When building a booking business, you have to find the right appointment scheduling tool for the best shopping experience. Effective scheduling is more essential than ever, especially for businesses and professionals striving to optimize their time and enhance productivity.
While Acuity Scheduling has gained popularity as a reliable tool for managing appointments, it’s not the only option out there. With a plethora of scheduling tools available, each boasting unique features and capabilities, it’s crucial to explore alternatives that might better suit your specific needs.
Whether you’re a small business owner, a freelancer, or part of a larger organization, this guide will help you find the perfect scheduling solution to streamline your operations and keep your appointments organized. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through the top 11 Acuity Scheduling alternatives worth considering in 2025.
Get ready to discover tools that can transform the way you manage your time!
Table of Contents
Overview of Acuity Scheduling and Its Key Features
Acuity Scheduling has long been a favorite among professionals and businesses seeking streamlined appointment management. It helps professionals manage bookings, automate reminders, accept payments, and sync with calendars—all from a branded online scheduler.
One of Acuity’s popular features is its customizable booking page, which you can tailor to reflect your brand’s identity. Users have the flexibility to set availability, allowing clients to see open time slots in real time, which enhances the booking experience.
Additionally, Acuity offers automated reminders and confirmations, ensuring that both you and your clients stay informed about upcoming appointments, reducing no-shows significantly.
Build your booking business with Acuity, the booking system that will accept payments by offering flexible and convenient client payment integrations (Stripe, Square, PayPal).
Acuity stands out for its sleek, user-friendly interface and flexibility in managing client appointments, especially in industries like wellness, coaching, consulting, and education.
Key Features:
- Fully customize to brand your booking page with custom colors, logos, and messaging to match your business style.
- Automated Email & SMS Reminders.
- Automatically detects and adjusts for client time zones.
- Offer group sessions, recurring appointments, and bundled packages.
- Integrates seamlessly with Google Calendar, iCloud, Outlook, and Office 365.
- Integrate with powerful third-party apps, such as Stripe, Square, Zapier, PayPal, Google Analytics,…
Is Acuity Scheduling free?
Acuity Scheduling does not offer a free plan; however, it provides a 7-day free trial for all its plans, allowing you to explore its features without requiring a credit card.
Acuity offers three paid plans, each designed to cater to different business needs.
Now, it’s time to explore Acuity Scheduling’s free alternatives!
Top 11 Acuity Scheduling Alternatives
WPBookster
One powerful plugin we want to suggest first for WordPress users, which are affordable and functional like separate scheduling software, is WPBookster – Real-time appointment booking on WordPress.
With WPBookster, you can effortlessly turn your WordPress website into a booking calendar. It comes with a lot of add-ons, which helps you launch your store to the world and make it work smoothly.
Whether you’re a fitness coach, therapist, or consultant, WPBookster adapts to your workflow. It integrates with WooCommerce for paid bookings, supports multiple staff members and services, and offers a responsive calendar view for mobile users.
If you’re serious about owning your booking system inside WordPress, WPBookster is a go-to choice.
Key Features:
- It offers a lot of functional add-ons.
- Real-time availability calendar.
- SMS and email notifications.
- Multi-service and staff support.
- Can customizable email notifications and reminders.
- Manage WordPress appointments in booking calendar and list view.
Calendly
Perhaps one of the most popular scheduling tools and best alternatives, Calendly offers a user-friendly interface and seamless integration with various calendar systems. It’s ideal for quick, hassle-free booking and integrates with most calendar systems and video platforms.
Once connected to your Google or Outlook calendar, it automatically reflects your availability and prevents double bookings. Calendly is ideal for one-on-one meetings, group events, or round-robin setups for sales teams.
Its standout feature is the ability to create personalized scheduling links that can be shared with clients, simplifying the booking process. However, it may lack some of the advanced customization options found in other tools.
Calendly is a great fit for freelancers, consultants, and small teams focused on simplicity and speed.
Key Features:
- Clean user interface.
- Connects up to six calendars to automate scheduling with real-time availability.
- Choose from pre-built templates or quickly create custom event types.
- Embedding scheduling links on your website, landing pages, or emails.
- Group events and team scheduling.
- Integrations with Google Calendar, Zoom, and more.
- Time zone detection.
SimplyBook.me
If you’re looking for customization and flexibility, SimplyBook.me might be your best bet. This plugin is more than just an appointment scheduler—it’s a full-fledged booking system for businesses wanting storefront functionality and marketing tools.
