The 7 best WordPress booking plugins in 2024

WordPress doesn't come with a built-in appointment booking system as standard. That means you have two options: either embed a third-party standalone booking app on your WordPress site, or install a WordPress appointment plugin, which is usually a more affordable and easy-to-manage approach.

If you're looking for a customizable WordPress booking plugin that makes setting up an appointment as easy as possible for your visitors, automates staff scheduling, and accepts online payments, you've come to the right place.

As a long-time user of WordPress, I've come across loads of booking plugins. So for this piece, I considered and researched dozens of options and did in-depth testing on the top contenders to narrow it down to these seven WordPress appointment booking plugins.

The best WordPress appointment booking plugins

• Amelia for versatility

• Booking Calendar for accommodation availability

• BookingPress for separate staff and manager dashboards

• MotoPress Appointment Booking for service businesses

• MotoPress Hotel Booking for hotels and vacation properties

• Salon Booking System for salon-based businesses

• Simply Schedule Appointments for consultants and small businesses

What makes the best WordPress appointment plugin?

There are literally hundreds of free and premium appointment booking plugins for WordPress and, consequently, plenty of (longish) lists of the best ones. So what makes this list different? 

Here, I've selected the standout plugins. It would have been easy to produce another long list, but I've tried to weed out the "also rans" and leave you with the cream of the crop. For instance, plugins that only display available appointments but offer no way to make a booking weren't considered. I've also only focused on true WordPress plugins—not embeddable third-party apps like Calendly.

Also: I didn't just read these apps' marketing materials and customer reviews. I spent dozens of hours researching and testing the best WordPress appointment booking plugins. I either used the demo sites or installed and activated each one in turn, configured the settings accordingly, and tested the appointment booking functionality. 

The bottom line is that all these WordPress appointment booking plugins all do much the same to varying degrees. And while some are industry-specific, many are versatile enough to work in various sectors. As I was testing the plugins, here's what I was looking for:

• Ease of use. There are two sides to consider here. On the backend, you want a user-friendly admin dashboard to view and manage bookings, and on the frontend, you want a booking form that makes setting up an appointment as easy as possible for visitors. Any plugin that failed this first test was eliminated.

• Customization options. You'll also want settings that allow you to modify the booking experience, such as a customizable calendar or booking form that you can place anywhere on your website. I was also looking for integration options with standard calendar tools such as Google, Outlook, and iCal. 

• Automations. A big part of introducing an appointment booking system is automating your workflow. For example, triggering automated appointment confirmations and reminders upon booking for both the site admins and the users.

• Multiple services, schedules, and staff. In some cases, you'll want a plugin that supports multiple service providers, such as personal trainers, doctors, and dentists, on different schedules, in one or more locations.

• Payments. You'll also want options for accepting online payments for appointments, possibly supporting multiple languages and currencies.

Overall, I whittled the list down to the seven best appointment booking plugins for WordPress.

The best plugins for WordPress bookings at a glance

Best all-around appointment and event booking plugin for WordPress

Amelia

Amelia pros:

• Perfect for multi-site, multi-service businesses

• Provides an insightful admin dashboard with key metrics

Amelia cons:

• Some people may feel overwhelmed by all the features

The Amelia WordPress booking plugin for appointments and events is perfect for multi-site, multi-service businesses such as law firms, fitness gyms, health clinics, and spa salons. The plugin enables customers to select the right service, with the right person, and makes it easy for them to reschedule appointments.

With Amelia, you can send automated email, SMS, and WhatsApp notifications and reminders for booked, canceled, or rescheduled appointments, and you can choose whether you want to send them to employees, customers, or both. 

In the backend, business owners/managers get a dashboard with widgets, charts, and tables summarizing various metrics and KPIs, like approved appointments, revenue, and employee workload, plus an upcoming schedule. The WYSIWYG editor lets you customize colors, information, and fonts to make appointment booking forms and event calendar forms that fit your website.

On the frontend, you can choose from several styles of mobile-friendly booking forms, like a classic step-by-step appointment booking form, a catalog booking form, or an event list booking form. Customers can quickly pick services, employees, location, date and time, and payment details and change any settings without leaving the booking page.  

The free lite version is well-equipped, but you'll want the premium version for online payments, WhatsApp integration, recurring appointments, unlimited employees, custom notifications, reminders, multilingual support, and different event ticket options. 

Amelia pricing: Free lite version available; then premium plans starting from $79/year.

Best WordPress calendar booking plugin for accommodation availability

Booking Calendar

Booking Calendar pros:

• Supports an unlimited number of booking resources (properties or services)

• Import and export bookings to your Google Calendar 

Booking Calendar cons:

• The frontend display can look a little simplistic compared to other apps

Booking Calendar is ideal for all business sizes, from personal sites to multi-user services like accommodation bookings, equipment rentals, and resource scheduling. Visitors can check availability in the calendar and then make a reservation for their preferred days or time slots.

