You’re in this free online appointment scheduling guide probably for two reasons. You’re tired of how bulky, time-wasting, and frustrating the traditional way of appointment scheduling works.
And/or you want to try the free version of online appointment scheduling and see if it is worth considering. Or, you don’t have enough finances to purchase the paid version of online scheduling.
Either Way, we got you covered, you’ll shortly be getting the best free online appointment scheduling software at no cost.
Online appointment scheduling is a process where multiple customers book, schedule or even cancel their appointment through a web-based service.
Appointments are very important in getting business certifications no matter the size, especially for the sake of ROI (Return On Investment). But, if you keep on running your appointments in the traditional scheduling method, you’re losing lots of opportunities.
There are chances that errors can easily occur, and vital data can be mistakenly skipped. These things are capable of slowing the company down.
In fact, when the appointment is poorly scheduled it leads to unhappy customers which might make the company lose key customers. For instance, If your receptionist is scheduling, rescheduling, canceling, and confirming appointments, it can frustrate him/her.
And, this might lead to poor customer service, when customers show up. Even the clients feel safer booking their appointments in the comfort of their homes.
If they feel like rescheduling it (maybe because of an emergency), they can also happily do it from the comfort of their home. Even traditional appointment scheduling can lead to missed calls.
Shockingly, a study made by 411 Locals found that 62% of phone calls for small businesses are not answered. That is, out of 10 phone calls only 4 are answered.
Further, a survey was made in 2020 with North Americans, and they found out that 60% use online scheduling to book their appointments. While 33% of them said they book their appointment through phone calls.
Do you see why free online appointment scheduling can be a good choice? Most people want to book their appointments online, at least that’s what 77% of patients said.
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Why is Appointment Scheduling Important?
There are dozens of reasons why free online appointment scheduling is important, but here are a few reasons.
1. You save time
“Time,” they said “is money,” if you can save time on your business you can use it and invest in a crucial meeting, an important skill, to your family. Your time is not only saved but your customers’ time is also saved here.
Your customer doesn’t need to call and wait anymore (which can really frustrate them). As much as each day gifts us with so many business hours, if you spend half of it scheduling appointments, you have accomplished little.
2. Less Distraction
When you are not receiving a call while you’re in the middle of serious business, it helps you to focus well. Scientific research found out that distractions affect performance negatively.
It is when you’re distracted that you remember the strawberry ice cream in your fridge, or to sweep out little dirt before you (as I was while writing this). And when these calls come in it can lead to poor retention memory.
When there are fewer or no distractions, you’ll see how effective you will be in your project or work. You’ll see how much you can achieve within a short time.
3. Maintains Strong Customer Relation
When your customers can easily book and schedule their meetings through free online appointment scheduling they feel happier. And a happy customer leads to a retained customer.
And a retained customer wants to bring their friends along to be happy like them. And this will increase your customers which brings more money.
In addition, if your product is top-class, but your means of reaching is very poor, there is a likelihood that the customer won’t return. Customers love to be treated well, even in scheduling their appointments.
Simple things like this turn a prospect into a customer, then a loyal customer. A free online appointment scheduling can be a gem your company is missing.
4. Reduces No-show
A study shows that 67,000 no-shows can cost the healthcare system almost $7 million. That’s quite a lot of money.
One of the reasons for no-shows is forgotten appointments.
But with free online appointment scheduling, this number can be reduced. For instance, this software is meant to remind the patient regarding their appointment, and it will inspire the reason why they first made the appointment.
Especially for those that booked it for a long time before and those that have a tight schedule.
5. Increases Revenue
With free online appointment scheduling, patients will be reminded of their appointments, and customers don’t have to wait a long time to book an appointment again. You’re no longer distracted as before, you save your precious time.
When all these are done, your revenue will congratulate you, for a job well done. One of the major reasons you started a business is to make money.
Online scheduling helps you to schedule more appointments, unlike traditional booking. And, this will result in more money on your account.
Also, newer customers can easily book their dental appointment with a few clicks online, rather than calling someone they don’t know.
6. Stress Is Reduced
For you to schedule an appointment for your customers is one part of the headache, to call them back to remind them of their appointment is a whole level of headache.
Not just that, you need to call Clark to reschedule his appointment because you had an emergency at home. Or call Esther to complete her spa money.
7. Everyone Can Know What to do
When an appointment is booked through free online appointment scheduling, your workers will also see them. This will enable them to know how many appointments they have throughout that day, who is coming for the appointment, and the reason he/she is coming.
Employees can also see what is going on in the business when they are not around.
8. Schedule Errors are Reduced
The chances of booking twice or more are what normally occurs in traditional ways of scheduling. In addition, your worker might forget they scheduled someone at a particular time, and this can cause confusion or even lead to frustrated customers.
