Getting a table at a popular restaurant often requires an appointment. So does visiting a physician or signing up for a workout session at your local fitness center.
The good news is that booking such services has gotten a lot easier in the past few years. Customers no longer need to make a phone call, speak to a business representative, and jot down the details of their reservation with a pen and paper.
With a WordPress website, you have the power to pick from a wide range of booking plugins that make it easy for customers to make an appointment in just a few clicks.
If you’re running a business that requires customers to book a reservation, the list of WordPress booking plugins we cover below will help you find the best fit for your needs.
No matter what type of WordPress business website with a booking plugin you’re building, the WordPress.com plugin-enabled plan offers first-rate managed hosting. From unlimited premium WordPress themes and world-class security to 24/7 support from WordPress experts and complete freedom to install third-party themes and plugins, you get all the help you need to grow your business.
Why should I use online bookings?
By offering online bookings through your WordPress.com site, you can create a more streamlined experience for you and your website visitors. Here are the top three advantages to using an online booking system:
1. Greater convenience for customers
Because online bookings are available 24 hours a day, customers aren’t restricted to making appointments solely during your operating hours. They can navigate to your site and complete a booking whenever they’d like. Because booking tools generally show users all available time slots within a specific period, it’s also easier for customers to choose the appointment time that best fits with their schedule.
2. Decreased administrative work
From the back-and-forth process of trying to find an available time slot that suits you and your customer, to capturing all their information and manually sending a confirmation email, taking appointments by phone can be a time-intensive endeavor. Online bookings help cut down on phone calls and administrative work so you can focus your time and energy on other efforts.
3. Reduced no-shows
With automated confirmations and reminders, an online booking option can help make sure customers remember their appointments and show up on time — a clear benefit for both parties.
Which companies should use online booking tools?
Many different industries leverage online booking solutions. Here are a few examples of companies that currently offer online booking options on their business websites:
- Clinics
- Consulting services
- Financial services (i.e., CPA or financial advisor)
- Formalwear or bridal shops
- Hotels
- Interior decor/design venues
- Law offices
- Personal trainers
- Private lessons providers (i.e., music teacher or dance instructors)
- Real estate offices
- Restaurants
- Salons
- Spas
What to Look for in a WordPress Booking Plugin
It’s easy to think of implementing a WordPress booking plugin as adding a simple calendar combined with a contact form, but that’s not the whole story. It depends on other factors like the nature of your business and the complexity of the service being booked.
For instance, a dental clinic could have multiple dentists with their own unique schedules. Similarly, a gym may need to display specific times and workshops being offered, with limited space in each class.
Therefore, it’s important to take a closer look at the requirements of your business and match them with particular features provided by WordPress booking plugins. By doing this, you’ll get all of the functionality and flexibility necessary to strengthen your business. Here are the essentials that you need to look out for:
- An interface that allows users to make reservations from any device
- The ability to accept payments or remove payment processing as needed
- The ability to list multiple people/services with their own separate schedules
- An interface on which customers can view and modify their reservations online
- Extensive time and date-based customization, such as excluding holidays or setting break-time between appointments
- The ability to embed the online booking form into any area of your website
- A searchable and filterable booking management interface on the backend
- The capability to send email notifications and reminders to both customers and admins throughout the booking process
There are a lot more features to consider depending on the type of WordPress booking plugin you’re looking at, but the ones listed above will give you a good starting point.
It’s completely fine if some of these features don’t apply to your business, in which case you can exclude them. Smaller businesses, for example, may only need a bare-minimum, free calendar to book appointments that do not require any payment. In contrast, bigger companies may need advanced features.
Best WordPress Booking Plugins
We’ve compiled a list of the best WordPress booking plugins to make it easy for you to understand the features of each and make an informed decision. So let’s dive in.
BirchPress
BirchPress is a premium WordPress appointment booking plugin that’s great for collecting PayPal and credit card payments for reservations. In addition to Paypal integration, you can also accept payments via other options such as those offered via its WooCommerce integration.