SimplyBook.me includes appointment booking, a customizable booking site, built-in point-of-sale tools, gift cards, coupons, and client membership features.
This platform offers a wide range of features, from custom booking websites to marketing tools. However, the extensive options can be overwhelming for users seeking a straightforward scheduling experience.
SimplyBook.me integrates with popular platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Google, making it a great tool for customer-facing businesses like salons, spas, and medical clinics.
Key Features:
- Provided POS and gift card support.
- Reminders to staff and clients whenever appointments are booked, cancelled, or rescheduled.
- Can manage your Social Media and Ads.
- Custom mobile app option.
- Support Apple Pay and Google Pay.
- Integrations with Instagram and Google.
Setmore
With a vibrant interface and easy setup, Setmore is an excellent choice for businesses that want to get started quickly. It includes video conferencing options, making it ideal for virtual appointments. By using this plugin, you can customize your booking page and enhance it to a new level with real-time availability online.
This plugin is ideal for freelancers and small businesses looking for a free or affordable appointment scheduling solution. It’s forever-free plan supports up to 4 staff calendars, basic reminders, and a customizable booking page.
Setmore integrates with Zoom, Teleport, Facebook, and Instagram, making it a versatile option for modern service providers. Paid plans unlock SMS reminders, payment integrations, and advanced analytics.
Setmore is great for solo providers or small teams that need reliable scheduling without heavy costs. The interface is beginner-friendly and stylish.
Key Features:
- Free plan with unlimited appointments.
- Video meeting integrations (Zoom, Teleport).
- Appointment booking via Instagram & Facebook.
- Manage all of your bookings through one online appointment scheduler.
- Team scheduling
- Receive around-the-clock support from Team Setmore.
Amelia
The next best alternative to Acuity Scheduling, Amelia is a powerful booking plugin tailored for WordPress users. You can customize the booking page according to each event you need, such as event booking view, set custom prices, select ticket types, create recurring events, enable deposit payments, and much more.
In addition, you can integrate Amelia with WooCommerce for payments, Google Meet/Zoom for virtual appointments and even manage bookings across different services or departments. Its intuitive back-end interface makes it easy for admins, while the front-end booking wizard creates a professional customer experience.
Loved by more than 80000 happy customers, If you’re managing a high-volume booking operation on WordPress, Amelia delivers sophistication and scale. It is a feature-rich plugin tailored to WordPress users. Whether you’re a clinic or a multi-location service provider, Amelia delivers robust appointment automation.
Key Features:
- Step-by-step booking wizard.
- Provides sleek, modern, and fully customizable booking forms.
- Employee and location management.
- Native Zoom integration.
- WooCommerce support.
- Show events in a list or an event calendar view.
BookingPress
With any service-based industry, you can consider BookingPress as a suitable alternative to Acuity Scheduling – a free appointment booking plugin for WordPress. BookingPress is a WordPress plugin designed to help users set up a booking appointment system with ease.
It comes with a responsive booking interface, supports Google reCAPTCHA, and integrates with Stripe for payment. BookingPress also supports you in effectively running your booking business by tracking your appointments, clients, payments, availability, and more.
BookingPress covers all the essentials, making it ideal for solopreneurs or freelancers who need a simple booking system without the cost. Premium versions unlock more features like Google Calendar sync and multi-service support
A solid pick for WordPress users starting small but with room to grow.
Key Features:
- One-click appointment setup.
- Provide a feature-rich toolset for customizing the booking form.
- Manage appointments with real-time availability
- Google reCAPTCHA integration.
- Stripe payment support.
- Sync popular calendars like Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar
Square Appointments
Perfect for service-based businesses, Square Appointments combines scheduling with payment processing. This plugin is ideal for those who already use Square for payments, offering seamless integration for billing and invoicing. It’s particularly strong in managing client appointments and payments in one place.
Not only for WordPress users, Square Appointments is integrated with popular third-party apps, such as Wix, QuickBooks, and JotForm. You can offer subscriptions, memberships, and group classes, and clients can book through a mobile-optimized page.
This dual functionality allows you to manage appointments while effortlessly handling client transactions. Though it excels in these areas, it might not cater as well to those needing extensive CRM capabilities.
However, the platform may not be as customizable as others, and WordPress users who aren’t already familiar with Square might find it challenging to adapt.
Key Features:
- Offer a Free online booking website.
- Send automatic appointment reminders.
- Your sales are integrated with your POS.
- Build relationships with customers by keeping profiles on file.
- Provide Square Messages to see customer communication and activity in one place.
- Unlimited sets of permissions.
