BookingPress Review: The Best WordPress Appointment Booking Plugin

Managing appointments can be a headache if you run a service-based business. But not with BookingPress. This powerful WordPress plugin streamlines scheduling to keep customers happy and frees up time so you can focus on delivering great services.

In this guide, we will walk you through the features and benefits of BookingPress and how it fits different types of service businesses.

What Does WordPress Appointment Booking Plugin Do?

As the name suggests, an appointment booking plugin helps streamline appointments. It automates the management of business appointments. It provides automated reminders to clients and saves you time on manual follow-ups.

A powerful booking system allows your clients to book your services 24/7.

Key Functions:

Online 24/7 Booking
Calendar Integration
Automated Notifications
Online Payment Processing
Staff & Service Management
Customizable Booking Forms

If you provide time-based or slot-based services like fitness classes, salon services, online education, car wash or rental business, clinic, dance school, etc., a booking solution can help.

Don’t worry if you’re on a limited budget. There are several booking plugins available. One option worth considering is BookingPress, which offers free and paid versions to accommodate different budgets.

BookingPress offers BookingPress Lite, the free version, and BookingPress Pro, the paid version. So, even if you are not ready to spend money on software, there’s a solution. Let’s look at each of them in more detail.

Why BookingPress?

BookingPress is more than just a booking plugin. It is a complete solution designed to make appointment scheduling effortless by offering:

✅ 20+ Payment Gateways for Free: Accept payments smoothly with a wide range of gateways at no extra cost.

✅ 50+ Add-ons: Get powerful features and integrations without paying extra. Everything you need is already in your plan!

✅ 14-Day Money-Back Guarantee: Try BookingPress risk-free. If it is not the right fit, you get your money back.

✅ Growing Community: Join a growing community of 60,000+ happy customers who rely on BookingPress for seamless appointment management.

Review: BookingPress Lite

Overview

BookingPress Lite, despite being free, is a full-fledged appointment booking solution. It is perfect for small businesses, freelancers, individual professionals, and even big companies with multiple staff members. It has a straightforward interface and can be set up without any coding knowledge. You can start accepting online bookings in just a few minutes on your WordPress website.

Top Features

Unlimited Bookings: Receive as many bookings as your business requires to scale up and serve multiple clients daily.
Multiple Services: You can add as many services as you cater to with BookingPress. Thus, you can offer an array of services for your clients to choose from in your online appointment booking form.
Custom Appointment Duration: Set dedicated time slots for each service or provide specific durations. You can also provide customers with a choice of various durations, such as a 30-minute fitness class or a 1-hour session.
User-friendly Interface: An extremely intuitive interface that simplifies the booking process for you and your clients.
Automated Email Notifications: This plan also includes automated notifications for appointment confirmation and reminders.
Page Builder Integration: BookingPress supports page builders like Gutenberg and Elementor to easily customize booking forms and websites.
Online & Offline Payments: The plugin also offers online payment support with PayPal. You get an online booking setup with free online payments, reminders, and services. You can even provide manual payment options while designing the booking form.
Multi-language Support: The Lite version of this WordPress appointment plugin is translation-ready and offers localized versions of your site.
Security Features: The built-in anti-spam functionality (captcha-free) keeps your customer data safe and increases their trust in your business.
Import/Export Tool: With this tool, you can easily transfer BookingPress plugin data for further record-keeping or import data from other tools to keep all your customer data in one place.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

The free plugin is highly cost-effective as it offers all the essential booking functionality at no cost.
It supports your business growth by allowing unlimited bookings and service additions.
The plugin is easy to use, navigate, and set up. The straightforward, user-friendly interface minimizes the learning curve.
Setting up online payments with PayPal, even in the free version, is an exclusive feature that is not available with other booking plugins’ free versions.

Cons:

The free version lacks some advanced features like SMS notifications, advanced reporting, and staff management.
It also lacks diverse payment methods and gateways. However, you can quickly run your service business and accept online payments with the BookingPress Lite version.

