The 5 Best Scheduling Apps For Small Businesses

Square Appointments is included for free for individuals using the Square Payments platform. For $50/month, you can add two to five employees, and for six to ten employees, you’ll pay $90/month. Custom pricing is available for accounts with more than 10 users per month.

Square’s built-in payment processor will run you a fee of 2.6% + $0.10 per card-present transaction on the free plan. You’ll pay 2.5% + $0.10 per transaction on the Plus plan. You are charged a 3.5% + $0.15 fee for card-not-present transactions.

The fee for online/eCommerce transactions and invoices is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

In addition to the cost of the software and payment processing, Square offers some of the easiest-to-use and most affordable hardware options on the POS market.

You can start with something as simple as a free Square magstripe reader or pay $49 for a first-generation Contactless & Chip Reader. Square’s Register is a great option if you prefer a more traditional setup that stays at your counter and has a customer-facing display.

Square offers a pretty straightforward appointment tool you can start utilizing from day one of signing up with Square Payments, with no additional hoops to jump through. Simple in design and easy to use, you’ll find the features will help you reduce inbound calls and cut the time it takes to schedule appointments.

Here are some of the most important features Square Appointments offers:

• Free booking website
• Customizable website colors, layouts, & pages
• iOS & Android apps
• Automatic email & SMS reminders
• Google Calendar sync
• Cancellation & no-show fees

Square offers low-commitment month-to-month contracts that allow you to come and go as you please. There are no early termination fees or long-term contract hoops to jump through if you decide to leave Square.

Another great feature of Square is the hardware warranty. If you damage your Square hardware within your hardware warranty period, even if you didn’t purchase the hardware directly from Square, the company will send you new equipment.

Acuity Scheduling offers a 7-day free trial for all of their plan options.

• Emerging: $20/month when paid monthly, $16/month when paid annually
• Growing: $34/month when paid monthly, $27/month when paid annually
• Powerhouse: $61/month when paid monthly, $49/month when paid annually

The Emerging plan includes 1 staff/location. For more, you’ll have to go with the Growing plan (6 staff/locations) or the Powerhouse plan (36 staff/locations).

All plans include unlimited services and appointments, client self-scheduling, and confirmation/reminder emails.

Acuity Scheduling offers a ton of helpful features. Here are some of the most notable:

• Seamless booking experience for clients
• Customize your booking page to match your brand
• Requires clients to accept cancellation policies and terms before booking.
• Take online payments through Stripe, Square, and PayPal
• Accept tips, deposits, & pre-payments
• Automated appointment follow-ups through email or text on certain plans
• Custom intake forms
• Store important client information in dedicated profiles
• Build customer loyalty with coupons, discounts, & subscriptions

Acuity Scheduling integrates with popular apps like Zapier, Square, Google Analytics, and more.

It’s easy to leave your Acuity Scheduling subscription behind if you need to. You can deactivate your subscription immediately or just turn off your auto-renew to finish out your last billing cycle.

You need to use a computer to manage your Acuity subscription at this time. There are no long contracts or early termination fees that you need to worry about with Acuity Scheduling.

Zoho Bookings makes pricing easy with its Forever Free, Basic, and Premium plans. Rates start at $6 per month for the Basic plan (when paid annually) and $8 when paid monthly. The premium plan starts at $9 (when paid annually) and $12 when paid monthly.

Each plan can begin with a 15-day free trial. If you have more specific needs and require a tailored plan, Zoho Bookings offers a FLEX plan made just for your business. Contact Zoho Bookings directly for quotes.

Zoho’s features are geared toward sale calls, consultation, interviews, or general calendar management. It is not set up for client-heavy bookings like salons, especially since there is no customizable web design option.

Some of Zoho Bookings’ best features include:

• Calendar sync
• Protect meeting schedule with buffer time
• Employee mobile app
• Meeting app integrations
• Collect deposits & partial payments
• Reporting
• Push notifications & reminders

You can also take advantage of the Zoho Bookings custom workflow functions like periodic emails (newsletters, coupons, etc.) and APIs that help you build a custom scheduling interface on top of Zoho Bookings or bring Zoho Bookings inside your personalized app.

While Zoho doesn’t provide a designated hardware option, you can use any hardware that is compatible with your payment processor when using Zoho Bookings. All that is required for the software is a device that connects to the internet.

Like Square and Acuity, Zoho Bookings allows you to cancel your plan at any time with no penalties or charges for the next month.

Doodle scheduling is free if you just want to set up a poll to find the best time to meet, but you need a paid plan to take advantage of any of the booking features.

Doodle offers four different plan options:

• Free: 1 user, unlimited polls, one booking page, one 1:1, Google Meet and Zoom integration
• Pro: $14.95/month when billed monthly, $6.95/month when billed annually. 1 user, unlimited booking pages, unlimited 1:1s, Microsoft Teams and Webex integrations.
• Team: $19.95/month when billed monthly, $8.95/month when billed annually. 5 users, custom roles and permissions, Admin Console, activity reports.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing. Priority support, single sign-on, and personalized onboarding/training.

All of Doodle’s paid plans have a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, so you can check it out for a couple of weeks before paying the first monthly or annual fee.

If you have a large group you want to coordinate with, Doodle is a great and easy-to-use software that will make it simple to find a good time to meet.

Here are some of the features Doodle offers that make your life as a meeting host easier:

• Booking pages for your whole team
• Schedule across time zones
• Set preferred meeting times
• One-on-one meetings
• Group polls
• Automatic deadlines & reminders
• Integrations with Zapier to use payment processors like Stripe, Square, PayPal, & more
• Compatible with any POS hardware with an internet connection

Doodle Professional is renewed automatically each year or month, depending on which subscription you choose.

If you want to cancel your Doodle plan, you just need to disable the automatic renewal of your subscription. This will cancel your current plan once it expires, and there are no early termination fees to worry about.

Sign In Scheduling has recently changed its pricing structure.

• Standard: $460/year. Includes 200 appointments/month, a single booking page, customizable branding, automated reminders, bulk emails, in-house integrations, and GDPR compliance.
• Pro: $612/year. Includes 200 appointments/month, multiple booking pages, customizable themes, automated reminders, bulk emails and SMS, in-house integrations and Zapier, and GDPR and HIPAA compliance tools.

Sign In Scheduling offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required that can be upgraded at any time. It’s also currently running a 15-minute “Sneak-Peek Demo” which is described as an automated interactive webinar with live chat.

Sign In Scheduling is built to help you book, track activity, and collect payments all in one platform.

Here are some of the most notable Sign In Scheduling features:

• Visitor management
• iPad kiosks allows for contactless check-in via QR code
• Pre-visit check-ins completed via SMS allow easy check-in for non-smartphone users
• Online booking pages
• Create pages based on location or providers
• Centralized calendar
• Track no-shows
• Take payments online via Stripe and PayPal integrations
• Integrates with popular apps like Zoom, Facebook, Xero, Mailchimp, Zapier, Microsoft Flow, and more

Sign In Scheduling doesn’t provide a lot of information about its contracts or the process of canceling your plan subscription. We can assume, based on its pricing model, that contracts are yearly with an automatic renewal. This might mean running into early termination fees if you decide that Sign In Scheduling isn’t right for you.

If you need to close your Sign In Scheduling account, you have to contact the customer support team, which also leads us to believe that there will be some sort of fee for ending your contract early.