Booking Calendar vs Online Scheduling and Appointment Booking System – Bookly

Booking Calendar – Booking Plugin for Appointments, Reservations, Rentals, Events WP Booking Calendar is a flexible WordPress booking plugin for appointments, reservations, rentals, and events. Add a responsive availability calendar and booking form to your website, accept online bookings, and manage them from a modern admin panel. Use Booking Calendar for full-day bookings, time-slot appointments, service scheduling, event registration, inquiry forms, request forms, or even as a simple multi-steps contact form with built-in request listing and email notifications. Features | See Demos | FAQ | Get Support Best for appointments, service scheduling, property rentals, equipment rentals, consultations, classes, events, and availability management. Key Features Block unavailable time intervals by resource and date range Create admin bookings from selected available time slots Configure global availability rules with live preview Accept full-day and time-slot bookings Show calendar availability on your website Create booking, contact, and inquiry forms Use the new Drag & Drop Booking Form Builder Build multi-step forms with rows and columns Customize form fields and email notifications Prevent double bookings Manage bookings in a clear admin panel Sync bookings with external services using .ics feeds Import Google Calendar events Works for properties, services, rentals, and events New Time Slots Availability & Fast Admin Booking Manage unavailable time intervals visually from Booking Calendar > Availability or directly from the bookings workflow using the new Time Slots Availability popup. Administrators can choose a date range and block or unblock exact time intervals in an interactive timeline. The timeline clearly shows available, booked, unavailable, and full-day unavailable states, and full-day unavailable states, making it much easier to understand real availability at a glance. Administrators can also create a new booking directly from an available time interval. Simply select an available time slot in the popup, open the booking form with the selected resource, date, start time, and end time already prefilled, and save it as a new booking. This makes Booking Calendar especially useful for appointment scheduling, service bookings, consultations, rentals, and any workflow where administrators need to quickly review availability and create bookings from the WordPress admin panel. New Drag & Drop Booking Form Builder Create booking forms visually without manually editing complex shortcodes or form code. Simply drag fields from the sidebar, drop them into the canvas, organize them into rows and columns, edit settings in the sidebar, and preview changes instantly. The new builder also makes it easy to create contact and inquiry forms where the calendar is optional. With the new interface, you can: drag and drop fields into the form layout, organize fields into sections and columns, create multi-step form pages, resize columns for better layout control, edit field settings in the right sidebar, instantly preview the form while building. This new functionality brings a more modern, user-friendly, and flexible way to create forms in Booking Calendar, making form setup faster, clearer, and much more convenient for website owners. Perfect solution for any booking logic As the first booking system for WordPress, we have created a huge number of features to match your specific booking needs. Easily define available dates and allow your visitors to reserve your property or service for a full day or time-slot. For those who need more advanced functionality, our premium versions offer an extensive system with multiple resources, seasonal prices, conditional dates selection, availability search, and even a multi-user system where users can independently manage their own availability, much like an Airbnb portal. Full Day Bookings – Drag and Drop Booking Form Builder Easily configure Booking Calendar for full-day bookings with the new Drag and Drop Booking Form Builder. The new Booking Calendar Form Builder makes it much easier to create flexible booking forms without manually editing form code. It is a simple and visual way to build booking forms for different use cases directly inside WordPress. Appointment Forms with Time Slots or Start Time + Service Duration Selection Create a time-slot booking form in just a few minutes with the new Booking Calendar Form Builder. Visually add the calendar, time fields, and contact fields, adjust the layout, and preview changes instantly — without manually editing form code. Changeover Multi-Day Bookings – Setup Wizard (Pro) Configure multi-day bookings with specific check-in and check-out days, clearly marked with diagonal or vertical lines. Perfect for bookings that require split days. Available Pro versions.

