Save time and effort scheduling appointments, and gain more leads with any of these five (free) appointment scheduling tools.
If your small business offers some sort of service, then you have probably felt the stress of scheduling an appointment. For years people had to schedule these appointments over the phone or even via email, but now this process can be automated seamlessly to save you time and frustration. There are dozens and dozens of tools out there to schedule appointments, but I will be highlighting five tools that I think are the best options to book appointments for FREE. As always, I'm looking for the best resources for you to save time and money using automation tools to help your small business.
Before diving in to the list, one thing to be clear: I am just focusing on the free plan for all of these services. As with most free plans, their branding will likely be visible and you will have limited features. This list is just to help you identify what scheduling tool is best for you while you get started booking appointments for your small business. For the best experience with any scheduling tool, I definitely recommend making the investment in one of their paid plans.
This tool has grown tremendously in popularity recently, and is one of the first that I can recall of its kind. It is an industry leader and has the specifications to prove it. Calendly makes appointment scheduling easy with dozens of integrations, flexible scheduling for you and your team, billing, and more, but many features you do have to pay for.
While offering a free plan, Calendly's paid versions are incredibly cheap with $8/month per user for Premium and $12/month per user for Pro. We will just focus on the free version today.
With their free version, you get access to the essential features that you will need to schedule appointments for your business. You can integrate Calendly on any of your calendars including Google Calendar and Outlook, and schedule unlimited events. Below you can find the Pros and Cons of the free Calendly plan:
Pros
- Unlimited Scheduling
- Customizable Sign Up Form
- Automated Notifications
- Zoom Integration
- Custom Workflows
Cons
- No option for group events (classes, webinars, etc.)
- No Zapier integration
- No CRM integration (HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, etc.)
- Can't collect payments
- No Analytics
Overall, Calendly is an awesome tool to get you started with scheduling appointments. Their free plan is lacking some tools that I would really like to see, especially the Zapier integration, but what they do offer can absolutely get the job done for you and your small business if you need to schedule meetings, appointments, demos, etc.
Seriously, what doesn't Square do for small businesses? Between websites, marketing, payment processing, and now scheduling, you really can have a complete solution with them. Today we will just focus on Square Appointments, a great feature for individuals to schedule meetings, demos, and any other one-on-one appointment you can think of.
This tool is perfect for salons, barbershops, trainers, and any service-based business. I actually have personal experience using Square Appointments when I was a competitive axe throwing instructor for a summer (but we don't need to get in to that).
With their free version, you get an abundance of tools at your disposal, but only for one individual calendar. If you add any additional calendars to your plan the price skyrockets:
| # of Staff Calendars | Price | Processing Fee |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Free | 2.6% + 10 cents |
| 2-5 | $50/mo. | 2.5% + 10 cents |
| 6-10 | $90/mo. | 2.5% + 10 cents |
| 11+ | Custom Pricing |
As you can see above, the prices are pretty steep once you add any additional staff calendars. Luckily, if you are the only employee, or you share a calendar with your team and don't need to add additional calendars then you can get what I think is the best appointment scheduling tool for free. Below you can find what I think are the Pros and Cons of Square Appointments:
Pros
- Scheduling website
- Automated email and text reminders
- Collect payments
- Customer profiles and importing customers
- Can combine services and retail sales (if you have a square website)
- App & POS available
Cons
- Limited integrations
- Sign up forms
- No classes/group sign ups
You can see I did not have much negative to say about the Square Appointment scheduling tool. The one thing I will say is that if you are a business that is looking to schedule demos with leads to sell your product or service, this might not be the best option for you with the limited options for lead generation forms. In some cases, you might need to collect more information from your leads/prospects before scheduling a demo, but honestly it is not that much of a deterrent for me. If you are looking for a tool to schedule appointments like a personal trainer, hair salon, or any other service than I would say Square Appointments is the best way to go for you and your small business.
Unlike my first two reviews, I feel like Setmore flies under the radar compared to the others but it really shouldn't. Setmore makes appointment booking extremely easy with integrations just about everywhere, and the ability to add more than one calendar on their free plan.
Without wasting any time, the huge value-add that Setmore offers on their free plan is the ability to add 4 calendars to one plan. This makes Setmore the best appointment scheduler for any small business that needs to include more than one calendar on their appointment scheduler.
Another feature that I love is the ability to customize the branding even on the free plan. This makes the scheduler look professional even under a free plan. Tools like Calendly and Square Appointments have their branding all over their free plan.
Below you can find the pricing for Setmore Appointments for annual plans.
The pricing for Setmore is pretty cheap for their Premium and Pro plans, but like I've said, we are focusing on the free plans today.
