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Top WordPress Booking Plugins: Which One Should You Choose?

When you’re launching your new WordPress website, it can be very easy to overlook the importance of booking plugins. Booking plugins allow you to manage appointments and payments all in one place, eliminating the need to create and pay for multiple accounts with various platforms and applications. Read on for an in-dep

Alejandro Rioja
Alejandro Rioja
Updated 8 min read
TL;DR

Read on for an in-depth look at some of the best WordPress booking plugins out there, as well as how to choose which ones are right for your needs!

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Amelia

The Amelia plugin allows you to seamlessly add booking capabilities to your website without any additional work. 

It’s an intuitive system, and its plugins are regularly updated to ensure it remains compatible with various devices, browsers, and hosting environments. 

I highly recommend Amelia if you’re looking for a booking plugin that doesn’t require much effort or upkeep. It currently has a rating of 4.7 on capture.

Features

Customized schedule for services

Use full planning flexibility with the user-defined worklist feature. Each service and employee combination has its own set of working hours and breaks.

Recurring Appointments Scheduling

This feature ensures your clients will turn into your returning clients by allowing them to plan repeating arrangements.

Pick whether your arrangement repeats every day, week after week, month to month, or yearly. Keep up with your clients’ satisfaction regularly.

WooCommerce Integration

Manage your taxes, invoices, and payments using the easy-to-use Amelia Wocommerce native integration.

Booking Form Custom Fields

Build the booking structure to match your business best – arrange the custom fields (checkboxes, text areas, and so forth) to gather any extra essential data from your clients.

Native Zoom Integration

You can connect your Zoom account to Amelia with a click of a button. Customers can now book appointments and events online and receive links in notifications to access them.

This integration can save you a lot of time and reduce no-shows.

Integrated with Google Meet

Allow customers to schedule online virtual meetings, online book events, and receive instant confirmation and access links in Google Meet notifications.

Pricing

$59 for 1 domain a year.

WooCommerce Bookings

With WooCommerce, you can set up a booking service that is fully integrated with your online store.

Your customers will be able to choose from various room options, check availability and make payments securely without ever leaving your site.

Plus, since all of your customer data is stored in one central location, getting up and running only takes a few minutes.

And with step-by-step documentation available on their website, building an online booking facility has never been easier!

Features

Book One-on-One Appointments or Multi-person Events

This feature allows you to set the number of participants you want. You can limit booking and make it so that you can attend to your clients one at a time.

You could also have more than one person allowed to make reservations.

Offer Special Pricing for Groups, Days, or Individuals

This plugin allows you to offer your clients or people booking multiple slots discounts.

You can reduce the prices for early birds; you could increase the price on certain days or run a kids’ special discount. Freely customize your pricing as you like.

Show Availability in the Customer’s Time Zone

Whether you host a service online or you’re shipping goods to clients, this plugin lets you show your time availability in the client’s local time zone.

So, they can book a time that’d be convenient for them. It doesn’t matter if the bookings come from San Francisco, New Zealand, or Brazil; they’d always be within the hours you have set.

Require Confirmation, Offer Free Cancellations – It’s All up to You

Easily customize and allow your clients to cancel their bookings when they want. You can also set confirmations to allow yourself time to review bookings before approving them as official.

Reminders can also be sent out to mitigate no-show-up issues.

Pricing

$249 Billed annually.

Bookly

Bookly is a free WordPress plugin that lets you set up and accept bookings on your websites.

The plugin is easily customizable as it allows you to set your fees, prices, and currency. You can also decide how long you’ll keep bookings on hold.

Also, Bookly allows you to add confirmation messages and send reminders before events occur.

You can also manage your client base, services, booking calendar and automate your reservation system.

Features

  1. You get various settings for SMS and email notifications
  2. Bookly can be customized for any period of service from 5 minutes to 7 days
  3. Ability to create an unlimited number of booking forms on your website
  4. Fast online booking with an intuitive form that thousands of companies have tested
  5. It only takes a few minutes to book the service you provide

Pricing

Regular price: $0.

Pro price: $89.

Booking Calendar

The booking calendar is a simple plugin that you can use on your website to give your visitors a fast and straightforward way to book time with you or someone in your organization.

When they click on an available date, the clients will be taken to a simple form where they can fill out all of their details, pay securely online and send an email to confirm.

Their name will also appear on a waitlist until you’ve confirmed their booking – so only those people who confirm will be added to your calendar.

Features

  1. Customizable Form and Calendar
  2. Intuitive and Powerful Admin Panel
  3. Online Payment
  4. Email Templates
  5. Advanced Costs and Rates
  6. Search Availability
  7. Multilingual Option

Pricing

Free.

StartBooking

StartBooking allows your clients the opportunity to plan arrangements, pursue classes, and make changes to their appointments straightforwardly on your site.

Everything related to booking on your website can be customized according to your needs.

Moreover, you don’t have to worry about updates and compatibility because StartBooking makes sure that they remain compatible with other plugins.

You can change fonts, colors, styles, and designs without breaking things. It also has an easy-to-use interface so that you won’t get stuck somewhere along the way.

Features

  1. Scheduling & Appointments
  2. Classes & Group Bookings
  3. Customer Relationship Management
  4. Powerful Integrations
  5. Online Payments
  6. Create customer accounts
  7. SMS notifications

Pricing

Limited: $0/month.

Basic: $25/month.

Business: $75/month.

BirchPress

The BirchPress Scheduler plugin is a popular way to add and manage bookings on your website easily. 

From managing one-off classes at your studio or gym to monthly recurring appointments with clients or patients — it’s a great all-in-one booking tool!

You can adapt it to fit your needs with simple controls and customization options. It offers a variety of payment gateways and integration with popular apps like Google Calendar(only in the business plan), giving you room to improve as your business grows.

It’s perfect for service-based businesses that would benefit from easy scheduling tools on their sites like massage therapists, holistic wellness providers, spas, salons, and hair salons, to name a few.

Features

  1. Calendar Sync
  2. Email notifications and reminders
  3. Accepts Online Payment
  4. It is Developer Friendly
  5. Customizable Booking Form

Pricing

Personal: $99/per site.

Business: $199/per site.

Business+: $249/per site.

What I Looked At To Find The Best WordPress Booking Plugins

Many Booking plugins are available in the WordPress plugin directory, so it’s hard to find what you want with ease.

I had an idea of what I was looking for in terms of functionality and features, so that narrowed down my choices quite a bit.

In addition to that, there were quite a few things to consider when picking out which booking plugins were better than others.

Payment options for appointments 

I wanted to use a plugin compatible with my favorite payment processors, including PayPal and Stripe. This would make setting up appointment payments much easier and less complicated.

A customizable calendar 

The ability to customize my online calendar was extremely important to me. I wanted to look professional and incorporate other features into my website. This way, it’s easier for clients to keep track of upcoming appointments and book with ease.

Mobile-friendly 

This was a necessity. My website must be mobile-friendly, which means it should be viewed properly on any device. I wanted my clients to schedule appointments on their smartphones and tablets too.

Bottom line

When it comes to finding WordPress plugins specifically designed for booking your services online, dozens of options are available.

By exploring all of the options we’ve discussed, you’ll be able to find a combination of plugins that meets your unique needs. The first step is to look at each plugin individually and see what features they offer.

Some plugins may have everything you need; others require purchasing premium add-ons.

Let me know in the comments below which  Booking plugin you’d be choosing.

Liked the post? Read more to learn about the tools that could help your business.


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