The 7 Best WordPress Booking Plugins for Appointments

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Manually scheduling appointments is a nightmare.

How much time do you waste going back and forth with clients about meeting times?

There’s a much better way.

With the automated appointment booking plugins featured here, you can provide clients and customers with your availabilities and let them select the time that works best for them.

Even better, your calendar updates live as clients book time slots allowing you to fill up your schedule and focus on your clients, not your calendar.

Sound good?

Keep reading to find the top plugins to add calendars and booking forms to WordPress.

You might also find a solution you like in our event registration WordPresss themes collection.

WordPress booking plugins

I’ve included both free and premium solutions below. If there’s one difference between these two types plugins, it’s the design quality.

The free plugins were surprisingly feature-rich, but also relatively unnattractive. If you want a booking calendar that is both functional and beautiful, you’re better off with a premium solution.

Here are my top picks for the best WordPress appointment booking plugins.


  • 1. BookingPress

    BookingPress WordPress Booking Plugin

    View plugin now

    Plugin Description

    If you want to add bookings to your website, it doesn’t get much better than BookingPress Appointment Booking Plugin. This highly-rated plugin makes it easy to promote your services and automate the process of scheduling online.

    BookingPress offers a simple and effective solution to manage your bookings and appointments. It allows you to create a booking form, set up availability and pricing, and receive payments through your website.

    The plugin has service-oriented features that help you to manage your bookings effectively. One of the most significant features is the availability calendar which shows the available dates and times for booking.

    One of the many outstanding features of BookingPress is its ability to automate booking processes, making it an ideal plugin for a diverse range of businesses, including doctors, salons, spas, tutors, consultants, wedding planners, gym and yoga studios, dealers, and restaurants. With its flexible online booking process capabilities, businesses can easily accept online bookings without any hassle.

    Some notable premium features of the BookingPress Plugin are:

    • 33+ Premium add-ons are free to use
    • 15+ worldwide payment gateways are free to use. (PayPal, Razorpay, Stripe, Mollie, Authorize.net, 2Checkout, PagSeguro, Braintree, Worldpay, Paystack, PayUMoney, PayPal Pro, PayFast, Square, Worldpay, Skrill, WooCommerce, etc.)
    • Fully customizable to meet the needs of individual businesses
    • The front end and back end of the plugin have an award-winning responsive design
    • Advanced reports and analysis for better business management
    • Cart facility for multi-booking
    • WhatsApp & SMS notifications for easy communication with customers.
    • Invoice feature with PDF support
    • The Google Calendar & Outlook calendar integrations help businesses stay organized
    • The Advanced staff dashboard is available for staff members to manage their schedules and appointments
    • Custom booking fields with conditional hide/show options are available for greater flexibility
    • Fully customizable booking forms and customer panels make the booking process easy for both businesses and customers
    • Customizable email notifications
    • 24/7 customer support

    Learn more

  • 2. Bookly Pro

    Bookly

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    Plugin Description

    I have to kick things off with Bookly Pro. This booking plugin is extraordinarily feature-rich and with over 20,000 sales, it’s the most popular premium solution for adding appointment calendars to WordPress.

    One of Bookly Pro’s best features is its mobile device optimization. It’s more common now than ever for visitors to schedule appointments from their phones. The forms added by Bookly adapt seamlessly to touch-enabled devices to provide a top-notch user experience.

    It’s hard to cover everything Bookly Pro can do. You can honestly customize the form around any parameters you want. It displays beautifully on your site and in the back-end, you get a calendar view of all upcoming appointments. And of course, you may not want to login to your WP site every day to see your meetings. That’s why Bookly Pro integrates with Google Calendar so you can keep them synced at all times.

    While you might use a plugin to automate free appointment scheduling, it’s also possible to charge. Bookly Pro integrates with more than 10+ payment platforms. This includes PayPal, Stripe, and the option for visitors to agree to pay in person instead.

    Overall, Bookly Pro is an outstanding plugin and should be at the top of your list when you add appointment booking to WordPress.

    Learn more

  • 3. WordPress Appointment Booking

    Appointment Booking Plugin By MotoPress

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    Plugin Description

    The MotoPress Appointment Booking plugin comes in handy when you’re developing an appointment-based website. It works perfectly for service-related industries such as spas, salons, yoga studios, medical institutions, tutors, and more. It includes a booking widget you can embed on any page of your site so your customers can submit a booking with the mobile-friendly form. Even better, they can schedule multiple reservations at once.