The best feature for Setmore is clearly their "Free up to 4 Users" offer, but below you can find the Pros and Cons that I have found for Setmore:
Pros
- Free up to 4 users
- Countless Integrations
- Automated Email Notifications
- Customer Reviews
- Collect Payments with Square
- Group Classes
- Zoom & Teleport Integrations
Cons
- Limited Payment Processors
- Sign Up Forms
- No Custom Branding
Setmore allows you to customize your appointment page, add a separate section for classes, create different names for your "appointments," and more. It is very user friendly for both you as the small business, and your potential customers. I do wish that the landing page was a little more aesthetically pleasing, but for a free plan it is good enough for me. Overall I highly recommend Setmore as a free solution for your appointment scheduling needs.
Now this is one that you definitely did not see coming. JotForm is a tool that your small business should absolutely look in to for a number of reasons, but appointments is one of the many. I'll have another article on the many uses of JotForm in the future!
If you haven't used JotForm before, they basically have a widget for everything all packaged nicely in an incredible form builder with integrations to almost any app you can think of. You can have a multi-step form or a one pager, you can create a fillable PDF, and you have complete customization with the style and color of your form. Their free plan has some limitations, but they give you a lot more than most free plans. You can even process payments through your form, create recurring subscriptions, and calculate pricing based on a factors like length of time.
As I've explained in this list, we are going to focus on the free plan but I do want to include the pricing:
| Plan | Price | Form Limit | Submissions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Free | 5 | 100 |
| Bronze | $29/mo. | 25 | 1000 |
| Silver | $39/mo. | 100 | 10,000 |
| Gold | 99/mo. | Unlimited | 100,000 |
As you can see, there are some limitations with JotForm. The most glaring limitation is the number of submissions. This means that you can only accept 100 form submissions per month. If you business relies on multiple appointments per day, the free JotForm plan would not be for you based solely on the fact that you would likely run out of submissions by the end of the month.
JotForm is the perfect appointment scheduler for a company that needs to book demos for a high ticket product or service, specifically ones that need to collect a lot of information from their clients. Somethings that comes to mind would be a web design company or IT services.
To focus specifically on the appointment widget, you are able to schedule one-on-one appointments and group appointments. You can only have one calendar which is not great, but pretty common for free plans. You have a lot of flexibility on the availability section, even providing a "lunch break" and a "vacation" option so you can easily block off your calendar when you don't want to schedule an appointment.
Pros
- Unmatched Integration Possibilities
- Customizable Form
- Style and Branding
- Multiple Payment Processing Options
- Zoom Integration
Cons
- Submission Limit
- Only One Calendar
Depending on your business model, JotForm could be the best appointment scheduler for you. If you don't rely on multiple appointments per day, then you likely won't hit the submission limit and you have access to the dozens of additional features that JotForm offers that the others don't. You can collect more information from your clients, create impressive workflows, collect payments and create Stripe subscriptions all in one place. There are a number of other things JotForm can automate for your business, as well. If you couldn't tell, I highly recommend JotForm for all small businesses.
Whether you are a small business, a solopreneur, or (who am I kidding) one of 2 billion people on earth, I'm assuming you are on Facebook. The social media giant has a ton of tools to help your small business, but did you know that you can schedule appointments with clients right through your Facebook page? Well, this feature is included with your Facebook Business account and is a great tool for businesses or entrepreneurs starting out before committing to a scheduling tool.
Before diving in to this feature, I will mention that the Facebook appointment tool can integrate with a number of the appointment schedulers, including some I mentioned above. In that case, when clients schedule an appointment with you on Facebook, it would process through your scheduling app. If you do not want to commit to a more robust scheduler, you can just use Facebook and keep track of appointments on the app.
The Facebook scheduler actually is more robust than you might think. The app can sync to you Google Calendar, can send SMS or Facebook Messenger reminders to make sure clients don't miss an appointment, and you can customize your list of services. You are able to copy an appointment booking link to send to customers who might not be on Facebook, similar to how you would send your appointment link with any of the other appointment schedulers I've talked about.
Where I think this really comes in handy is as your call to action on your Facebook Business page. If you have a strong presence on Facebook, this could be a great way to generate leads. You can also promote your appointment scheduler in your Facebook Ads.
Pros
- Convenience
- Usability
- Syncs with Google Calendar
- SMS & FB Messenger Notifications
Cons
- No Group Scheduling
- Customization/Branding
- Sign Up Form
As with most things in business, you want to make life easy for you customers. Having an appointment scheduler built in to your Facebook Page (a place they trust) makes it extremely easy for customers to book an appointment with you.
It might not be the best appointment scheduler out there, but it might be the most convenient and a great place for you and your small business to start taking appointments.
While these are a handful of tools to schedule appointments online, there are dozens of options out there for you or your small business. From the research I've done on these tools, I'd recommend all of them depending on what your business needs are. I hope you found the analysis helpful!
Thank you all for reading this post. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message via email or LinkedIn. If you found this helpful, please consider subscribing for more resources and automations to help your small business succeed online!
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