The Best Appointment Scheduling & Booking Software For Small Businesses

Best for businesses with short sales cycles that needs an all-in-one booking and payment solution.

Square's scheduling tool allows your clients to book the appointment slots that works for them, and it now features SMS text and email reminders, so you can reduce no-show appointments and keep lines of communication open.

As an integrated payment and booking app for small business, Square offers a variety of features to simplify your process. The free customer booking link lets you display all the types of services you offer, so your customers can claim the spot they want. Or, if you are active on Instagram with a healthy following, you can use booking links that allow clients to schedule directly from the app. We also like that Square allows businesses to choose whether they want to require prepayment at the time of booking or if they want to collect payment at checkout or send an invoice.

As a platform, Square earns mostly positive reviews on all major customer review platforms and has proven to be a time-tested and trusted option. Square earns 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra, 4.6 out of 5 stars on G2, and 4.8 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot.

Square Appointments Pricing

Square Appointments is included for free for individuals using the Square Payments platform. For $50/month, you can add two to five employees, and for six to ten employees, you'll pay $90/month. Custom pricing is available for accounts with more than 10 users per month.

Additionally, you can process payments with your clients for 2.6% + $0.10 per tap, dip, or swipe or 2.5% + $0.10 with the paid plans. Be aware that processing fees jump for card-not-present transactions. You'll pay 3.5% + $0.15 when you enter a credit card number manually in the Square POS app, via a Square Virtual Terminal transaction or Card on File transaction. Payments received through a Square Online Store or eCommerce integration are subject to a rate of 2.6% + $0.30 per transaction.

Square Appointments Features

Square offers a pretty straightforward appointment tool that you can start utilizing for yourself from day one of signing up with Square Payments, with no additional hoops to jump through. Simple in design and easy to use, you'll find the features will help you reduce inbound calls and cut the time it takes to schedule appointments.

Here's what you'll get with Square Appointments:

• Your own web link, so clients can self-book
• Instagram in-app booking
• Automated Square Assistant 24/7 SMS messaging tool for clients to confirm, cancel, or reschedule appointments
• Automated text and email reminders
• Integrated payments for invoice or checkout
• Set optional prepayment requirements
• Track customer sales and appointments
• Android and iOS mobile app lets you make and manage appointments
• Save cards on file

When To Use Square Appointments

For businesses that are already using Square, Square Appointments offers a robust platform to streamline appointments and sales. While Appointments is free for individual users, the price to add two to three users may be high for a smaller salon or service business. That said, if Square helps clients book faster and easier and lets you establish new business and ensure payment, the cost may be well worth the monthly fee.

Best for companies that need an all-in-one booking, payment, and project management tool.

With CRM at its core, HoneyBook is an appointment scheduling app that also does a great job of helping small businesses manage customer relationships from the first booked meeting to closing the deal, getting paid, and beyond.

For the consultative or creative entrepreneur, HoneyBook can save a lot of time while keeping costs low. An all-in-one platform, you can use it to reduce the number of tools you utilize while you track everything you need in one place. That's because whether your client hits your site or clicks on a Facebook ad, you can capture the lead and start tracking interaction. With the scheduling feature, you can set your availability for your clients so they can claim the slot they need at the customer-facing, branded portal. Then, HoneyBook sends auto-replies and reminders to your client for you.

HoneyBook has earned a positive reputation across all the major customer-review sites and maintains a 4.8 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot, 4.8 out of 5 stars on Capterra, and 4.5 out of 5 stars at G2.

HoneyBook Pricing

HoneyBook pricing is extremely simple. There is one price point with two ways to pay. You can pay month to month at $40/month or opt for annual billing of $400 that shaves $6 off your per-month costs. HoneyBook is also a payment processing solution and runs you a flat 3% for payment processing.

Either plan includes a seven-day free trial, with no credit card required, and the company also offers a 60-day money-back guarantee that starts from your initial purchase date.

HoneyBook Features

HoneyBook provides other ways to support your organization within the software. You can:

• Set session details and location
• Define availability
• Set time buffers between sessions
• Trigger emails to clients based on dates or other criteria
• Real-time sync with Google Calendars
• Sessions are connected to ongoing projects so you can track details about your client
• The mobile app allows you to send a link to your client for scheduling
• Automated custom confirmation and reminders
• Dedicated online portal for clients
• Customized branding option
• Integrations include Gmail, QuickBooks, Zapier, and Google Calendar
• Custom branded invoices

It's worth mentioning that HoneyBook also allows you to combine invoices, contracts, and payment, including a proposal feature that lets you maintain the paper trail of accountability that can sometimes get lost when you don't have dedicated account managers.