9. You Customers Prefer it
70% of customers prefer to book their appointments online. Imagine what you could be losing when you don’t have free online appointment scheduling?
Your customers want to wake up in the morning, go straight online, book their appointments and move on with their activities (that simple). They want to see if your free time is their free time online.
Not to pick up their phone and call, then they are hearing “please, let me check my schedule,” and they are waiting for minutes. That’s frustrating and might lead to losing that customer.
10. 24/7 Scheduling
Your customers are not restricted by the time to book an appointment with free online appointment scheduling. They can do it in the morning or at night, on weekends, business days, or holidays.
And you’ll be notified once an appointment is scheduled online.
Free Online Appointment Scheduling
Here is a list of free online appointment scheduling
- Square Appointments
- Calendly
- Squarespace Scheduling
- Zoho Booking
- Appointlet
- Appointy
- Picktime
1. Square Appointments
Square Appointments is a free online appointment scheduling that works for all businesses. No matter the size or type of business, whether it is a chiropractor, barber, a dentist, spa, or a very busy photographer.
Square Appointments has a nice user interface, which makes it easy and friendly to use their website. It can be used on any device, whether it is your smartphone, tablet, or desktop.
To make scheduling easier, Square Appointments also made an app for both android users and iPhone users. So you can go straight to the app and see appointments you have for the day with ease.
Most importantly, Square Appointments is a free online appointment scheduling that allows you to add a free booking flow to your website. This allows your customers to go through your website and book their appointments, easy peasy.
To start using Square Appointments, all you need to do is freely register with them, then go to the appointment section in the dashboard. From the appointment section, you can choose to create a staff, add your services or even create your online booking site.
Further, you don’t need any special training to use Square Appointments, common sense should guide you through. Even though you had difficulty setting up, their trained customer service team is there to guide you.
Also, you can learn and ask questions in the seller community. And, their support center is available 24/7 where you will see some beneficial tips or even videos to help you learn more about their services.
In addition, setting up doesn’t take the whole day, with just a few minutes you’re ready to go. There are no hidden fees either, you don’t pay when your money is refunded, no fees when you just registered.
It’s not a long contract, that is, you can cancel anytime you want. Square Appointments also allow you to accept any card from your customer’s payment.
That is, you can accept Mastercard, Visa, American Express, and Discover. Checks, gift cards, and cash are also accepted for payment by your customers.
Even when you’re offline, Square Appointments is one of the free online appointment scheduling that allows you to accept payments when there is no internet service. When you return online, the payment will automatically push through.
You should note that Square Appointments are free if you are the only one to manage them. But if you have staff that you would want to add, they will give you a 30-day free trial.
Which is worth paying for their services, seeing the level of excellence they portray in their business. With 29$ per month, you can upgrade to their plus account.
Their premium account comes with $69 per month.
2. Calendly
Calendly is a free online appointment scheduling software that allows you to professionally schedule meetings. Calendly is trusted and used by more than 10 million users all over the world.
Companies like eBay, Compass, LAZBOY, Lyft, Hackbright Academy, Ancestry.com, Twilio, and more than 50,000 more companies also use their services. Their online schedule platform makes it possible to schedule meetings with anyone, anywhere, and anytime.
More than 100 reputable partners are working with them to provide your one-click schedule with clients. Amazingly, this great online schedule company is just 9 years old.
It was founded in 2013 by Tope Awotona, and since then has helped lots of companies make billions of dollars.
All you have to do is share a link to the customer and “bingo,” your meeting is scheduled. The customer will see your free time and choose a time that is convenient for them and book an appointment appropriately.
Calendly is synchronized with all your calendars and it knows when you’re available. Even if the customer changes his/her mind, the client can reschedule easily.
It also reminds the client when the appointment reaches, which reduces losing appointments. And, it can also follow them up.
You can also embed your scheduled appointment link to your website, which your online visitors can use to book their appointments. You can make appointments to suit your life plan, nobody will schedule a time that doesn’t serve you right.
There is no hassle in using Calendly, the website is user-friendly. It helps you to create meetings with your team members, and there are friendly templates that can make the scheduling more interesting.
Also, Calendly is a free online appointment scheduling that can see what the team members are doing. By doing so, they can help their teamwork better.
Further, you can connect your LinkedIn with Calendly and you can schedule appointments with customers with just a few clicks. Calendly has an app for both android and iPhone users, and there are Chrome and Firefox extensions.
However, like Square Appointments, you have to be the only one to manage these appointments. To upgrade to Essentials you need to pay $10 per month, for a professional upgrade, you will pay $15 per month and a team upgrade is $20 per month.
You can also choose to upgrade any of the plans annually. Which you’ll get a discount of 20% for doing so.
