Bookster – WordPress Appointment Booking Plugin vs WPS Bookings for WooCommerce

Managing appointments through phone calls, texts, and emails is chaotic. You lose track of bookings, double-book appointments, and spend hours on scheduling instead of serving customers. Bookster turns your WordPress site into a 24/7 booking system. 🌐 View All Demos Customers book appointments themselves, see real-time availability, and receive automatic confirmations. You manage everything from one dashboard. 📌 Documentation | Core Pro vs All Access 💫 Perfect For Hair salons and barbershops Spas and beauty clinics Massage therapists and wellness centers Personal trainers and fitness coaches Consultants and coaches Tutors and education services Medical and dental practices Any service business that takes appointments 💙 How It Works Customers visit your booking page, choose a service, pick their preferred staff member, select an available time slot, and book instantly. You receive an email notification and can view all appointments in your calendar dashboard. No more back-and-forth scheduling. 🔥 Key Features (100% Free) Unlimited Bookings & Services Create unlimited services with custom names, descriptions, and photos Set individual duration and pricing for each service Add taxes, fees and discounts to bookings No limits on number of appointments per month Offer service add-ons and upsell options Smart Scheduling Set your working hours for each day of the week Configure different availability for different services Add buffer time between appointments (e.g., 15-minute cleanup) Block off days for vacations or holidays Set minimum advance notice for bookings (e.g., require 24-hour notice) Customer Booking Experience Clean, mobile-friendly booking form that works on all devices Multi-step process: choose service → select staff → pick time → enter details → confirm Customers see only available time slots (no double-booking) Optional customer account dashboard to view and manage their bookings Customers can cancel or reschedule appointments themselves Payment Options Accept cash/check for in-person payment Accept PayPal payments online (customers pay when booking) Stripe integration available via premium addon for credit card payments Mark bookings as paid or unpaid manually Track revenue in the analytics dashboard Automatic Notifications Email confirmation sent to customers immediately after booking Reminder emails sent before appointment Email notifications sent to admin when new bookings arrive Customize email templates with your branding All emails sent automatically – no manual work required Admin Dashboard View all appointments in Bookster → Calendar menu Switch between day, week, and month calendar views Click any appointment to view or edit details instantly Filter appointments by status (confirmed, pending, cancelled) Search for specific customers or appointments Drag appointments to different dates to reschedule Color-coded by service or staff member for quick overview Analytics & Reports Track total bookings and revenue right from dashboard View performance by service (which services are most popular) Monitor individual agent performance Make data-driven decisions about staffing and services Premium Addons (Optional) Upgrade your booking system with these customizable options: Staff Management Add unlimited team members from Bookster → Agents menu Set individual working hours for each staff member Assign specific services to specific team members Let customers choose their preferred agent or assign automatically Track performance and bookings per agent Booking Form Customize booking form steps (reorder, add, or remove steps) Add custom fields to collect specific information Enable recaptcha, brand logo, timezone selector, and more for your booking system. Advanced Features (coming in future addons) Group bookings and classes Recurring appointments Multiple locations management SMS notifications via Twilio Design Toolkit for Block Editor and Elementor Getting Started Adding the Booking Calendar to Your Site Method 1: Shortcode (Works Anywhere) Add [bookster_booking_form] to any page, post, or widget area. Method 2: Block Editor 1. Edit the page where you want the booking form 2. Click the + button to add a block 3. Search for “Bookster” 4. Select the Bookster Booking Form block 5. Publish the page Method 3: Classic Editor Paste [bookster_booking_form] directly into your content. Viewing and Managing Appointments Go to Bookster → Calendar in your WordPress dashboard You’ll see all appointments in calendar format Click any appointment to view details or make changes Use the view buttons at top to switch between day/week/month views Use filters to show appointments based on agents or booking status Creating a Manual Booking (For Walk-Ins or Phone Bookings) Go to Bookster → Calendar Click the + New Appointment button (or click an empty time slot) Select the service and staff member Choose