BirchPress makes it easy to schedule and manage appointments from your WordPress dashboard. With BirchPress, you can also block holidays and other days throughout the year when you don’t plan to be available.
Key features of BirchPress include:
- Embed booking calendar anywhere on your website with shortcodes
- Integration with Outlook, Google Calendar, Android, and iPhone to exchange appointment data
- Send email reminders and notifications when someone books, edits, or cancels a reservation
- Customize appointments by setting up sign-up forms as needed
- Developer-friendly and allows advanced customization
WooCommerce Bookings
When building an online store with WordPress, the WooCommerce plugin is the obvious choice. Not only is the core plugin free, but it can also be extended with several extensions.
One of these extensions is WooCommerce Bookings, a premium product that allows you to provide bookings based on dates or times. You have the option to accept appointments free of charge or enable payment processing.
If you’re running a website that already uses the WooCommerce plugin, WooCommerce Bookings is probably your best option. It’s also a clean and simple extension for WordPress beginners. You can stick with the modern and elegant layout it has by default, or style it with CSS.
Key features of WooCommerce Bookings include:
- Filterable dashboard in WordPress to manage and update bookings
- Limiting the number of people who can make appointments
- Setting up discounts for a limited number of reservations
- Approve, reject and control when the bookings are available to customers
- Seamless integration with WooCommerce, one of the most commonly used e-commerce plugins, allowing you to manage everything in the same admin panel.
- Setting up fixed time slots so the customers decide based on slots you choose
- You can use it with other WooCommerce extensions to add more features. For example, more fields can be added to the booking form with the Product Add-Ons extension.
If you’re using WordPress.com, you can purchase and activate WooCommerce Bookings right from your dashboard.
WooCommerce Appointments
WooCommerce Appointments is another premium WordPress booking plugin that integrates with WooCommerce. It’s similar to WooCommerce Bookings, except that the pricing is more affordable and it comes from another company — BookingWP.
WooCommerce Appointments offers some great features, the most prominent of which are integrations with Google Calendar and WooCommerce. This means that you can take payments from customers and sync the bookings with your previously configured Google Calendar. Reservations can also be accepted without any charge.
Key features of WooCommerce Appointments include:
- Email notifications and reminders automatically sent to customers
- Easy for developers to white-label and make code customizations
- Supports shortcodes to insert booking forms anywhere on your website.
- Two-way syncing with Google Calendar. This means you can edit an appointment in Google Calendar or in WordPress. The change will be reflected in both places.
- Integration with most of the commonly used WooCommerce extensions.
- Prevent your schedule from being filled up too quickly
- Customize schedule with lead times, padding time between appointments, multi-day scheduling, and scheduling windows.
- Set up rules to control capacity, pricing, and availability
Bookly
The Bookly WordPress booking plugin comes in both free and premium versions. With the free plugin, you will get a basic booking tool that lets you accept free appointments on your WordPress site. However, if you want more features like an unlimited number of people with separate schedules and online payment processing, the Bookly premium version is more appropriate.
Bookly has one of the most modern-looking interfaces of any WordPress booking plugin. Its sleek design is visible on both the front end and back end of your site and makes for a great user experience for both you and your website visitors. And many areas of the reservation form can be customized without coding, which makes it ideal for beginners.
Key features of Bookly premium version include:
- A complete booking package that lets you get a beautiful result without customizing code.
- Several staff members can be included in the booking schedule with separate rates and availabilities.
- Send automated email and SMS notifications
- Integration with Google Calendar
- Features can be extended with several premium add-ons, such as one for discount coupons.
- Support for an unlimited number of services on your booking page
- Set up payment and booking rules to make reservations more flexible
Team Booking
The Team Booking plugin is a premium WordPress plugin known for its affordable price tag. It allows integration with PayPal or Stripe for processing payments.
