Appointment Hour Booking – Booking Calendar vs Yatoon Salon Booking & Appointments

Appointment Hour Booking is a WordPress plugin for creating booking forms for appointments with a start time and a defined duration over a schedule. The start time is visually selected by the end user from a set of start times calculated based in the “open” hours and service duration. The duration/schedule is defined in the “service” selected by the customer. Each calendar can have multiple services with different duration and prices. This plugin is useful for different cases like booking of medical services where services with different duration and prices may be available, for personal training sessions, for booking rooms for events, for reserving language classes or other type of classes and other type of services/resources booking where start times are selected and the availability is automatically managed using the defined service duration to avoid double-booking (the booked time is blocked once the booking is completed). Main Features: Easy visual configuration of calendar data and schedules Working dates, invalid/holiday dates and special dates can be defined Supports restriction of default, maximum and minimimum dates Open hours can be defined for each date Each calendar can have multiple services defined Each service can have its own price and duration Start-times are calculated automatically based in the open hours and service duration Available times are managed automatically to avoid double-booking Multiple services can be selected on each booking Services can have multiple capacity Automatic price calculation Customizable email notifications for administrators and users Form validation and built it anti-spam captcha protection Manual and automatic CSV reports iCal addon with iCal export link and iCal file attached into emails Calendar available in 53+ languages Multiple date formats supported Blocks for Elementor and Gutenberg Multi-page calendars Printable appointments list Features in commercial versions: Visual form builder for creating the booking form fields Booking form can be connected to payment process (Ex: PayPal Standard, PayPal Pro, Stripe, Skrill, Authorize.net, TargetPay/iDEAL, Mollie/iDEAL, SagePay, Redsys) Payments are SCA ready (Strong Customer Authentication), compatible with the new Payment services (PSD 2) – Directive (EU) Addons for integration with external services: reCaptcha, MailChimp, SalesForce, WooCommerce and others Addons with additional features: appointment cancellation addon, appointment reminders addon, clickatell and twilio SMS add-ons, signature fields, iCal synchronization, Google Calendar API, Zoom Meetings … Appointment Hour Booking can be used for: Booking services or resources: Define schedule, open hours, services, prices and durations and let the calendar plugin manage the schedule. Sample cases: Medical services, personal training, resource allocation, booking rooms, classes, etc… The services can have a maximum capacity (example: number of persons that can book/attend the service at the same time). The default capacity is 1. If the service capacity has been set to 1 the time-slot will be blocked for new bookings after getting one booking. If the service capacity has been set to a greater number (example: service with capacity 10) the time-slot will be blocked after filling the capacity (example: after getting bookings for a total of 10 persons). This feature is described in detail at https://apphourbooking.dwbooster.com/blog/2019/01/24/bookings-for-multiple-persons/ The Troubleshoot Area Use the troubleshot if you are having problems with special or non-latin characters. In most cases changing the charset to UTF-8 through the option available for that in the troubleshot area will solve the problem. You can also use this area to change the script load method if the booking calendar isn’t appearing in the public website. The Notification Emails The notification emails with the appointment data entered in the booking form can sent in “Plain Text” format (default) or in “HTML” format. If you select “HTML” format, be sure to use the BR or P tags for the line breaks into the text and to use the proper formatting. Exporting Appointments to CSV / Excel Files The appointment data can be exported to a CSV file (Excel compatible) to manage the data from other applications. That option is available from the “bookings list”, the appointments can be filtered by date and by the text into them, so you can export just the needed appointments to the CSV file. Other Versions and Features The free version published in this WordPress directory is a fully-functional version for accepting appointments as indicated in the plugin description. There are also commercial versions with additional features, for example: Ability to process forms/appointments linked to payment process (PayPal, Stripe, Skrill, …) Form builder for a visual customization of the booking form Addons with multiple additional features Payments processed through the plugin are SCA ready (Strong Customer Authentication), compatible with the new Payment services (PSD 2) – Directive (EU) that comes into full effect on 14 September, 2019. Please note that the pro features aren’t advised as part of the free plugin in the description shown in this WordPress directory. If you are interested in more information about the commercial features go to the plugin’s page: https://apphourbooking.dwbooster.com/download