When To Use HoneyBook

Consider the HoneyBook platform as an excellent option if you are currently managing appointments and follow-up communication with your clients yourself. HoneyBook is built for freelancers, creative industries, and smaller workplaces that need to better organize all the touchpoints with a client in a longer sales funnel. From tracking the first click to your site to booking the initial discovery meeting, sending the proposal or contract, and managing invoices and payment, HoneyBook offers an all-in-one tool that organizes all of those moving pieces in one easy-to-use platform.

Best for meeting hosts who need to simplify the process of managing multiple scheduling conflicts.

Doodle offers booking software for small businesses but doesn't stop there. The core problem that Doodle can solve is the disorganized, harried feeling one gets when sifting through email messages and calendars. Doodle not only offers you a way to book appointments and meetings, and organize, communicate, and track changes all in one platform (and across multiple time zones), but it also helps you keep appointments confidential for you and all attendees.

Across customer review sites, Doodle earns high reviews with a 4.5-star review on G2, 3.7 at Trustpilot, and 4.7 out of 5 stars at Capterra.

Doodle Pricing

Doodle scheduling is free if you just want to set up a poll to find the best time to meet, but you'll probably be interested in the actual booking tools and for that you'll need a paid plan.

Paid plans start at $4.49/month for one user (paid annually). However, if you want to access a bookable calendar, you'll need to upgrade slightly to the Pro plan at $5.99/month (paid annually). The Pro plan also allows you to access custom branding, one-on-one meetings, and a personalized scheduling URL. Both those Doodle plans lets you sync meetings to calendars, create deadlines, reminders, and more, with no ads. If you have more than one user, you'll need to jump to the Team plan, which runs $30/month (paid annually). There's also a customized Enterprise plan for large user groups.

All of Doodle's paid plans have a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, so you can check it out for a couple of weeks before paying the annual fee.

Features

Doodle can certainly reduce discord when it comes time to schedule a meeting between multiple attendees. Here are some of the features you get with the Pro plan:

• Sync meetings to calendars
• Deadlines and reminders
• Store email, phone, and address of attendees
• Track meeting invitations
• Zapier integration
• Bookable calendar
• Custom logo and branding
• Personalized scheduling URL
• Doodle one-on-one meetings
• Zoom integration
• Meeting time polls
• No ads with paid plans

When To Use Doodle

We recommend Doodle for any company that regularly schedules and organizes meetings. This tool will help you reduce the number of emails coming in and out of your inbox and help you keep meetings organized and confidential for all attendees.

Doodle is suitable for small and larger organizations, as it includes different tiers, so you can find the right fit for your needs.

Best for fast-paced businesses that need to schedule appointments and coordinate with a team.

With a generous free plan and four additional pricing tiers, 10to8 delivers what you need in basic scheduling without ask you to pay for anything you don't.

Across customer review sites, it's clear that 10to8 does what it says it is going to do. At Capterra, we found a 4.6 out of 5-star average rating with mostly positive reviews. On Trustpilot, 10to8 earns a 4.7-star rating out of 5-stars, and another 4.7-star rating out of 5-stars from the G2 consumer rating site.

10to8 Pricing

10to8 provides a very generous "free forever" plan for small businesses that includes SMS, 100 appointments a month, and two staff logins.

Paid plans start at $9.60 a month for two users and 100 appointments per month, with plans going up to $40 a month for six users and up to 600 appointments per month. There's also an enterprise-level Bespoke plan for businesses with bigger needs.

All 10to8 plans include a free trial, so you can try before you buy. As far as the added features you get with each tier of the paid plans, it starts with customizable branding options with the Basic plan and then pricing scales upwards based on the number of appointments and staff logins. In addition to removing limits, the Bespoke plan also adds tools for HIPAA compliance.

10to8 Features

Because of the user-friendly interface and features, 10to8 would work quite well for a wide variety of businesses and organizations. From booking appointments or professional services at a small business to helping your sales team organize a meeting, 10to8 is built to help you book, track activity, and collect payments all in one platform.

Here's what you get with the 10to8 solution:

• Book-now button
• Client-facing scheduling and booking menu
• Take payments with PayPal, Stripe, or Sage Pay
• Automated SMS and email reminders that have read receipts
• Customizable service descriptions
• Assign services to staff members
• Color code staff members and services
• Voice reminders
• Clients can request changes from SMS, and you can respond from the online booking calendar
• Integrates with WordPress and Facebook
• Access control for staff booking
• Tracking for changes, notes, payments, and customer history
• Confirmation emails
• Custom reports
• Platform and messaging in more than 20 languages
• Native Zoom integration
• Automated satisfaction survey
• Client review badge for your website

When To Use 10to8

10to8 can be a good appointment scheduling app for a wide variety of business types and sizes, due to the different price point options and the basic functionality of the service.

Especially if you don't already have a merchant account or you are still relying on paper checks, 10to8 is a great way to simplify scheduling while being able to offer different payment options to your customers.