4,000 active installations. It works with WordPress 3.0.1 or higher.
Features:
- Seamless booking experience in the front end
- 4-step booking experience
- Staff members can access their own profile
- You can connect to Google Calendar
- Easy to use and customizable
- PayPal integration
- Client and Admin online appointment
- Appointments payments
- Reschedule Appointments
- Customizable emails
- Time slots
- Padding time
- Unlimited Services
- Admin Calendar
How to Get Booking Ultra Pro?
Here is the Link for Booking Ultra Pro from the Official WordPress Plugin repository.
Premium Booking Plugins:
If your business depends on online bookings and appointments then you should consider investing in a premium booking plugin. The key advantages of a premium plugin are reliable payment gateway integration, unlimited number of services and staff members, SMS notifications, extended customizations and premium support. We are now going to discuss the top premium WordPress plugins for online bookings and appointments. These are one of the most reliable and feature-rich premium booking plugins in the market.
1. Amelia
Amelia is a well known premium plugin for appointment bookings. This is an automated booking solution. Amelia is perfect for a variety of businesses that rely on online booking and appointments. These include Law Consultants, Spa salons, Beauty Salons, Gym, Private Clinics, Repair centers, etc.
Features:
- Supports SMS notifications and SMS text messages
- Custom service schedule for each service and employee
- Custom fields for Booking form
- WooCommerce Integration
- Google Calendar Synchronization
- Smooth and easy front-end booking interface
- Comprehensive attendance management
- Powerful search feature for bookings
- Calendar, list and catalog view
- Multiple employees management
- Multiple Locations Management
- Email notification with four configurable gateways; SMTP, standard PHP sendmail, Mailgun API, and WP Mail
- Supports PayPal and Stripe payment gateways
How to Get Amelia?
Here is the link for Amelia from its official website.
Pricing:
The Basic subscription for 1 domain costs $59/year. The Pro subscription for 3 domains costs $109/year. The Developer subscription for unlimited domain is priced at $249/year.
2. Booked
Booked is one of the most affordable premium plugins you can find on Envato Market. The Plugin has registered more than 9,200 sales. With included add-ons and a promise of lifetime updates, Booked is one strong contender for appointment booking solution.
Features:
- Unlimited calendars with time slots and custom fields
- Each calendar assigned to a ‘booking agent’ user for management
- Guests can book appointments without registration
- Customized time slots
- Built-in color picker to allow numerous color choices for Calendar
- Custom fields including text fields, paragraph fields, drop downs, checkboxes, and radio buttons
- Front end Calendar shortcode and Widget
- Powerful Appointment management in the backend
- Responsive design
- Customers can manage their own appointments
- Customers can add appointments to Google Calendar
How to Get Booked?
Here is the link for Booked from CodeCanyon.
Pricing:
The Regular Licence is available for $49. You can extend support to 12 months for an additional $16.50.
3. Calendarista
Calendarista is an online booking system for WordPress that claims to 10x your bookings with its faster and efficient online booking experience. Calendarista is an upgraded version of the popular plugin Booki.
Features:
- Appointments with calendar view and search filters
- Two-way sync with Google Calendar
- Supports PayPal, Stripe, WooCommerce and 2Checkout
- Customizable email notifications for customers and admin
- You can limit bookings by number of seats
- Group bookings available
- Booking cancellations with threshold buffer
- Google maps support with departure and destination fields
- 10 different booking modes for different businesses
- Customizable front end
- You can group multiple services in a dropdown list
How to get Calendarista?
Here is the link for Calendarista on CodeCanyon and you can also visit its official website.
Pricing:
The Regular Licence for Calendarista costs $69. The 12 months extended support costs $24.
4. BirchPress
BirchPress Scheduler is a popular WordPress appointment booking plugin. A wide variety of businesses from sectors like Health & Wellness, Professional Services, Education, Salon & Beauty, Healthcare, Auto & Home services, Fitness & Recreation, Room scheduling among others use BirchPress Scheduler.
Features:
- You can optimize booking forms for responsive themes
- Automated email notifications for staff and clients
- Custom email messages
- Supports minimum time requirement for booking
- You can set time period for advance bookings
- Custom booking form
- Page redirection after booking
- Group Booking
- WooCommerce Integration
- Supports PayPal and Authorize.net
- Shortcodes for easy embedding
How to Get BirchPress Scheduler?
Here is the link for BirchPress Scheduler from its official website.
Pricing:
The Personal Plan costs $99 for a single site. The Business Plan costs $199. The Business Plus Plan costs $249.
5. Team Booking
Team Booking claims to be the only plugin to allow setting availability from Google Calendar. This is a very flexible solution with extensive interaction with Google Calendar. The plugin has registered more than 4,900 sales so far. It is also one of the most affordable premium plugins available for appointment booking.
Features:
- When you create an event in Google Calendar, it becomes available on your website for booking
- Timezone selection via frontend
- Availability management for each service provider and co-worker
- Unlimited services
- Three main classes; single appointments, events with tickets, and unscheduled services
- Payments with PayPal and Stripe
- Incremental Pricing, Discount coupons and campaigns
- Approval system for Admin and Service provider
- Cancellation feature for customers
- Customizable registration forms
- Email notifications with customizable emails
- Multiple co-workers can make availability plans
How to get Team Booking?
Here is the link for Team Booking from CodeCanyon.
Pricing:
The regular license costs $28. You can purchase extended support for $8.63.
So this was our look at the best WordPress plugins for appointment booking. The free plugins are definitely worth a try. We recommend testing a free plugin before purchasing a premium plugin as you will get an idea of how the booking system works and what your business actually needs. In the long term, investing in a premium booking plugin is a wise decision. We hope this article helped you in finding a good booking plugin to start with. Do voice your opinion in the comments.