Although the plugin looks relatively simplistic on the front end, it supports unlimited booking resources, like properties or services, each with its own calendar, to prevent double bookings. So, you can display unavailable, pending, and booked dates (in different colors) for the various resources.

It has a user-friendly admin dashboard for receiving and managing bookings in a calendar overview or listing panel. You can configure the booking form structure and select your calendar skin to fit your site design. You can also customize email templates for different booking actions.

You get even more features as you move up through the premium versions. For example, you can start setting different rates for seasons, days of the week, or number of days selected. There are even options for early or last-minute booking discounts. The customization here is nice and means it'll work for a wide variety of businesses.

Booking Calendar pricing: Free version available; then premium plans starting from $79/year for a single-site license.

Best WordPress appointment booking plugin for individual staff and manager dashboards

BookingPress

BookingPress pros:

• Separate dashboards for site admins and staff members

• Extensive range of payment gateways and free add-ons

BookingPress cons:

• Some users may find the premium plans a bit pricey

BookingPress is a comprehensive WordPress appointment booking plugin for any service-based industry, including health and wellness, gyms, salons, medical clinics, service and maintenance, equipment rentals, and professional services. 

Behind the scenes, there are two types of dashboards: one for site admins and one for staff members. This allows anyone on your team to add and view their appointments, set days off, add services, and track their performance.

In the admin panel, you get a built-in editor to customize your booking form, from colors and fonts to titles and layout. Plus, you can set automatic notifications and reminders via email, WhatsApp, or SMS. BookingPress also syncs with other calendars like Google and Outlook so that staff can schedule bookings with other items in their personal calendars.

On the frontend, you can configure a step-by-step booking form taking visitors through your menu options. For example, select your hair stylist and type of cut, add any extras, choose a date and time, apply any coupons, and take a deposit payment.

The free version of BookingPress includes the PayPal online payment gateway as standard. But in the premium version, you get 17 more online payment gateways and over 40 free add-ons—like coupons, deposit payment, and service extras—to optimize your bookings further.

BookingPress pricing: Free lite version available; then premium plans from $99/year (first year $69).

Best WordPress appointment booking plugin for service businesses

MotoPress Appointment Booking

MotoPress Appointment Booking pros:

• Works with multi-location, multi-service businesses

• Lets you add and customize unlimited services and employees

MotoPress Appointment Booking cons:

• Only displays booking form as a widget rather than a full page

The MotoPress appointment booking plugin makes it easy for service-based companies that use meetings, classes, or sessions to accept bookings and appointments online. It works with a range of appointment-based businesses that offer multiple services in several locations. For example, you could rent out recording studios in three cities for music production, podcast production, and recording sessions. Other typical businesses include:

• Barbershops, hairdressers, and beauty salons

• Tutoring businesses and online classes

• Healthcare and medical centers

• Sports facilities and fitness instructors

Visitors to your site can book appointments step-by-step via the mobile-optimized booking form widget. For example, select a category/service/location/person, choose a suitable date/time, and make the payment (online or upon arrival). Regular clients also have the option to log in to their accounts to schedule recurring appointments faster.

You can send automated email notifications and reminders to clients and staff members before and after the appointment. Plus, there's an optional premium extension to integrate Twilio for SMS notifications. 

The user-friendly admin dashboard lets you customize multiple settings. You can add time slot booking for numerous services, add lock-out hours, add and manage employees, set employee schedules and holidays, create discount coupons, and allow customers to book multiple services.

The dashboard also gives you a bird's-eye view of bookings in list and calendar format, so admins and team members can quickly check their current appointments. Aside from the booking widget, you can also create widgets to showcase employees' experience and design lists of services and locations.

MotoPress appointment booking pricing: Free lite version available. Premium version $59/year (single site) or $199/year (unlimited sites), plus a range of optional add-ons. 

Best WordPress booking plugin for hotels (and vacation properties)

MotoPress Hotel Booking

MotoPress Hotel Booking pros:

• Sync all your bookings from online travel platforms (OTAs) in one calendar

• Manage your bookings from anywhere with the dedicated Hotel Booking mobile app

MotoPress Hotel Booking cons:

• If you need the optional add-ons for managing payments, it becomes expensive

MotoPress also offers a hotel booking plugin: an all-in-one property management suite for hotels, resorts, vacation homes, apartments, campsites, bed and breakfasts, and other types of rental properties. It's capable of handling unlimited properties—including unlimited rooms in the accommodation—or a single property, and it can also process multiple bookings by one user in one reservation.

You can customize the settings for your property type from the user-friendly admin dashboard. For example, you can set the number of seasons, booking rules (minimum and maximum nights), rates (room, occupancy, weekly, monthly), extra services, taxes and fees, discounts and coupon codes, and email notifications.

On your site, visitors can check the availability of individual properties or rooms in a color-coded calendar or use a dedicated search form. You can manually confirm booking requests in the admin dashboard or process them instantly via email or upon payment (in full or fixed deposit). The plugin accepts payments via several gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and 2Checkout, but you can also integrate more through a dedicated WooCommerce payment extension.

