How to set up an online booking system with WordPress

More and more, clients are coming to me wanting to offer online booking. This is going to be become a higher demand item on the wish list, simply because more people are looking to easily schedule appointments online as we become busier and busier. I know I really enjoy being able to schedule an appointment without having to call and go through the whole “What’s available?” and “Can you do Wednesday?” process.

I’ve tried out three different online booking system, so this post is going to review the ones I’ve tried and what I liked and didn’t like.

WooCommerce Bookings

I set this up for a client who wanted to offer online bookings for private parties she was offering. She needed to be able to put in her exact openings, offer specific times, and give people a few options for making their appointments, while also taking a deposit to hold the date. WooCommerce Bookings fit the bill.

What I liked:

I liked that it lets you block out dates, choose specific availability, block out days and times, and is easy to set up a bookable product.

What I didn’t like:

It gets pricey. The add-on itself is $250 (per year), but as with any WooCommerce product, you have to buy add-ons after add-ons to make it work. Want to accept credit cards? That’ll cost you $79. Want to require additional fields? That’s another cost. And so on and so on. For developers, be sure you are researching everything you need before you quote this project, because the cost of the products alone adds up quickly.

It’s also not as intuitive as I’d like. I was able to figure it out after playing with it, my client has frustrations with it when trying to block out her schedule or manually enter bookings. It works, but it’s not the most user-friendly option. You can’t have multiple bookable products using the same shared resources, so if I wanted to offer two different kinds of products to book, but can only do one at a time, you can’t really make that happen. It’s much more complicated than it needs to be.

Appointments+ from WPMU

I watched the videos, it looked like this was going to a great option for my client who wanted online booking capabilities. It was super easy to install and set up, and I had it up in a flash. And that’s where the great review ends. The documentation was lacking. I couldn’t find explicit directions for the things I wanted to do. And while I’m super capable of figuring things out on my own, I find written instructions to be really useful. There is documentation… it just wasn’t very thorough.

Then basic things that should have been included weren’t. For example, the ability to add padding time to each appointment so there’s time to set up for the next appointment. This feature wasn’t baked it, it was an add-on. To me, it seems like if you doing appointments, this is something that should be basic.

Then everything got really complicated. I wanted to offer start times every half hour, but if the person chooses a 1.5 hour appointment, then they only offer start times every 1.5 hours and try as I may, I couldn’t find a way around it.

What I liked:

It was easy to install, and the support was fairly quick, even if they didn’t always have an answer. You also have to maintain your membership in order to get updates for the products.

What I didn’t l ike:

Functionality was limited. It was difficult to make it work how I wanted. Features that seemed important weren’t included and you had to do a lot of work to make it happen. It wouldn’t allow me to put a custom email as the sender in the email notifications, it only used the admin email for the site. And the thing about that is, often people use a different email as their “sending” email than where they actually check mail.

Bookly

I’m just going to start out by saying this is my new favorite appointment booking solution. After doing research and trying several different options, this one gave me everything I wanted, was super easy to set up, is easy to use and is responsive.

What I liked:

It’s easy and intuitive. I was able to easy configure it to allow the appointment times we wanted, block out days accordingly, and customize it to match our site. It integrates with Google calendar, WooCommerce, and several payment gateways including Stripe. It was easy to configure all the settings, including the custom email notifications. The support was responsive to my questions as well. Pretty cheap too at $45 with no recurring renewal fee.

What I didn’t like:

Haven’t found anything yet.

Need help setting up your online booking system? Give us a shout and we can hook you up!