The WordPress platform has a lot of unique features, but scheduling is not available to you immediately. That’s why there are plugins to extend its functionality, enabling you to have a schedule on your website.
This can be extremely useful if you don’t want to handle bookings yourself and instead, people can book a date themselves. If your business relies on you having business meetings with people, then managing your time is crucial.
You must always schedule the meetings in a significant way so that you don’t miss any of them since it can cost your reputation and even business. A plugin can easily replace a job that a secretary would typically do to help you schedule and book a date.
The WordPress plugins that I will showcase for you in this article are all great at helping you schedule appointments. They are efficient, fast and reliable so what’s not to like about them.
Each has some slight differences from the other, and I will explain them all to you. Hopefully, by the end of the article, you would have already chosen which one is the best for you.
Why is Scheduling Important for Business?
One of the main benefits of having a scheduling plugin in your online business website is that you can prioritize tasks. This is important since you can spend your time working on something that might be time-sensitive and that it’s a priority.
Without the scheduling and appointment setting plugin, all that work will fall to you, so that’s not a great use of your time. Plugin, tons of other tools can help you do that easily. I suggest you don’t do it manually since it’s inefficient and generally a time-wasting activity.
Some research has pointed out that using a scheduling tool can increase lead generation by three times. That is important, and it’s not something to be overlooked. If there’s a possibility of 3X the conversion rate, I don’t see a reason why you wouldn’t want to do that.
There are various benefits of using one of these plugins down below. For example: saving your time and energy, increasing leads, and reminding people of the meeting.
A good plugin will send email reminders to the people before the meeting begins so that even if they forgot about it now, they get reminded and don’t miss it.
Best Schedule Plugins for WordPress
1.Timetable and Event Schedule by MotoPress
MotoPress Timetable and Event Schedule is a fantastic organizer plugin developed to help you create and manage online schedules. It can be single or multiple events; you can customize each event’s appearance, add date, time, custom description, and display all the needed items in a timetable.
This plugin can be used for timetabling different types of events like online lessons, festivals, gym classes, conferences, concerts, formal parties, ceremonies, and much more. It’s beneficial in terms of backend management and maximum ease for your audience to use.
It’s not going to cost you anything since it’s free, and you can get it from the link that I have provided or search in the WordPress plugin marketplace.
2.Simply Schedule Appointments
As the name suggests, this plugin will make it super simple to make appointments on your website. A great thing about this plugin is that the calendar that they use can directly sync up with Google Calendar. That’s a great feature if you use Google Calendar to gather all the essential information in one place.
Setting up is quick and straightforward, so even a beginner can do it with no problems. The user interface is clean and very intuitive, making for a better user experience. You can either use a short code embedded on your site or create the form from scratch to show the calendar.
There are also a few different scheduling types such as phone, on-site, zoom, etc. All the essential functions are included in the free version of this plugin, but if you want the advanced features, there’s a premium version.
3.Bookly PRO
The Bookly Pro is one of the best plugins on this list; it has a fantastic user interface and has a ton of features. This product is the premium version of the Bookly online plugin and has so much to offer; it removes all the free plugin limitations and adds a bunch of features.
This automated booking and scheduling plugin for WordPress is fully customizable. It has online payments, notifications and also syncs with Google Calendar. Or you can use some of the ready-made templates that this plugin offers.
There can be an unlimited number of staff members operating with individual schedules and prices. Some other notable features are integrating the PayPal Express Checkout, Importable and Exportable customer database, built-in analytics, WooCommerce Compatibility, Multi-language support, and so much more.
This product screams quality, and it was also featured on the code canyon marketplace, so you know that it’s good. The developer also has the Power Elite Author, which further solidifies the quality of the plugin. Bookly Pro will cost you $89, and with it, you get frequent future updates to ensure compatibility and reliability.
Also, you get 6 months of support from the author. If you want to extend that to 12 months, that will be an additional $31.50.
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4.BirchPress Scheduler
The BirchPress Scheduler is one of the only appointment booking plugins on this list that has small business owners in mind. And what I mean by that is the unique ability that this product has. It can handle appointments with ease and manage your staff and employees, giving them assignments and schedules.
This makes it a multi-purpose tool, and if you are a small business manager, this will sound good to you. This plugin was utterly free, to begin with, but later changed to premium only. This switch made it possible for the developers to focus more on their product and add many new features.
The ability to color-code appointments, decline bookings without a minimum amount of time in advance, email notifications for the meetings, auto-fill option for returning customers, edit, add, or remove appointments from the dashboard, support for multiple currencies, and much more.
Several packages correspond to the business size that you can pick to buy this plugin from. You must select the right package for you, so look carefully at what each of them offers. The cheapest option starts at 99$ per year, and with it, you get support and future updates for the duration.
If you have a WordPress website, and your sidebar or footer area is empty, then you can add the widgets plugin to take your site to the next level.
5.WooCommerce Bookings
This is an add-on for the WooCommerce plugin which is the largest eCommerce platform on WordPress. You are going to save time and effort by letting the customers book at their convenience.
They can book reservations, appointments and what’s most important is that there’s no need for a phone call to complete the process. You can add this product to your online store and set it up in a matter of minutes.
It’s a powerful plugin that has a lot of great features. For example, the ability to schedule by person or date, send email notifications, confirm or deny any booking, set blackout dates, automatically send invoices via WooCommerce, list or calendar view, buffer periods between booking, and many more.
This is an official WooCommerce extension, and it’s going to be a bit pricey, so if you know exactly what you are doing, go for it. The starting price for this plugin is $249, and it has all the features that I mentioned above and more.
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6.WP Booking Calendar
With the WP Booking Calendar plugin, your visitors can check the availability and make reservations instantly for a specific date. They can also search for the available properties or services at a specified date and make the booking and payment online.
This kind of simplicity and a large number of sales has made this product an excellent option. This plugin is used by many businesses that need help with handling their complex booking records, with internal meetings, and scheduling other business services.
It’s an all-in-one plugin that has great features that any admin would appreciate. You can choose between several engaging email templates that also have the booking receipts in them. Both you and the customer can edit the booking if there’s a need for rescheduling or a mistake was made during the booking process.
The WP Booking Calendar plugin has a free version with many great features and four other premium packages. Each package corresponds with the size of your organization and has some distinct features that you might enjoy.
Make sure to read all the necessary information before committing to buying a package.
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7.Events Schedule
The Events Schedule plugin is one of the better-looking and stylistic plugins on this list. It offers all the features that you would ever need without losing a single bit of style points along the way. You can choose one of the 12 templates that they offer for the schedule.
Each of them has unique elements in them such as a carousel, a full monthly calendar, a slider, and more. Some other great features that you get with the plugin are the option to have many filters for events, repeat events, compatibility with page builders like Visual Composer, Google Maps integration, SEO friendliness, and much more.
This product has an impressive rating of 4.5 stars with over 7000 sales which is impressive. The developer has earned the Elite Author badge on codecanyon, which suggests this is a great plugin. The Events Schedule is going to cost you only $39, and it’s a great deal.
With the purchase, you also get future updates and 6 months of support from the developer. If you want an additional 12 months, then that will cost you $12.75 more.
Final Verdict
I have listed many fantastic plugins in this article, and depending on your needs, I’m sure you will find the right one. Some might be great for some uses and others for various uses, so pick the plugin you want carefully. It’s crucial for a business in 2021 to have an automated scheduling system in place since it will increase your efficiency a lot.
If you have any questions or suggestions for anything that I talked about in this article, don’t hesitate to comment in the section below. I will try to respond to every one of them as soon as possible.
