Published on October 14, 2022 by Simon Wright
Do you have a service-based company, for example, a hotel, restaurant, event planner, photography, hair salon, clinic, travel agency, or gym? If so, your website – and, therefore, your business – will undoubtedly benefit from having some method for capturing reservations, bookings, and appointments. So, you’ll be happy to know that adding one is super easy, thanks to WordPress booking plugins.
Incorporating a robust booking system into your website offers several advantages:
While it is great that WordPress booking plugins exist, the not-so-great news is that the sheer number available makes choosing the right one a challenge.
Fortunately, the search can be made easier by keeping in mind certain key features a robust booking system should have, namely:
The above list is only the main criteria you should consider when deciding on a plugin. However, there may, of course, be other features that would be useful to your business.
Before we move on to our suggested WordPress booking plugins, we quickly want to mention the importance of having good hosting for your website. WP Bolt offers a variety of high-performance WordPress VPS (virtual private server) hosting packages that will ensure your website is both fast and reliable. To learn more about VPS hosting, please click here.
So, now to our seven suggested WordPress booking plugins. These are all ‘freemium’ plugins, meaning both free and paid versions are available. Therefore, it should be easy enough to find one that fits both your needs and your budget.
Please note the plugins are not listed in any particular order of preference.
Bookly is a versatile general WordPress booking plugin that almost any type of business requiring an online reservation system can use.
With Bookly, your customers can make online reservations quickly and easily from any device type. Bookings are automatically confirmed by email or SMS, plus the plugin can also send SMS reminders nearer the appointment times.
The free version boasts some great features, including:
Upgrading to Bookly Pro costs $89 per year and adds features such as:
Moreover, a range of paid add-ons is also available to further increase the versatility of Bookly.
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Next, we have Amelia, another popular plugin for adding an automated booking system to your WordPress website.
The free version of this plugin, Amelia Lite, is perfect for smaller businesses, such as tutors or hairstylists, who need a reliable appointment-capturing system without breaking the bank. It boasts the following features:
While that amount of functionality is acceptable for small businesses, larger ones may prefer to opt for a paid plan. Costing between €79 and €249 per year, depending on the number of sites you wish to cover, these plans add the following features:
Moreover, lifetime licenses of Amelia are also available. Those cost between $199 and $589. All paid versions come with a fifteen-day money-back guarantee, so trying them is risk-free.
Amelia is an excellent choice as it is suited to many applications, and the free version is great for small or new businesses with zero budget.
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WP Simple Booking Calendar takes ease of use to a new level thanks to its unique simplicity and lack of unnecessary frills. Configuring and operating this WordPress booking plugin is super-easy, making it an excellent option for less tech-savvy business owners looking to enhance their website’s appeal.
The free version of WP Simple Booking Calendar includes the following key features to help you capture online appointments and bookings:
You can upgrade to WP Simple Booking Calendar Premium for extra features. That costs between $39 and $139 per year, depending on the number of domains to be covered. Additional features Premium brings to the table include:
Given its ability to synchronize with external calendars and booking engines, WP Simple Booking Calendar is perfectly suited to vacation rental property websites, although it also has many other applications.
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As you probably realize from the name, Hotel Booking Plugin is meant chiefly for hospitality-type businesses such as hotels, bed and breakfasts, vacation rentals, etc.
The wonderful thing about Hotel Booking Plugin is that you can easily create a simple vacation rental website to capture online bookings or a complex hotel reservation system with online payment facilities, flexible pricing, inventory control, and much more.
Moreover, even the free version of Hotel Booking Plugin has some great features, including:
Increased functionality is available with Hotel Booking Plugin Pro, which costs $99 per year for a single domain or $199 for unlimited WordPress sites. Pro adds the following features:
Moreover, a wide range of free and paid add-ons is available to enhance further the functionality of the free and Pro versions of Hotel Booking Plugin, such as WooCommerce Payments, Elementor integration, etc.
Overall, Hotel Booking Plugin is an ideal way of capturing bookings through your WordPress website and synchronizing them with external calendars.
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Next on our list of WordPress booking plugins is Simply Schedule Appointments. This option makes adding online booking capabilities to your website a breeze, as it is easy to install, set up, and use. Moreover, your customers will love using the intuitive interface when scheduling appointments and making bookings.
In common with all other WordPress booking plugins in this list, Simply Schedule Appointments offers both free and paid versions. The feature set of the free one is impressive and is likely to be sufficient for many smaller companies. It includes:
Naturally, the paid plans offer more functionality. For example, for $99, you can upgrade to ‘Plus,’ which adds:
Two further plans are available, namely ‘Professional’ ($199 per year) and ‘Business’ ($299 per year.) Naturally, those add even more features, such as payment capture, email and SMS reminders, and even team and resource management tools.
Simply Schedule Appointments is suitable for various business types and sizes. So, if you are a wedding planner, gardener, dress shop, or any other business looking for a simple way to add a robust appointment-capturing system to your WordPress website, this plugin may be just the ticket.
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You’ve probably already guessed that Five Star Restaurant Reservations squarely targets restaurant-type businesses. This WordPress booking plugin is a smart and easy way to add table reservations and management to your business’s website.
The free version of the plugin has great functionality, bringing you the features like:
Those features are ideal for smaller restaurant businesses. However, larger ones may wish to consider upgrading to the Premium version, which for between $67 and $397 per year (based on the number of restaurants you have,) brings you tons of extra features for further automating and streamlining your table reservation process:
A further plan – Ultimate – is also available. That costs $297 per year for a single site and allows you to enhance your booking system with automated SMS or email reminders, table selection and assignment, accept deposits, and more.
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If you run a hairdressing salon, barber shop, beauty parlor, or spa, Salon Booking System may well be the ideal WordPress booking plugin for you. Furthermore, non-beauty-related businesses, such as tutors, therapists, etc., can also use it.
Like all other WordPress booking plugins we have suggested in this article, Salon Booking System has a free version which, despite having a zero Dollar price tag, comes with some great functionality:
If you wish to capture online payments, an upgrade to a premium plan is required. Five are available, costing between €69 and €399 per year. Depending on which you opt for, you will get some or all the following extra features and more:
Overall, Salon Booking System is an excellent plugin for adding sophisticated booking capture features to your WordPress website.
Get Salon Booking System
Adding a WordPress booking plugin to your website can push your business to a new level. Not only will you save resources by offering self-service reservation capabilities to your site visitors, but you will also give them a superb user experience that will attract them back repeatedly.
While many WordPress booking plugins are available, we hope this article has helped narrow them down to make finding the right one for your business easier.
I’m a former construction industry professional who came out of the writer’s closet and am now totally comfortable with my creative side. My pronouns are smart, creative, witty, and dependable. I have written content in a number of niches including WordPress, plus I’m a blogger and affiliate marketer. If you’d like to know more about how I can help you, please head over to my website.
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