date and time Enter customer information (name, email, phone) Select payment method Click Create Appointment Customer automatically receives confirmation email Troubleshooting Booking calendar not showing on my page Check 1: Verify the shortcode Make sure you added [bookster_booking_form] exactly (with square brackets). Check 2: Clear cache If using a caching plugin, clear your cache: WP Rocket → Clear Cache or similar. Check 3: Theme conflict Temporarily switch to a default WordPress theme (Twenty Twenty-Five) to test. If it works, there’s a theme conflict. Customers not receiving email confirmations Check 1: Email settings Go to Bookster → Integrations → Email tab and confirm email notifications are enabled. Check 2: Check spam folders Ask customers to check spam/junk folders. Add your domain to their contacts. Check 3: WordPress email issues WordPress email can be unreliable. Install an SMTP plugin like YaySMTP to improve email delivery: 1. Install YaySMTP plugin 2. Connect it to Gmail, SendGrid, or Mailgun 3. Send a test email to verify Check 4: Test with yourself Create a test booking using your own email to confirm emails are sending. Time slots not showing as available Check 1: Working hours configured Go to Bookster → Settings → Schedule and verify hours are set for the day in question. Check 2: Agent availability If using staff members, check Bookster → Agents and verify the agent works on that day. Check 3: Minimum advance notice Check Bookster → Settings → General → Restrictions, if you require 24-hour notice, today’s appointments won’t show. Check 4: Service duration If your service is 2 hours but only 1 hour remains before closing time, that slot won’t appear. Double bookings happening This shouldn’t happen with Bookster. If it does: Check 1: Multiple admin users If multiple people manage bookings, ensure everyone refreshes the calendar before creating appointments. Check 2: Contact support If this persists, contact Bookster support with specific examples. PayPal payments not working Go to Bookster → Settings → Payments tab Verify your PayPal email address is correct Confirm PayPal is enabled (toggle should be blue/on) Test in PayPal sandbox mode first Check if PayPal account is verified and can accept payments Review PayPal transaction logs for error messages Calendar showing wrong timezone Go to Settings → General in WordPress Set your city timezone correctly (e.g., “New York” or “Berlin”) Save changes Go to Bookster → Settings and verify timezone matches Clear browser cache and reload Third-Party Services Bookster uses these external services to provide full functionality: FullCalendar.io Purpose: Renders the interactive booking calendar Privacy: No personal data sent to FullCalendar Terms: https://fullcalendar.io/license Stripe.com (Optional – only if using Stripe addon) Purpose: Process credit card payments Data shared: Customer name, email, payment amount Privacy: https://stripe.com/privacy PayPal.com Purpose: Process PayPal payments Data shared: Customer name, email, payment amount Privacy: https://www.paypal.com/privacy When customers make payments, they’re redirected to Stripe or PayPal’s secure servers. Bookster does not store credit card numbers. Support Need help? We’re here for you: Documentation: Visit Bookster’s detailed guides Support Forum: Post questions in the WordPress.org support forum Email & Live Chat Support: Contact us through the Bookster website Video Tutorials: Watch setup videos on our YouTube channel Response time: We typically respond within 4 hours on business days and 12 hours on weekends. We’d Love Your Feedback ❣️ If Bookster helps your business, please leave us a review on WordPress.org! It takes 60 seconds and brightens our day. Click here ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to share your experience. Have a feature request? We’re actively developing new features based on user feedback. Submit your ideas here. Compatibility Works With All Major WordPress Themes: Brandy WP Shadcn GeneratePress OceanWP Divi Avada And thousands more Page Builders: Elementor Gutenberg (Block Editor) Classic Editor Beaver Builder WPBakery What’s Next? After installing Bookster: Run the setup wizard Add the booking calendar to a page Create a test booking to see the customer experience Customize email templates with your branding Share your booking page link with customers Start accepting appointments 24/7! Your new booking system is ready to help you grow your business. Welcome to Bookster! 🚀