You get plenty of features with three built-in formats: a standard frontend booking calendar, another for upcoming events in sync with Google Calendar, and a third for unscheduled services (such as customer support tickets).
The calendars have a modern look and feel. The form builder is customizable enough to add several fields and collect customer details easily.
Key features of Team Booking include:
- Integration with Maps in the forms to send people to a specific place
- Accept payments via Paypal or Stripe
- The forms have a modern interface with big fields and minimal steps
- You can pick from appointment, event, or unscheduled booking forms
- The pricing is very affordable for a premium booking plugin
- Integration with Google Calendar
- Separate schedules for multiple service providers
MotoPress Hotel Booking
The MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin is a premium reservation solution for managing bookings on a hotel or rental property website. With this plugin, you can accept online reservations, process payments, set up real-time availability calendars for separate locations, sync your booking calendars with common OTAs, and more.
Key features of MotoPress Hotel Booking include:
- Two-way auto-synchronization with iCal and other 3rd-party booking platforms
- Email notifications for booking confirmations and cancellations sent to both admins and customers
- Unlimited accommodations can be booked in one session
- Option to integrate additional payment gateways with WooCommerce Payments add-on
- Categorize your accommodations by factors like price, location, etc.
- Creating fixed-value or percentage-based discount coupons
Simply Schedule Appointments
Simply Schedule Appointments is a modern and user-friendly booking plugin for WordPress. It comes in both the free version and three premium versions, in which you get advanced features and integrations.
The premium editions provide features such as custom form, Google Calendar syncing, and Mailchimp integration, along with the option to book group events and classes.
Additionally, all the versions (including the free edition) allow for integration with the most popular page builders such as Divi, Beaver Builder, and Elementor. This means that you can simply drag-and-drop and style elements to customize the booking form as needed.
Key features of the free version of Simply Schedule Appointments include:
- Booking unlimited appointments
- Customize the booking form to blend in with your website’s design
- Drag-and-drop booking forms into your website’s pages with a page builder
Additional features you get in the premium versions include:
- Accepting payments via PayPal or Stripe
- Integration with 15+ 3rd-party plugins such as LifterLMS, Gravity Forms, and more
Booked
Booked is one of the more affordable, premium plugins sold through CodeCanyon. It allows for guest booking, paid bookings, and registered bookings. The time slots can be displayed in a calendar or list view.
With the Booked plugin, you can assign calendars to particular staff members in your company with their own separate schedules. A user can also create a professional profile to showcase their value to customers.
Key features of the Booked plugin include:
- Ready to use out of the box without any custom coding
- Great modern-looking, user-friendly interface
- Free addon for staff members to access booking management on the frontend
- Support for several employee calendars
- Support for guest bookings without user registration
- Specify rules for public holidays or vacations
- Shortcodes to place the booking calendar in any part of your website
Bookings for WooCommerce
Bookings for WooCommerce lets you accept appointment bookings on your WordPress website in integration with the WooCommerce plugin. You get all the benefits of using the popular e-commerce platform. These benefits include choosing from a number of payment gateways and the ability to sell other items.
For example, Bookings for WooCommerce can help you sell bookable products such as venue hire, vacation rentals, product hire, and more. Customers can pick a start date and an end date using different calendars. You can also make the bookable periods as daily, nightly, or weekly.
Key features of Bookings for WooCommerce include:
- Set bookings to begin on specific days during the week, such as when you are renting out a property for a particular time.
- Define the length of buffer periods between bookings so you get enough time to catch a break before each reservation
- Compatibility with WooCommerce provides you with extra features and flexibility
- Integration with 3rd-party plugins like Add-Ons Ultimate.
- Simple and user-friendly for beginners
- Set a specific day of the week to begin your appointments
- Customers can book daily, nightly, or weekly
Booking Calendar by wpdevelop
Booking Calendar is among the oldest WordPress booking plugins, and it has regularly been updated over the years. It has a free core version with all the essential features a small business may need. And you have the option to upgrade to a larger plugin-enabled plan when you have the need for more.