Visit Calendly Online Appointment
3. Squarespace Scheduling
Squarespace is a free online appointment scheduling that allows your client to see when you’re free, then book their appointments. With their payment platform, your customers can easily make their payments.
Their payment platform allows you to bill your clients before or after appointments. You can also interact with your customers anywhere through a video meeting.
You don’t need to worry about customers that owe or don’t pay full payment again. Also, you can share when you are available to your customers so they can know when you’re free, then schedule an appointment.
When someone books an engagement, you are notified immediately. And your meetings are synchronized with your calendar software and apps, for instance, your Google, Outlook, iCloud, and Office 365.
Squarespace Scheduling helps you to send customized automatic confirmation, follow-ups, and reminder messages. Which is branded according to your company’s aesthetics.
Squarespace Scheduling is a free online appointment scheduling that also allows you to integrate its platform with third-party apps. Like; Google Analytics, PayPal, Zero, Outlook, GoToMeeting, Google Calendar, Stripe, Zapier, and so many other apps.
4. Zoho Booking
Zoho Booking also syncs with all of your calendars like other reputable free online appointment scheduling. In the free version, you’re freely given a booking link that you can customize.
Zoho Booking will also automatically notify your customers through email, which will also have your company’s design. And more other services they will render for free, they won’t ask you for your credit card.
It can also hold the schedules of your staff members in one place, allowing them to plan wisely. You’ll also see what your workers’ day will look like.
There is an auto time conversion that makes your international clients book according to their timezone. Zoho Booking integrates with Zoho CRM, Meeting, Assist, Flow, PayPal, Stripe, Hubspot, Zoom, Google Meet, Mailchimp, and many other apps.
This helps you to have everything you need in one place.
5. Appointlet
Appointlet is trusted and used by over 158,000 people. It is a free online appointment scheduling that allows you to do so many things on their platform.
No one will restrict you with the number of meetings you intend to book, they are unlimited. You are also not restricted with the type of meetings you want to create.
You have the chance to integrate Appointlet to video conferencing apps like Zoom, Go2Meeting, and Join.me. You can also customize your form to feel like your company’s outlook.
With Appointlet, you can send automatic booking notifications, and your clients can easily cancel their schedules and reschedule at their own will. Your customers’ timezone is their location timezone which will make them not to be confused when booking.
With Appointlet’s free online appointment scheduling, you can add any number of teams. Your logo and color are also allowed to personalize the app to your company’s taste.
Appointlet has greatly helped lots of businesses to make millions of dollars in their business. For instance, Milton Anthony (Demand Generation Manager) said,
“With Appointlet our customers get to be in control of when they want to be reached. This simple tool has contributed to over $9 million in revenue in the last 8 months.”
6. Appointy
Appointy free online appointment scheduling allows you to integrate your website to their app. It allows you to get appointments directly from Facebook.
It will create a tab on your Facebook page which your customers can click and easily book their appointments. This method should triple your bookings.
Further, it syncs with your website, to allow your website visitors to book appointments, which will bring in more money. Even if you don’t have a website, there is a subdomain created by Appointy which allows you to create your booking page.
Appointy is trusted by more than 110,000 customers in the world. Appointy made research and discovered that more than 55% of all bookings are done outside business hours.
Your clients prefer booking when they are not at work. Moreover, Appointy provides more than 20 languages so that your customers can book in their languages.
Your data and security are also taken seriously. With their partnership with top security companies, your data is secured with them.
It also provides special analytics, which enables you to know how satisfied your customers were and how your team is performing. With Appointy, you can make your customers schedule appointments, classes, workshops, events, tours, rides, and activities.
In addition, it is not restricted to any kind of business. The health and wellness niche can use it, education, medicine, fitness and recreation, salon and beauty, the professional service, the government can also use it.
7. Picktime
With Picktime free online appointment scheduling, you can schedule unlimited appointments, classes, rooms, etc. without stress. There is something for any kind of business, whether spa, barbing, education, how to study medicine in Canada, sales rep.
You don’t need much stress to manage your appointments, with just a single click, you’re good to go. With Picktime, your customers can book a meeting anytime, you’re open 24/7, which increases your booking number.
If you have business in more than one location, Picktime will help you to overview them from wherever you’re. You can also manage your teams’ plans, and decide to give out a “day off,” if necessary.
Moreover, your clients can pay from the platform, either through card or cash. And, they are reminded of their appointments when the time approaches.
With Picktime free online appointment scheduling, you can add 3 team members, that is, you are not the only one managing the schedule even in the free version.
Conclusion
You see that you can start online scheduling at no extra charge. With free online appointment scheduling, you can save more time, work productively, spend more time on important things and make more money.
Isn’t that simple and what you want?
FAQs
Does Google Have a Free Scheduling Tool?
Koalendar is a free meeting scheduling service from Google.