Bookings for WooCommerce allows store owners to offer bookable products such as appointments, rentals, and events directly from their WooCommerce store. Incorporate the reliable, dependable online booking system for your bookings based business, designed specifically for your WooCommerce store. WooCommerce Bookings is an all-in-one appointment scheduling plugin Motivated to facilitate and automate your booking operations directly within your WooCommerce store. It empowers business owners to transform standard products into fully bookable services making time slot reservations seamless, intuitive, and entirely customer-driven. This WordPress booking plugin allows you to add a booking calendar on your website in order to schedule online appointments. You can also show your booking calendar on websites like Booking.com and Airbnb. Set the booking people types (adults, kids, and oldies), and manage your bookings with ease by utilizing the listing calendar and regulating the booking durations. You can now simply book time slots utilizing the WordPress booking plugin, confirm/reject bookings, display reservations on calendar listings, enable booking cancellations, promote booking availability, regulate booking duration, and much more using the Bookings plugin’s capabilities. WooCommerce Bookings is the ultimate solution for all your booking and appointment needs across diverse industries: Salons & Spas – Admin can manage bookings and appointments for salons and spas also for other beauty treatments, different massages, nail art, and consultations with ease. You can create different bookable products for each one of them, as per service type. Each service type can have specific time slots, durations, and pricing, ensuring your clients can easily book their desired appointments. Fitness Trainers & Gyms – Our Bookings Plugin is compatible with the WooCommerce subscriptions plugin, which gives you the power of creating subscription-based booking products for your fitness classes, personal training sessions, and Gym memberships. Healthcare Providers – Utilize the functionality of the booking plugin and set booking time slots – 24 hours or AM/PM, and schedule doctor’s appointments, therapy sessions, and consultations. Consultants & Coaches – Administrators can integrate Google Calendar, which allows clients to book appointments for consultations, coaching sessions, or workshops. Event Organizers – Admin managers can easily offer confirmations for booking requests made by customers, as well as easy booking cancellations. This enables users to book tickets for events or reserve spots for workshops, seminars, and conferences. WordPress Booking plugin Demo | Documentation for booking for WooCommerce KEY FEATURES OF THE FREE VERSION OF THE WORDPRESS BOOKING PLUGIN: 1) Centralized View For Bookings Customers can view their bookings in a centralized manner. They can see the name of the booking product (which is clickable), the payment method they used, the option to add the booking to their Google Calendar, the booking status, and the cancellation option (if the merchant has enabled this functionality). Furthermore, customers can also select whether they want to view the bookings in a list or grid format. 2) Sync Global Calendar With Airbnb Merchants can sync their global booking calendar with their Airbnb listing calendar. If specific dates are set as unavailable on Airbnb, an automated cron job that runs every 5 minutes will update the bookings calendar( listed on your WooCommerce store) to block those same dates, and vice versa. Similarly, any changes made in your store’s global calendar will reflect on Airbnb’s calendar too, ensuring both stay perfectly in sync. 3) Global Calendar Booking By utilizing this feature of the booking plugin, merchants can easily integrate the global calendar into any page on their booking website. This eliminates the hassle of creating multiple calendars. Merchants can also add unique forms to the global calendars; these forms are there to collect relevant information that will help you process the bookings more efficiently. Once a date is marked unavailable, the same date can not be marked available, and vice-versa. NOTE: Merchants can only add up to 5 fields while creating the form if you’re using the Free version of the plugin, and the “required” action is only accessible for users with the Premium Version. 4) Choose Your Week’s Starting Day The admins can conveniently select the start day for the week suiting the requirements of your booking website. 5) Multi-Language Support for Calendars Merchants can select the language that aligns well with their target audience. This functionality helps merchants make their booking websites familiar to their customers. 6) Booking Spotlight Enhance your customer’s online booking experience with this intuitive feature. Whenever a customer selects a particular date or slot for booking, it visually gets highlighted, making it easier for the customers to track their choices. 7) Offer Bookings Availability Settings With the Bookings for WooCommerce Plugin, admins can effortlessly manage availability and scheduling for WooCommerce appointments. They can set daily availability as well as specific booking deadlines, simply by adjusting Start and End times in the plugin’s Availability tab within settings. This flexibility allows for more than 10 slots based on individual needs. Marketers can leverage this feature to customize availability for particular days, weeks, or even months. For instance, Marketers can set Mondays and Tuesdays as available until December. 