Adding a booking plugin to your WordPress site will do more than just improve your operational efficiency. This new system will optimize the customer experience.
Roughly 70% of consumers prefer booking appointments online.
Furthermore, 36% of people said that waiting on hold too long when booking over the phone was their biggest pain point for scheduling appointments and 20% of people said the biggest inconvenience was having to wait to call during office hours to book.
By adding a booking plugin to your WordPress site, you’ll eliminate more than half of the biggest pain points for consumers while simultaneously providing them with their most preferred booking option.
When evaluating a new service provider, 94% of consumers say they are more likely to choose one that has online booking options compared to a provider that doesn’t.
In short, adding online booking options to your website will:
- Improve your efficiency
- Enhance the customer experience
- Reduce the time it takes to book appointments
- Increase the chances of getting new customers
- Give you a competitive advantage
I think I’ve made myself clear. Now that you know the importance of having a WordPress booking plugin, you need to install one to your site.
How do you choose? What’s the best WordPress booking plugin?
Use this guide as a reference to help you decide which one is the best for your business.
| Product | Price | Rating | Active installs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amelia | Free + paid | 4.6/5 | 90,000+ |
| Bookly | Free + paid | 4.4/5 | 60,000+ |
| Booqable | |||
| Booking Calendar | Free + paid | 4.8/5 | 40,000+ |
| Team Booking | Paid |
Amelia
Amelia is an automated booking specialist. This plugin is great for those of you who offer multiple types of services.
For example, let’s say you own a car repair center. Your customers can schedule things like tire rotations, oil changes, brake replacements, and other services that you offer. You can even set it up so they can choose a specific mechanic to service their vehicle, based on availability, of course.
This plugin is also great for law consultants. Your clients can schedule meetings based on the type of help they need. You can collect deposits and payments through this booking plugin as well.
As you can see, the applications for Amelia reach far and wide. Its versatility makes it one of the best WordPress booking plugins on the market.
You can install Amelia to your WordPress site in just a few clicks. You don’t need to be a technology wizard or have experience with coding to get it up and running.
I also like how this plugin has an administrative dashboard that lets you track and measure KPIs with graphs, tables, and charts. This provides you with deep insights into your performance.
The design of the booking calendar is completely customizable, so you can choose the colors and other design elements that compliment your website color schemes.
Pros
- Booking forms for appointments and events via shortcodes, blocks and Elementor widgets
- Square payments and email notifications work in the free Lite edition
- Customer data stored in dedicated tables, with optional SMS credits service
- Usage tracking stays off unless the admin opts in on the free edition
Cons
- Most payment gateways, Google and Outlook sync, Zoom and coupons require a paid licence
- Very large codebase (over 6,700 files) with dozens of custom database tables
- Lite settings for payments and limits are reset to defaults on save
Bookly
Bookly is fully customizable and extremely responsive. Its sleek design on both the front and backend is modern and visually appealing.
One of the features that makes Bookly one of the best WordPress booking plugins is the option for different employees to create custom pricing and availability. For example, let’s say you own a gym. Each personal trainer can set their own rates. Your customers would have the option to choose the trainer they want from a dropdown menu when booking a session.
From the user end, Bookly takes them through a quick four-step process on your website.
- Select the service with the options for categories and employees, if applicable.
- Choose a date and time.
- Enter personal details like name, phone, email, and additional notes.
- Pay.
That’s right. Bookly even processes payments or deposits. This is great for those of you who are getting lots of no-show appointments and missing out on those earnings. If you don’t want to force your customers to pay in advance, you can set an option for paying on-site at the appointment.
You can also set up automatic text and email notifications with Bookly. Those notifications remind the customer as well as your staff members about upcoming appointments.
Bookly also lets your customers translate the booking process into their native language. This solves the problem that I talked about earlier in terms of having trouble communicating with certain customers over the phone.
Bookly lets you create promo codes to discount your services. The plugin tracks all of the data, so you can determine which deals are working the best.