However, the pricing for different plans can be difficult to understand for an average user, and the sales page isn’t that simple either. There are five packages for Single site, five for Developer site, and five for MultiSite. So we would suggest installing the free version first and see if it meets your needs. It’s a powerful product but understanding which plan comes with which features gets frustrating.
Key features of Booking Calendar include:
- Syncing reservation details with Google Calendar
- Syncing booking data with third-party sites like TripAdvisor, Booking.com, and Airbnb
- Sidebar widgets for easy placement on the website
- Flexibility in choosing and displaying your unique availability
- Option to block out certain dates and times from the year
Amelia
The Amelia plugin is a free, easy-to-use, and powerful option to automate bookings. It lets customers make reservations with or without online payment.
The free version is appropriate for an average small business, while large brands can get the paid version with a lifetime license. With Amelia, you can get all your staff members, an assortment of services, and extras with integrated payment options in a single place.
Key features of Amelia include:
- Keep your customers and agents notified and reminded of appointments via SMS
- Add multiple service providers with custom schedules
- Configure certain dates or date ranges with a separate schedule
- Two-Way Google Calendar integration for each service provider
- Integration with the WooCommerce plugin
- Multiple business locations, services, and service categories
- Analyze business performance KPIs with graphs and diagrams
- Support for discount coupons
Booking Calendar – Appointment Booking System
This plugin has a free core version that comes with several features required to get started. You get an unlimited number of booking forms and widgets for booking calendars. The customization options are flexible as well, with settings to change the reservation fields, date formatting, and more.
The Pro version is very affordable and lets you add a complete payment system to a single website. In addition, you get features like editable reservations, maximum and minimum days reserves, discount tools, and ReCaptcha.
Key features of Booking Calendar – Appointment Booking System include:
- Easy to set up
- Large and simple to navigate frontend interface
- An unlimited number of booking calendars available in each plan
- Editable reservations
- Payment processing
- Option to configure discounts
- Flexible customization to add as many unique fields as required
Appointment Booking Calendar
The Appointment Booking Calendar plugin has two unique features. First of all, it’s the only free WordPress booking plugin with PayPal integration. A premium version is also available if you want to disable the PayPal integration and get additional features such as coupons.
Second, its main use is to show an available selection of time slots, not the whole calendar. When setting up your calendar, you can cross off the days on which you are not available. Your calendar will then show only the time slots that work best for you.
The free version also gives you some great features like built-in Captcha, a multi-page calendar to see the whole year, and availability verifications.
Key features of Appointment Booking Calendar include:
- Free PayPal integration
- Flexible customization. You can clear out unavailable dates and times
- Support for Captcha in the free version
- Multiple months can be shown at once with multi-page calendar
- Users can reserve many time slots in a single sitting. Great for recurring bookings
- Support for CSV, Excel, Outlook, and Google Calendar imports
Pick the Best WordPress Booking Plugin
We’ve covered a lot of information in this post that can take a while to go through. If you’re still unsure about what to pick, here are some quick recommendations that may help.
If you are using WooCommerce, WooCommerce Bookings gives you the best value. But if pricing is a concern, shoot for WooCommerce Appointments plugin.
Need a premium product with a low price tag? Consider Amelia. If you are trying to integrate PayPal payments for free, Appointment Booking Calendar is a great option.
If you want to avoid any coding and have lots of features with a beautiful interface, you can pick Bookly or Bookings for WooCommerce. For simple and beautiful appointment calendars, Booked and Simply Schedule Appointments are great choices.
Hopefully, this information will help you zero in on the best WordPress booking plugin. Finally, remember that the WordPress.com plugin-enabled plan offers you the best chance to build a WordPress booking website quickly and easily.
You might also like: How to Set Up a Booking Calendar with Amelia
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