Run your salon’s bookings, schedules, payments, and customer relationships from WordPress. Yatoon gives salons a polished booking experience for clients and a practical local booking toolkit for the team. Clients choose services, add-ons, professionals, dates, and times on mobile; staff manage the day from WordPress. Try the live booking demo – no account or installation required. Watch the complete mobile booking demo: Built for nail salons, hair salons, barbershops, spas, beauty studios, and other appointment-based businesses. Yatoon has also been used for daily bookings at a real nail salon for more than a year. Local-first workflow: Free keeps scheduling, availability, customer records, and bookings inside WordPress. External payment, calendar, messaging, and platform connections are Pro features. What Free includes Local WordPress scheduling, availability checks, customer records, notifications, and booking management Mobile booking for services, options, professionals, dates, times, customer details, and confirmation Customer self-service for reviewing, rescheduling, cancelling, and rebooking appointments Staff calendar workflows with mobile rescheduling, temporary breaks, shared-resource checks, and capability-based Yatoon roles Services, categories, images, variations, add-ons, pricing, staff qualifications, schedules, breaks, and closed dates Waitlist, service menu, customer portal, staff portal, booking blocks, Elementor, and shortcode integrations Customer-facing AI Chat when WordPress AI Client and a provider are connected and Chat is enabled by an administrator Third-party integrations are optional and require their own accounts, credentials, supported regions, and provider terms. Local mode continues to work inside WordPress when an external provider is unavailable. What customers experience A mobile booking flow for services, variations, add-ons, professionals, date, time, customer details, and confirmation Several services or guests in one booking journey, with separate staff choices and reference photos where enabled Clear service durations, prices, appointment summaries, directions, and calendar actions Secure self-service for viewing, rescheduling, cancelling, rebooking, and eligible service changes A branded service menu, discovery storefront, portfolio, favorites, quick rebooking, and lightweight installable customer app What your team manages Services, categories, images, variations, add-ons, pricing, staff qualifications, and schedules Business hours, staff schedules, breaks, time off, closed dates, and availability rules Appointment calendar, client records, notes, reports, notifications, and waitlist Mobile-friendly rescheduling, temporary break controls, shared-resource checks, and role-specific staff workspaces Before a booking or sensitive change is saved, Yatoon rechecks staff qualification, schedules, breaks, closed dates, existing appointments, shared resources, and relevant external availability. If a time is taken during checkout, the customer keeps their details and gets a clear recovery path. Add it to any WordPress page Use the native block, Elementor widget, or one of these shortcodes: [yatoon_booking] – complete booking form [yatoon_service_menu] – visual service menu with Book buttons [yatoon_customer_portal] – customer self-service portal [yatoon_staff_portal] – mobile staff schedule portal [yatoon_discovery] – discovery storefront and booking entry points External Services and Privacy Google Maps – www.google.com/maps. The confirmation page displays a lazy-loaded map when a business address is configured. The preview sends the public business address and normal browser connection information to Google; it does not include customer names, email, appointment details, or manage tokens. Clicking the map opens Google Maps directions to that address. See Google Privacy and Google Terms. Free Local mode performs booking and availability inside WordPress and does not require Square, Vagaro, Stripe, PayPal, Twilio, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, or Meta WhatsApp. Every external service Yatoon can contact is listed below with what is sent, when it is sent, and the provider’s own policies. Nothing in this list is contacted unless the corresponding feature is switched on by an administrator. Fonts. Yatoon does not download fonts from any remote host, and does not bundle font files either. Choosing a font family under Brand & Colors only adds that family name to the CSS font stack; otherwise the system font is used. Yatoon push relay (Cloudflare Worker) – https://yatoon-api.yatoon.workers.dev. Optional and disabled by default. When explicitly enabled, Yatoon sends a signed, pseudonymous browser push subscription endpoint and a generic event type to this Cloudflare Worker. Customer names, contact details, services, appointment times, and notes are never sent. See Yatoon and the Cloudflare Privacy Policy. Freemius – https://api.freemius.com. Used for optional account connection, licensing, plugin updates, and upgrade screens. It is contacted only when an administrator opts in or uses one of those features. See Freemius Privacy Policy and Freemius Terms. Provider integrations. Each service below is contacted only when an administrator has configured its credentials and switched the corresponding feature on, and only while performing the action that needs it. Provider credentials are stored encrypted in WordPress; Yatoon diagnostics must not include them. Free package providers. Free can use the following optional services when the site owner enables them: Google Maps – www.google.com/maps (confirmation-page directions map) OpenAI – api.openai.com (optional AI assistant) Anthropic – api.anthropic.com (optional AI assistant) Google Gemini – generativelanguage.googleapis.com (optional AI assistant) Cloudflare Turnstile – challenges.cloudflare.com (optional booking-form bot check) Before any customer text can reach an AI provider, an administrator must enable the relevant AI feature, and Yatoon requires explicit one-time customer consent and screens the message for sensitive data. Customer-facing AI is off by default on new installations, and connecting a provider alone does not publish it. Site owners are responsible for obtaining required consent, publishing an accurate privacy notice, configuring retention, and complying with the rules of their region and chosen providers.