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6 Top-Rated Free Appointment Scheduling Software

Ashish Upadhyay profile picture
By Ashish Upadhyay

Published | Updated on
10 min read
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Do you often get overwhelmed when managing customer appointments for your business? Maybe you have a front desk team for your business that finds it difficult to manage multiple customer reservations, double bookings, and missed appointments. Having a dedicated software solution that helps simplify appointment scheduling by keeping track of customer inquiries and staff availability can nudge you toward success. 

However, getting an appointment scheduling tool doesn't have to break the bank for your business. You could choose a free solution that ensures you always meet your customer appointment needs. This article highlights, in alphabetical order, six top-rated free appointment-scheduling software products based on verified software reviews. Read more.

All the products in this article are dedicated appointment scheduling tools that offer features such as an appointment reminder, online booking, and calendar sync.

1. Fresha

Fresha is an appointment-scheduling solution that offers unlimited bookings with its free plan. The software also provides a mobile application to send push and email notifications to existing clients, reminding them of their appointments. 

You can also create user accounts for team members in the software and help them stay up-to-date with appointment notifications. Fresha also gives its free users unlimited reporting capabilities to look into their appointment metrics, such as appointment conversion rate, cancellation rates, and average service time.

Free features of interest:

  • Unlimited appointment bookings: Creates appointment bookings for customers and sends notifications across mobiles, tablets, and desktops. 

  • Unlimited locations: Helps you manage multiple venues from a central account and handle appointment schedules through a single dashboard. 

  • Staff scheduling: Helps assign appointments to specific staff members and grant them access to their schedules.

Customer support options: Chat, email, and help desk

Who should consider Fresha?

Suppose your business has multiple venues and needs to manage clientele across various locations. In that case, you can use Fresha's unlimited location management feature and track appointments through a central dashboard. The software also offers a mobile app for customers to browse available time slots and services and facilitate appointments.

Analysis accurate as of August 2023

2. Goldie

Goldie is another appointment booking application that helps facilitate customer appointments and send appointment reminders. Furthermore, it allows users to create an online booking website.

The software allows up to 20 appointments with its free plan and provides a calendar to manage appointments. The online booking website can be customized as per your brand requirements. The free version also provides a customer relationship management (CRM) portal that helps you send booking confirmations and follow-up messages to customers to avoid no-shows. You can also manage your list of service offerings and prices to keep your customers up to date. 

Free features of interest:

  • Online booking website: Helps create an online booking portal for your business to accept and manage customer appointments.

  • Unlimited devices: Supports unlimited devices, such as mobiles, desktops, and tablets.  

  • Manual reminders: Helps you send reminders to customers regarding upcoming appointments via email and push notifications on mobile.

 Customer support options: Chat, email, and phone support

Who should consider Goldie?

If your business needs to create an online booking website from scratch at no cost, Goldie is an ideal choice as it provides this functionality with its free plan. The software also lets you organize all prospects and customers and store their information in a centralized dashboard.

Analysis accurate as of August 2023

Trial/Free Version

  • Free Trial
  • Free Version

Cost to upgrade

$19.99 per month (billed annually)

Device compatibility

/ Pro tip

Check for the capability to create a custom booking page that can be customized as per your business’s brand, such as specific themes, colors, and fonts.

3. OnceHub

OnceHub is an appointment scheduling solution that offers live engagement through live chat and video meetings, availability management for your staff, and third-party calendar integrations. 

The software also offers a powerful workflow builder for sharing customer information between teammates, collecting and storing customer data, and routing appointment requests to individual team members. OnceHub also provides flexible publishing options for promotional material on your website. You can choose to have standalone pages to promote services, pop-ups on the main webpage, or embedded forms to collect customer queries from the website.

Free features of interest:

  • Workflow builder: Helps build individual workflows for team members and create a centralized information repository. 

  • Automated reminders: Helps send automated reminders to customers regarding upcoming appointments and notify team members to take follow-ups. 

  • Video conferencing integration: Integrates with third-party video calling software to facilitate customer video meetings.