8) Flexible Bookings With the booking and appointment plugin for WooCommerce, customers can tailor their WP booking criteria to their specific booking unit (hour, day, and minutes), budget, event, and requirements. You can make reservations without bothering to place a call, thus you can do so from the comfort of your home following easy booking management. 9) WordPress Bookings Confirmations & Cancellation Offered With the WooCommerce appointments plugin, Admin managers can easily offer confirmations for booking requests made by customers, as well as easy booking cancellations, by utilizing the plugin’s capabilities. 10) Booking Listing and Sorting by Tag All requested booking plugin-based orders made by the customers are to be listed in the WooCommerce Order Listing table. Admin managers can conveniently sort the booking out of the orders using the Bookings tag available there. By utilizing this feature, you can ensure that your customers are only able to submit complete and accurate booking requests, leading to a more efficient and streamlined booking process. 11) Add your Bookings to Google Calendar With the click of a button, you can now instantly add your WP Booking requests utilizing our plugin-based setting option to your Google Calendar. Isn’t this a WOW feature? It goes without saying that this enables you to take pleasure in your reservations while also keeping you informed of their status and serving as a virtual reminder of them. 12) Offered Services & Additional Costs With the WooCommerce appointments plugin, admin managers can easily create booking services and additional costs using the backend settings, and also can easily display them over the checkout page as well as over the individual bookable resource page. 13) Responsive Interface WordPress Online Booking provides an online mobile-friendly WooCommerce easy free online booking system, i.e. a responsive UI that works on a variety of devices. In short, they offer ease of access for their customers for online appointment booking products. 14) Avoid Unwanted Bookings Prior to a day, admin managers can easily determine the maximum amount of WooCommerce appointments that can be made. So that they may provide easy booking management for their items, avoid unnecessary bookings, and easily indicate unavailability with the WordPress booking plugin. BOOKING APPOINTMENT WORDPRESS PLUGIN MEETS YOUR REQUIREMENT, SO Download Now!! LIVE DEMO OF WORDPRESS BOOKING PLUGIN WooCommerce Bookings Frontend Demo WooCommerce Bookings Backend Demo Demo For Live Preview WordPress Booking Demo : Different Pricing On Different Dates WordPress Booking Demo : Configurable Booking Start and End Times WordPress Booking Demo : Booking Calendar WORDPRESS BOOKINGS PLUGIN COMPATIBILITIES The Bookings plugin is compatible with Points and Rewards for WooCommerce and Points and Rewards for WooCommerce Pro. This allows merchants to offer points and rewards on bookable products. Compatibility with Gutenberg Block allows merchants to seamlessly add the global calendar, just by entering the calendar ID to incorporate the calendar into different pages. This eliminates the need to copy and paste the unique global calendar shortcodes. Elementor Page Builder is compatible with bookings plugin. This compatibility lets you use Elementor’s capabilities to add the “global calendar” to different pages without copying shortcodes. WooCommerce bookings plugin is compatible with Upsell Funnel Builder. This allows admins to upsell booking-related items or whatever best suits the requirements of their online booking business. WooCommerce Bookings plugin is compatible with Return Refund and Exchange for WooCommerce and WooCommerce RMA For Return Refund & Exchange. This will help the customers in receiving the overdue reimbursement or refunds easily using the bookings plugin. The Bookings for WooCommerce is compatible with WordPress Multilingual i.e. WPML plugin and Multisite. Our Bookings plugin is compatible with Subscriptions for WooCommerce and Subscriptions For WooCommerce Pro. This allows merchants to list subscription-based booking products on their websites. They can charge sign-up fees and make it a recurring booking product. Bookings for WooCommerce plugin is compatible with our Wallet System for WooCommerce. This allows customers to make bookings through the wallet frontend panel and recharge their wallets to use the balance for future purchases. Our Bookings plugin is compatible with Ultimate Gift Cards for WooCommerce and Gift Cards for WooCommerce Pro. This enables merchants to run offers wherein they can offer gift cards for salons, spas, etc, along with their booking products. WHAT PREMIUM VERSION OF BOOKINGS FOR WOOCOMMERCE PRO OFFERS 1. Allow Single-Day Booking For Customers Utilize this functionality of the bookings plugin if merchants want their customers to book for a single day/date, not multiple days. This feature is suitable if you have a booking product that you want to enable for a day/date. NOTE: This functionality works for Single Calendar. 