The plugin enables you to synchronize all bookings across online travel platforms (OTAs) like Airbnb, Booking, TripAdvisor, HomeAway, or any other that supports iCal (with no per-booking or per-property commission). Plus, you can also add and manage your bookings on your mobile phone with the dedicated Hotel Booking mobile app.

MotoPress Hotel Booking pricing: Free lite version available. Premium version $99/year (single site) or $199/year (unlimited sites), plus a range of optional add-ons.

Best WordPress appointment booking plugin for salons

Salon Booking System

Salon Booking System pros:

• Manage your bookings from the mobile app 

• Add functionality like SMS notifications with 30+ free add-ons

Salon Booking System cons:

• Would benefit from more frontend styling and layout features

The Salon Booking System plugin is ideal for beauty salons, hairdressers, barbershops, and spas, but it's also been used by everything from COVID test centers and health care centers to therapists and tutors. 

The site admin can view, add, and cancel reservations from their Google Calendar with two-way synchronization. And on the backend, there's an easy-to-use admin panel for configuring salon settings by adding salon information, setting email notifications, creating scheduling rules, defining your services, and adding your assistants. The plugin automatically creates three default pages—Booking, Booking my account, and Thank you for booking—along with two assistants and three services to get you started.

You can customize the look and feel of the form's style with three different booking form sizes according to your page layout and a custom color palette. Once you're up and running, there's a calendar and list view of bookings and a reports section with stats on reservations and revenues.

On the frontend, visitors see a step-by-step booking system. At the checkout, you can enable guest checkout or offer a Facebook login for new visitors. Meanwhile, existing customers can log in to check, reschedule, and cancel bookings, view their reservation history, and make new appointments.

The excellent free version is well-equipped, but the premium version adds online payment options, a mobile app for salon staff and managers, free access to 30+ add-ons, and the option to display available time slots in the customer's time zone.

Note: If you want to manage multiple locations, you'll need the premium version Multi-Shops add-on—included in the Business plan or available to purchase for the Basic Plan.

Salon Booking System pricing: Free version available; then premium plans starting from $69/year (15% off renewals). 

Best WordPress booking plugin for consultants

Simply Schedule Appointments

Simply Schedule Appointments pros:

• Brilliant setup wizard gets your first appointment type live in five minutes

• Comes with unlimited calendars, appointments, and notifications

Simply Schedule Appointments cons:

• Requires the Business Edition (which is pricey) for multiple staff and resources

Simply Schedule Appointments is an easy-to-use WordPress appointment booking plugin. It's ideal for consultants and small businesses who want to schedule phone/video calls for consultations, interviews, or other predefined services. But it's not limited to those disciplines—you could easily use it for booking lessons, handyperson services, hair appointments, or anything else.

I was really impressed with the setup wizard, and true to its claims, I had my first appointment booking form live in five minutes. Compared to other plugins, it's a dream to configure. 

You can decide when you're available for appointments and block off dates when you don't want to be disturbed for bookings—no more phone calls or back-and-forth emails to find a meeting time that works. You also get to add buffer time and setup time, so, for example, you could set a lead time of two days to allow for meeting preparation and a buffer of 15 minutes before and after a booking for extra flexibility in your schedule.

You can embed the appointment booking calendars using the WordPress Classic or Block editor, Elementor widgets, Beaver Builder modules, and Divi modules. No matter how you do it, they look elegant and unobtrusive out of the box, but you can style them to match your brand and website.

The free version is excellent, but the premium version gives you extra features like Stripe and PayPal for payments, SMS notifications with Twilio, Zoom and Google Meet for virtual meetings, and Google Calendar Sync with your site's booking system to check your personal calendar for conflicts.

If you want to get really adventurous and create complex forms, you can integrate Simply Schedule Appointments with Gravity Forms or Formidable Forms. And if you want visitors to book events, you can use The Events Calendar integration. 

If you're looking for the Calendly of WordPress booking plugins, this is it.

Simply Schedule Appointments pricing: Robust free version available; then premium plans from $99/year.

Should you use a booking plugin for WordPress?

If you want to take bookings on your WordPress site, you'll need a plugin or a third-party app. If you're already using a standalone app and are comfortable with its functionality, that may be your best bet. But if you're starting from scratch, then choosing and installing a WordPress plugin makes more sense—it's fully-integrated, offers the same functionality, and usually costs less.  

All the appointment booking plugins listed here come with a free version, so you can get a feel for what they offer before investing in the premium version. While one or two are industry-specific, many will work in various scenarios, so don't be afraid to see which works best for you.

If I were choosing one for my business, I'd go for Simply Schedule Appointments. But which one will you choose?

Related reading:

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• The best WordPress SEO plugins

• 7 WordPress plugins that helped me grow my website traffic (and revenue)