With Bookly, customers can set up recurring appointments, get added to a waiting list pending cancellations, attach files, and rate your services. This WordPress plugin even has a feature for group booking.
Overall, Bookly is one of the most complete WordPress booking plugins you’ll find.
Pros
- Complete booking form, calendar and customer list in the free plugin
- Gutenberg block, Elementor widget and Divi module for the booking form
- Usage statistics are only sent when the admin turns them on
Cons
- Free version limited to one staff member and five services
- Online payments need Bookly Pro or the paid Bookly Cloud Stripe service
- Many admin screens advertise Pro and Cloud products
Booqable
Booqable gives you everything you need for your rental business. Once you add the plugin to your WordPress site, you can start accepting rantals immediately. It works with any theme and is super easy to set up.
You’ll be able to get rentals going today, that’s how easy it is.
It has a host of other features too:
- Request a quote: if you’d prefer to send quotes instead of letting customers book directly, that’s built right in.
- Embed products: add individual products or collections for rental.
- Mobile friendly: the plugin works beautifully on every mobile device.
- Control your rentrals: add blockout dates, time slots, and prevent last minute reservations.
- Real-time availability: time slots and stock are tracked automatically so nothing is every double booked.
- Advanced pricing: Easily set up flat-rates, fixed fees, and any other pricing structure you want.
- Built-in payments: Accept payments from Stripe, Paypal, all major credits cards.
- Customizable design: Easily match the plugin to the design of your brand. It’ll look like a seamless experience that you had custom-built from a professional designer. It also works with any WordPress theme.
The Booqable plugin comes for free once you sign up for Booqable’s rental software. It’s a perfect way to get a fully-featured rental tool along with an amazing WordPress plugin to make installation really easy.
Booking Calendar
Booking Calendar has been around for ten years and is a top solution for those of you who are in the hospitality industry.
In addition to appointments, this plugin is commonly used to book stays at hotels, resorts, or a bed and breakfast. That’s because the system is designed to accommodate days-long bookings, as opposed to just an hour time slot for an appointment. Not every WordPress booking plugin offers this feature.
Booking Calendar is extremely responsive on both the frontend and backend. For those of you who aren’t too tech-savvy, you shouldn’t have any problems installing this plugin to your WordPress website. All you need to do is insert the booking shortcode into a page or post on your site.
Your bookings are stored in the Booking Calendar dashboard, so you won’t need any third-party services or accounts to manage them.
The plugin will automatically prevent double bookings based on this information. Again, this is ideal for those of you who are offering a service such as rooms in a hotel building.
Booking Calendar supports multiple languages, so you can accommodate website traffic that’s coming from other countries. The plugin also syncs with third-party platforms such as Booking.com and TripAdvisor, to make sure your availability dates are updated in real-time all over the Internet.
Pros
- Full-day, time-slot and appointment bookings in one plugin
- Booking and inquiry forms with email notices
- Elementor widget and WooCommerce compatibility
Cons
- Large plugin with many admin screens to learn
- Newer resource and service catalog needs the Pro edition
- Payment gateways are not in the free code
Team Booking
As the name implies, the Team Booking plugin is designed to accommodate the booking schedules of multiple members on your staff. We’ve seen some other plugins on our list that have this feature, but none that have it has their primary point of emphasis.
Team Booking integrates with Google Calendar, which makes it easy for managing appointments based on everyone’s unique availability.
But don’t let that that dissuade you if you’re a solopreneur. While this plugin was designed with teams in mind, you can still use it on your own if you’re providing an individual service.
This plugin allows you to set up multiple form fields to collect additional information about your customers.
Team Booking also has a map feature, which is another differentiating element. When a customer books an appointment, the map can pop up with the location. All of the directions are displayed in real time from the customer’s address.
You can collect payments or deposits with Team Booking as well. The plugin is supported by PayPal and Stripe.
Team Booking is a top choice for those of you who don’t want to spend a ton of money on a booking plugin. Pricing for this license starts at $28.
Cons
- Version 3 is no longer updated on CodeCanyon
- Multi-day events are not supported
- The author does not provide support for this item