2. Color Codes to Display Availability: As an admin, you can now allow your customers and visitors to view the availability and unavailability of given slots with the help of color codes in the date picker calendar with our WP booking plugin. 3. Export Booking Order by Booking Name You can now effectively export your Woo bookings order data with ease just by referring to the name of that particular WooCommerce Appointment product. 4. Google Calendar Sync: Admins can use this feature to sync the processed bookings to their Google Calendar. 5. Resource’s Daily Maximum Number of Bookings This option allows you to set the maximum booking limit for a single day. You can specify the number as per your ease here and easily avoid getting overburdened for a day. 6. Day-Wise Slot Management The admins can utilize this functionality to schedule different appointment slots every day. 7. Smart Pre-Booking Email/SMS Reminders This reminder settings tab offers multiple setting options for setting up your booking email and SMS-based reminders. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF EXCLUSIVE FEATURES OF WOOCOMMERCE BOOKINGS PLUGIN The Online Reservation Plugin i.e. Bookings for WooCommerce turns your ordinary WooCommerce store into an effective booking plugin in WordPress solution provider. Making use of bookings plugin features, you can create an online appointment booking system that caters to all your customer’s requirements with ease. Note: Get Bookings for WooCommerce Pro Additional Useful Content Appointment Bookings Video Create Online Booking System WOOCOMMERCE BOOKINGS SUPPORT If you need support or have questions, kindly use our online chat window here or and discover all types of WooCommerce Extensions for your eCommerce store. If our documentation doesn’t contain the solution to your problem, you can visit the WP Swings Forums Community or Generate a ticket Create and Revamp Your Store with WooCommerce Services External Services WP Swings Support Service Purpose: Submit user support queries Data Sent: Name, email, message (user-provided form data) When: On form submission via support page Service endpoint: https://wpswings.com/submit-query/ Terms of Service: https://wpswings.com/terms-and-conditions/ Privacy Policy: https://wpswings.com/privacy-policy/ WP Swings Demos Purpose: Provides users with access to live product demo previews to explore plugin features and functionality. Data Sent: Standard web request data such as IP address, browser type, and referring URL. When: Data is sent only when the user voluntarily clicks on a demo link. No automatic requests are made by the plugin. Service endpoints: https://demo.wpswings.com/bookings-for-woocommerce-pro/ Terms of Service: https://wpswings.com/terms-and-conditions/ Privacy Policy: https://wpswings.com/privacy-policy/ HubSpot Forms Used for onboarding and deactivation feedback forms. Data sent: Form fields submitted by admin, plus currency, and context pageUri, pageName, and ipAddress. When: When onboarding/deactivation form is submitted from the plugin. Service endpoint: https://api.hsforms.com/ Terms of Service: https://legal.hubspot.com/terms-of-service Privacy Policy: https://legal.hubspot.com/privacy-policy Google Calendar (Add-to-Calendar Link) Purpose: Create calendar events Data Sent: Event details (title, date, location) When: When user clicks the calendar link. Service Endpoints: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/r/eventedit Terms: https://policies.google.com/terms Privacy: https://policies.google.com/privacy Google Calendar API (FullCalendar Integration) Purpose: Sync calendar events Data sent: Calendar ID, API key, and query parameters. When: When FullCalendar is configured to pull events from Google Calendar. Service endpoint: https://www.googleapis.com/calendar/v3/calendars Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy Google Maps Embed Purpose: Used to display booking location maps on the frontend product pages. Data Sent: The booking location/address string is sent as a query parameter in the embedded map URL, along with standard browser request data. When: Every time a booking product page with location map is loaded. Service endpoint: https://maps.google.it/maps Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy Google Fonts (Static Assets) Purpose: Used to load font assets (if referenced by styles). Data sent: Standard web request data for font files. When: When fonts are loaded. Service endpoint: https://fonts.gstatic.com/ Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy My Question is not listed Check out WooCommerce Bookings knowledge base