    This appointment plugin stands out due to unlimited services, multiple employees, and group scheduling features. The timetables are flexible enough to include buffer times, breaks, holidays, and days off. When it comes to collecting payments, clients can pay with PayPal, Stripe, direct bank transfer, or through another method upon arrival.

    Another cool feature in this plugin is the built-in user roles, Appointment Manager and Appointment Employee. This lets you give employees access to specific booking management options within your site. All the bookings are available in a centralized calendar view, and you can even synchronize bookings with an employee’s Google Calendar.

    This plugin is fully integrated with Gutenberg, Elementor, and the Divi page builder. Plus, it includes a number of widgets to feature your employees’ contact info, lists of services, and other details.

    Learn more

  • 4. Booked

    Booked

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    Plugin Description

    Booked is the best-designed WordPress booking plugin in my opinion. The aesthetic is minimalist and goal-oriented, it adapts well to mobile devices, and the experience of booking appointments with this plugin is totally smooth.

    If you need to create a complex form with lots of integrations, you’ll probably be happier with another product. However, for simple appointment booking, the Booked plugin really nails it. It’s flexible enough to accommodate most service businesses and is super easy to configure for your site.

    The back-end interface allows you to view, manage, and edit upcoming appointments. Customers also get their own dashboard for viewing their appointments including an option to add the meeting to Google Calendar. When you purchase the Booked plugin, you also get access to the WooCommerce, Booking Agents, and Calendar feeds add-ons.

    Learn more

  • 5. Team Booking

    Team Booking

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    Plugin Description

    Team Booking has taken a really smart approach to appointment scheduling. This plugin is 100% dedicated to integration with Google Calendar.

    With Team Booking, you can add a customizable form to your site and keep all appointments up-to-date between the scheduling form and Google Calendar using two-way syncing. If you manually update Google Calendar, the form on your site updates. Likewise, when a visitor schedules a meeting via your form, Google Calendar is immediately updated. It’s a wonderful system that gives you the best of both worlds.

    You can accept payments via Stripe and PayPal and even offer discount codes. Another cool feature in this well-designed plugin is the email notification system. You can notify the client and the service provider each time a meeting is scheduled with completely customizable emails. This can vastly improve the onboarding experience for new clients. And as the name implies, this service booking plugin works great for teams and more complex organizations.

    Learn more

  • 6. Booking Calendar

    Booking Calendar

    View plugin now Premium version

    Plugin Description

    Booking Calendar is the most popular free booking plugin with over 50,000 installations. The way it’s designed, it will work best for multi-day appointment booking for hotels and similar accommodations.

    Using this plugin is simple. There are just a few customization options needed to configure the form, and then you’re provided with a shortcode you can add to any post or page to display it on your site. Follow our shortcode tutorial if you’re not familiar with using them.

    Where Booking Calendar shines is in the admin display. You’ll get a beautiful and practical timeline interface where you can view all upcoming appointments. Click any appointment to get additional details like the name, number, and email of the client. If you need additional flexibility, there are a few premium packages available as well.

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  • 7. WooEvents

    WooEvents

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    Plugin Description

    I included this plugin for anyone looking for a WooCommerce-based booking solution. WooEvents is focused on event booking as the name implies. This means that instead of providing visitors with your availability so they can choose a timeslot, you publish a calendar of events and visitors can register for that event. It’s perfect for selling tickets to shows and conferences.

    As a premium events booking plugin, you can expect some awesome features with WooEvents. Some of these features include recurring events, user-submitted events, and countdown timers for events.

    As for the calendar itself, WooEvents comes with a gorgeous display out-of-box. The form is full of color and looks awesome. It also integrates well with other themes and you can click the link below to visit the WooEvents page where they featured dozens of examples with other themes at the bottom.

    Learn more

Which booking plugin is best for you?

To start with, give the Bookly Pro plugin serious consideration. It’s truly awesome how many features they’ve included.

If Bookly Pro overwhelms you, check out Booked instead. It’s much simpler and beautifull designed.

Team Booking stands out due to its deep integration with Google Calendar and the two-way sync.

Booking Calendar is the most popular free booking plugin, so it might be a good option for anyone just getting started with their business.

Lastly, WooEvents is the best plugin for event registrations with WooCommerce.

Still have questions about these booking WordPress plugins? Use the comment form below to share your thoughts.

Ben Sibley
Ben Sibley
This article was written by Ben Sibley. He is a WordPress theme designer & developer, and founder of Compete Themes.