Bookly is a free scheduling plugin for WordPress that allows accepting online bookings on your website and automating your reservation system. Manage your booking calendar, services, client base, save time and money – all in one place. Join more than 70,000 businesses all around the world that have already automated their online booking system! Bookly is designed to grow your online sales and make easy appointments. This is a one-stop shop for any businesses from hair salons or photography to wealth management and transportation. You can start easily with the free version of Bookly and once your business scales you can operate ultimate scheduling software with the paid version available with the Bookly Pro add-on, and various add-ons. PLEASE NOTE that online payments, unlimited number of staff members and services, and ability to install add-ons are NOT AVAILABLE in the free version. If you would like to find out more about features available with the Bookly PRO add-on, please check our demo. Bookly Homepage | Pro Features (Bookly Pro add-on required) | Add-ons (Bookly Pro add-on required) | Bookly Help Center | Demo 1. Benefits for the customers Online Scheduling with Bookly couldn’t be any easier for your customers. The booking form is perfectly responsive on any device, and all that customers need to do is pick their desired service and time, provide you with a few personal details, and voilà – it’s done! Your customers will receive an email or SMS notification before the appointment, and it will be automatically added to your Appointment Booking Calendar. 1.1 When you install Bookly on your website, your customers will be able to: – quickly schedule and book appointment without having to directly contact you or your employee; – make a booking on any device, since Bookly design is fully responsive; – select the category, the service, and employee to perform the service; – define the dates and time that work best for them and the booking system will offer only available time slots; – fill in the minimum amount of contact details; – get an email and SMS notification confirming their online reservations; – get SMS reminder about an upcoming appointment. 1.2 Bookly Key Benefits Saves time – no action necessary after booking is confirmed Friendly booking interface – easy navigation Minimal data input required Responsive booking form – works on any device Never forget a booked appointment with SMS and email notifications 2. Benefits for the business owner No coding experience required to set up Bookly. We did our best to make it as easy and quick as possible to install and start using Bookly free scheduling software on your WordPress website. And with our Bookly Pro add-on and other add-ons, you will bring online scheduling experience for you and your customers to the next level. You will be able to navigate the Booking Admin Panel like a pro, approve and adjust your appointments, and automate your online scheduling to concentrate on the most important part of your business – serving your customers and grow sales. You can change the layout and modify the appearance of the booking form to match your business, website, and branding, manage your services and the customers’ list and send email and SMS notifications – all in one place. You can use a wide range of Bookly features to configure your Appointment Scheduler and manage your bookings effectively: – easily and effectively manage your Customer list and Appointment Calendar online from the Admin panel; – add an unlimited number of clients to your searchable and sortable Customer list; – add new customer directly from the calendar; – setup and customize SMS settings right from Bookly backend; – notify customers and a service provider about approved, pending and canceled appointments via SMS and Email notifications; – view calendar in monthly/weekly/daily format; – filter, search and sort booking list; – automatically approve or cancel appointments. Configure the booking form to suit your needs: – customize every step of your booking form, including editable headings, texts, and buttons; – translate all user interface and notifications into 40+ languages via WPML plugin; – add as many booking forms on your website as you want; – show or hide specific fields if you don’t want them to be visible to your customers; – use pre-defined default values for Category, Service and Employee fields in your booking form; – choose the way your customers will see your booking form on the front-end (e.g., show or hide the calendar, show each day in one column, display blocked time slots); – display available time slots in the client’s time zone; – set duration for each service separately; – choose an individual color for each service in order to color code appointments internally in your Appointment Booking Calendar; – organize services into categories (you can add up to five services with the free version of Bookly); 2.1 Key Features Fast online booking with intuitively manageable forms The fully customizable appearance of the booking form with no coding involved Unlimited number of booking forms on your site Comprehensive admin area with an intuitive interface Monthly/weekly/daily calendar view for the service provider Manageable list of your customers Filterable, sortable and searchable booking list of your customers Variable duration for each service (5 min – 7 days) Services grouped into categories Customizable SMS and email notifications settings right from the Bookly backend WPML integration for multi-language support Automated SMS Mailing Campaigns for various marketing purposes Blocks for Elementor and Gutenberg 3. Bookly Pro add-on features: Bookly Pro add-on allows you to use more features and settings, install other add-ons for Bookly, includes six months of customer support, and provides you with advanced capabilities for automating your online scheduling system. Some of them include: Unlimited number of staff members with an individual working schedule and ability to manage their profiles and online booking calendar Unlimited number of services with additional settings (padding time, visibility, limitations, etc.) Ability to receive secure and flexible online payments on your website Online payment processing with PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, Authorize.Net, Mollie, Payson, PayUbiz, PayU Latam Additional templates for Email notifications (e.g., reminders about upcoming appointments, follow-up messages, birthday greetings, next day agenda, etc.) Advanced features for customizing your online booking form (show address fields, birthday fields, Facebook login, timezone switcher) Google Calendar integration WooCommerce compatibility Importable and exportable customer list which includes info about appointments and payments Built-in analytics so you will be able to see a comprehensive report about the number of bookings, customers and payments received Integration with Zoom, Google Meet and Jitsi Mailchimp integration (via add-on) Ability to export appointments via ICalendar feed Ability to purchase and use dozens of paid add-ons for deeper customization of your booking system (group bookings, custom fields, service extra items, recurring appointments, deposits, coupons, personal staff cabinet and user account for your clients, automatic invoicing, waiting list, and much more!) 4. Who can benefit from using Bookly: Bookly for WordPress is designed to be used by local businesses or individual providers who offer different services to customers. Since the booking form can be fully customized and personalized, it is successfully used in many business segments such as Healthcare, Beauty, Education, Medicine, Consulting etc., as well as by individual professionals. Also, Bookly is an excellent solution for web studios and developers, who are looking for ways to improve the appointment process for their customers. Online scheduling for: Salon & Beauty (hair salons, nail salons, cosmetology centers, tanning studios, barbershops) Health and wellness (wellness, spa & massage, aromatherapy, baths) Medicine (clinics, doctors, dentists, medical centers) Education (education centers, tutors, language schools, private lessons) Fitness & Gyms (yoga classes, personal trainers, health clubs, fitness centers, dance instructors) Professional services (coaches, consultants, lawyers, photographers, consulting psychologist, cleaning services) or any other services which can be scheduled and reserved online using the booking system. FURTHER READING Bookly Online Scheduling plugin official page Help center Bookly demo Bookly Pro add-on demo Add-ons for Bookly Pro Youtube channel AFTER ACTIVATION Add at least one service (Bookly menu > Services). Add a staff member linked to your service (Bookly menu > Staff members). Customize the appearance of your online booking form (Bookly menu > Appearance). Publish the booking form on your website (WordPress sidebar menu > Pages/Posts).