Final Verdict on Lite Version

If you’re new to service businesses and seeking a complete yet low-investment solution, BookingPress Lite is ideal. You will get all the necessary features for free. This entry-level solution will help you get comfortable with the workings of online booking systems. Once you are set, you can then go for the pro version.

Review: BookingPress Pro

Overview

If you are looking for an extensive suite of features from an appointment booking system, BookingPress Pro is perfect. It is designed for scalability, enhanced functionality, and exclusive features. This tool is perfect for medium to large businesses that want facilities like staff management, a multiple locations system, service packages, and advanced reports. Let us look at the features that make this tool worth the investment.

Advanced Features

Advanced Staff Dashboard: Add multiple staff members and assign them specific services. Add their hours, availability, expertise, etc., and provide them access to their dedicated staff dashboard so they can view and manage their day accordingly.
Multiple Payment Gateways: Support 20+ payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, Mollie, Authorize.net, Razorpay, etc. This ensures payment convenience for you and your clients.
Automated Notifications: With Pro, you get access to SMS and WhatsApp notifications and emails. This is a more convenient way of sending reminders.
Recurring Appointments: If you offer ongoing services or classes, this is the perfect feature. Clients can schedule recurring appointments for a specific duration and book their calendars.
Multi-language and RTL: This tool helps you cater to a global clientele with its multi-language and right-to-left text orientation support. It ensures that your business is accessible and usable across many different regions.
Advanced Reports & Analysis: Get detailed statistics and reports to monitor your business performance, track bookings, and analyze staff schedules.
Third-party Integrations: With integration into tools like Zoom, Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, Mailchimp, ARMember, Google ReCaptcha, and many others, you can indeed extend the capabilities of your business.
Multiple Business Locations: This tool is perfect for you if you run multiple locations of your business. You can easily manage an unlimited number of locations from a single dashboard.
Happy Hours & Gift Card: Set special happy hour pricing based on your requirements. Further, you can allow your customers to purchase a gift card and offer it to others to boost word-of-mouth marketing.
Group Booking: Allow multiple people to book a single slot as a group. For instance, a couple’s spa or a group tuition session.
Add Buffer Hours: Set up a buffer time before and after an appointment so your staff can get a break to shift from one to another.
Overnight Booking: For services like hotels, an overnight booking option is a boon. Allow your clients to book multiple days with this feature.
Discount Vouchers: Create multiple discount codes and share them with loyal clients to increase bookings.

Apart from these, there are multiple other features like service extras, bundle services, country-location-wise tax management, conversion tracking, customizable booking forms, and many more.

BookingPress Pricing

BookingPress provides unlimited add-ons and features at a single cost without hidden charges. It has three pricing plans that differ only in the number of sites on which it can be used.

Standard Plan: $79/year with 20+ payment gateways and 45+ add-ons to be used on a single site.
Professional Plan: $129/year with 20+ payment gateways and 50+ add-ons for use on up to 3 sites. It also provides certain premium add-ons.
Enterprise Plan: $249/year with 20+ payment gateways and 50+ add-ons and can be used on 20 sites. This plan also provides some exclusive add-ons for additional features.

Looking at the extensive range of features and multiple add-ons, BookingPress is a cost-effective solution with substantial value.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

Advanced payment integrations offer various features to cater to your diverse business needs.
The user-friendly interface for advanced functions eases the learning curve of Pro tools and setup.
The customer support is prompt, helpful, and available 24/7.
You get a fixed set of add-ons for all plans.

Cons:

If you are an individual or a small-scale business, you might not need all the features of the Pro version. It can lead to an overwhelming business functioning with limited needs.

Final Verdict on Pro Version

If you are a medium-to-large business looking to amp up your game, BookingPress Pro is for you. Its extensive features, along with an easy-to-use interface, are the perfect investment for your service business. You can quickly run your service business with third-party integrations and support with appointment booking and scheduling. Thus, with this tool, you can enhance your client management and the service business process.

Wrapping Up

BookingPress is a powerful and versatile booking solution that caters to businesses of all sizes. Want to have a quick review of its Lite vs Premium versions? Here it is!