WordPress has certainly become the most popular choice of many webmasters because of its ease of use and popular extensions. Whether you are running a restaurant or a hair salon, appointments are a crucial part of any business. With WordPress, everything seems like a child’s play. From adding essential features like Booking Plugins to extending the functionality of your website, WordPress enables you to perform a lot of things. And adding an appointment and booking calendar is no different.
It comes with countless free and premium appointment and booking plugins to help you allow your customers to make an appointment right from your website.
Reasons to add appointment plugins to your website
1. Offers convenience
We are growing at a rapid pace and nobody has time to visit your business premises only to find out that you are not available or busy. Therefore, people are always on the lookout for convenience that allows them to schedule a meeting with you prior visiting your place. And adding appointment calendars do just that. It offers them convenience and ease of accessing your services.
2. Helps you stay managed
Running a business often gets hectic and difficult to manage. However, being able to keep track of all your appointments and booking can help you stay organized and serve better.
3. No paperwork or phone calls
If you run a business where you keep track of your appointments and bookings on a notepad and receive hundreds of calls every day for scheduling an appointment, adding an appointment calendar is a great option for you. No need of phone calls and paperwork anymore. Divide your business in different modules and manage easily.
Now that you know how useful this feature can be for your business, it’s time to know which plugins are appropriate for your WordPress website.
Appointment and Booking Plugins for WordPress
1. Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is one of the most popular contact form plugins available out there. A majority of webmasters are probably using Gravity Forms to create various forms on their webmasters. Unfortunately, most of them are usually unaware of this feature of Gravity Forms. This plugin provides notification support, so you can automatically send appointment confirmation email.
2. WP Simple Booking Calendar
WP Simple Booking Calendar is yet another popular appointment WordPress plugin that allows you to create a calendar and then integrates it into a page or post with shortcode. The appointment calendar enables users to book an entire day which means there aren’t any hourly time slots.
3. Appointment calendar
Appointment Calendar is a great plugin that enables you to integrate a booking management system into your WordPress website. All you need to do is add the service you offer and integrate it into your page or post with shortcodes.
Additional features include time slot blocking for lunch, holiday, meeting etc., email notification support, export appointments, and add/modify/organize booking from the admin interface. The basic version of Appointment Calendar is available for free of cost though it also has a premium version with more advanced features.
4. Team Booking Plugin
Team Booking Plugin is developed by VonStroheim which is available on CodeCanyon. This is a powerful yet simple plugin that solves the main purpose – booking appointments.
This is a premium plugin which means you need to pay a small fee to get full access of Team Booking Plugin. This plugin is not only easy to use but also offers better aesthetics in comparison to other booking plugins available.
Do not forget to read;
5. Booking Calendar
Booking Calendar is another free booking plugin that is well documented, easy to use and simple. The plugin comes with two calendar views – one for you and the other for your website visitors.
With Booking Calendar, you can easily integrate appointment/booking form into your post or page. It comes equipped with many options such as jQuery effects, email notifications, built-in captcha and custom fields.
6. CP Appointment Calendar
CP Appointment Calendar is another free booking and appointment WordPress plugin. The plugin allows you to disable PayPal payments if you do not prefer taking upfront payments from your customers.
The plugin can also be used as a widget and is multi-site compatible. Additional features include 60 days of technical support, free updates and more.
7. Bookly Responsive WordPress Appointment Booking Plugin
Bookly is by far one of the best appointment/booking plugin that is available at $46. It comes with a visual customization options and various booking features. Additional features include sync with Google Calendar, email notification directly from your WP website, integrated PayPal payments, unlimited service, a responsive layout which ensures your added feature looks presentable on all devices and more.
8. BirchPress
BirchPress is an advanced WordPress appointment and booking plugin that is available in different packages starting at $75. The plugin enables you to add a professional appointment booking management system into your WP website.
It also comes integrated with Paypal and allows your customers to pay through it. It also syncs your appointment calendar with other calendars such as Outlook, Android, iCal, Google Calendar and more.
Hello Emily, Fruitful article.
I have found one more WordPress plugin for reservation and appointment management system which is All in One Reservation WordPress Plugin. It is a simple and powerful plugin allows you to setup any reservations easily, quickly and pleasantly. It has lots of features like create and manage reservation, reservation in advance, reservation status for specific dates, email systems and much more etc.
Simple but versatile WordPress plugin.