YouCanBook.me
YouCanBook.me focuses on simplicity and calendar integration. It works directly with your Google or Microsoft calendar, showing your live availability and syncing appointments automatically.
Turn your entire business into one page with a powerful booking system. You can customize your booking pages, add buffer times, set up automatic reminders, and use Zapier or API integrations to connect with your CRM or mailing list. It’s particularly useful for consultants, tutors, and remote teams who want fast, real-time scheduling with minimal complexity.
This tool provides excellent customization options and powerful automation features, making it perfect for professionals needing to streamline their workflows. Its interface may take some time to get used to, and it can be pricier than simpler alternatives.
If you’re calendar-driven and don’t need a ton of extra features, this tool is a streamlined solution.
Key Features:
- It offers full customization on the booking page with logo, color, background image, footer, and so on.
- Offer a choice of in-person or online meetings
- Real-time calendar sync.
- SMS/email notifications.
- Webhooks and Zapier integrations.
- Integrated with Analytics to track your client’s journey.
- Connect with popular calendar apps, video platforms, CRMs, and 7,000+ other tools.
Online Booking & Scheduling Calendar for WordPress by vCita
Trusted by over 100,000 users worldwide, vCita is an all-in-one business platform that combines scheduling, CRM, invoicing, client communications, and marketing tools.
In addition to a powerful booking tool, vCita includes a client portal, file sharing, automatic reminders, payment tracking, and more. You can even launch email and SMS campaigns from the same dashboard.
This tool is designed for service professionals and appointment-based businesses.
vCita is more than a booking tool – it’s ideal for coaches, consultants, and agencies managing multiple clients.
Key Featues
- CRM, invoicing, and scheduling in one.
- Offer registration for online sessions, 1:1 appointments, classes, and events.
- Offer online services via Zoom.
- Get paid for services & products online from any device.
- Keep all your client data and payments secure, private, and protected.
- Comes with booking reminders and payment collection.
TidyCal
TidyCal is a no-frills scheduler built by AppSumo with affordability in mind. Its standout feature is the lifetime pricing model – pay once and use it forever, with no monthly fees.
With TidyCal, business owners can create unlimited booking types and fully customize their booking page and email reminders.
TidyCal supports calendar syncing, time zone detection, and simple payment processing through Stripe or PayPal. It offers basic branding and embeds into websites, though with limited styling. It’s perfect for entrepreneurs and coaches who want to keep things lean and efficient.
If subscription fatigue has you down, TidyCal is a minimalist tool that gets the job done.
Key Features:
- One-time payment model
- Calendar integration
- Simple, clean UI
- Easy embedding
- Auto-Create Meeting URLs.
10to8
Combining scheduling with a strong emphasis on automated reminders, 10to8 is great for reducing no-shows and managing client communication. Its integration options are impressive, although users may find some features are not as intuitive as they could be.
In addition, you can create your own booking page, add logos and other branding elements with the help of customization elements.
10to8 is a feature-rich appointment scheduling platform known for its clean interface, strong security, and robust communication features. It’s ideal for businesses of all sizes – from solo consultants to large enterprises – and is particularly valued in sectors like healthcare, education, financial services, and IT.
It also integrates well with various calendars and has strong client management capabilities. The platform automatically sends email and SMS reminders, which significantly reduce no-shows—up to 90%, according to 10to8’s own data.
Key Features:
- Supports teams with varied roles and locations.
- 2-Way Client Messaging.
- Accept payments via Stripe or PayPal at the time of booking.
- Integrates with Google, Outlook, Apple, and Exchange calendars.
- Automatically create meeting links for virtual appointments.
- Comes with SMS, email, and voice call reminders tracking.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Scheduling Tool for Your Needs
In conclusion, selecting the right scheduling tool is crucial for enhancing your productivity and streamlining your appointment management. With the numerous alternatives to Acuity Scheduling available in 2025, which we’ve provided above, it’s essential to take a moment to reflect on your specific needs and preferences.
Each tool comes with its unique features, user interfaces, and pricing structures, so consider what aspects are most important to you – whether it’s ease of use, integration capabilities with other software, customization options, or customer support.
Remember, the best tool is one that complements your workflow and enhances your ability to connect with clients effortlessly. Whether you’re a solopreneur, part of a small business, or managing a larger organization, the right scheduling software can make all the difference in ensuring smooth operations. So, take the plunge, explore the alternatives, and choose the scheduling tool that empowers you to reclaim your time and focus on what truly matters—growing your business and serving your clients!