Customer support options: Chat, email, and phone support

Who should consider OnceHub?

If your business relies on video meetings and wishes to have regular face time with customers, you can opt for OnceHub. Its video conferencing integration gives you multiple options to choose from and engage your audience through live interaction.

Analysis accurate as of August 2023

Trial/Free Version

  • Free Trial
  • Free Version

Cost to upgrade

$10 per user per month (billed annually)

Device compatibility

/ Pro tip

Look for integrational support with various existing and commonly used applications, such as accounting, email marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), calendar management, and video conferencing platforms.

4. Setmore

Setmore is another appointment booking solution that offers unlimited appointments with its free plan. It also provides a mobile application to its users, which allows them to accept customer payments. You can also use the app to create multiple staff calendars and provide your team with individual staff logins to manage their own bookings. As an admin, you can keep tabs on all schedules via the mobile app.

You can send customized notifications to customers for appointment confirmations and reminders. The software also facilitates email reminders by providing email integration. Setmore accepts up to four users with its free plan.

Free features of interest:

  • Individual staff logins: Create individual staff logins for up to four people and enable team members to manage their bookings. As an admin, you can keep tabs on all schedules.

  • 1-click video meetings: Provide your services virtually with video calling integration without downloading extra applications.

  • Built-in payment system: Offers a built-in payment gateway to your online booking page, helping you track every transaction and generate customer invoices.

Customer support options: Chat, email, and phone support

Who should consider Setmore?

Businesses that don't wish to purchase a solution for payment management can benefit from Setmore as it provides an integrated payment gateway to accept customer payments and keep track of transactions.

Analysis accurate as of August 2023

Trial/Free Version

  • Free Trial
  • Free Version

Cost to upgrade

$5 per month for up to two users (billed annually)

Device compatibility

5. Trafft

Trafft is a scheduling and appointment booking solution that lets you manage individual and group customer appointments for group events such as yoga or pilates. The free version of the software gives access to five users and enables you to set unlimited appointments and send up to 200 email notifications to customers each month. 

You can also use the built-in booking website to accept customer appointment bookings and sync third-party calendars to manage employee schedules. Trafft also offers group bookings and lets customers select time slots on specific dates via the booking page.

Free features of interest:

  • Email notifications: Sends up to 200 email reminders per month to customers to notify them about upcoming appointments, cancellations, or changes in their bookings. 

  • Calendar sync: Synchronizes with third-party calendar platforms you may have and helps you keep track of your daily, weekly, or monthly appointments. 

  • Special days for employees: Helps set customized working schedules for specific employees on one or more days. This overrides the employees' general working schedules, ensuring flexibility when needed.

Customer support options: Chat, email, and phone support

Who should consider Trafft?

Trafft is ideal for businesses that cater to individual and group bookings and want a platform that helps them schedule recurring group bookings for members. If you have a website, you can easily embed a booking form into any page using Trafft. This enables your clients to book appointments directly from your website.

Analysis accurate as of August 2023

Trial/Free Version

  • Free Trial
  • Free Version

Cost to upgrade

$19 per month for up to 10 users (billed annually)

Device compatibility

/ Pro tip

Opt for a tool that allows you to generate various business reports and analytics, such as appointment reports, client reports, revenue reports, and staff performance reports. The software should also allow you to download, print, and email these reports whenever required.

6. YouCanBook.me

YouCanBook.me is another online scheduling and appointment-booking solution that helps set appointments and create work schedules for your entire workforce across different departments. The software helps you view, cancel, reschedule, and keep a record of every customer interaction.

The software lets you control your availability by setting up a minimum and maximum advance booking notice. This feature stops people from booking at the last minute or too far in the future. You can also set individual prices for each booking based on the service you’re offering or set an hourly rate.

Free features of interest:

  • Configurable booking form: Gives you complete control over your booking form questions and helps get the customer information you need for every booking.  

  • Custom shorthand codes: Helps personalize communication by using shorthand codes on your booking form questions and outputting the answers in emails and messages, eliminating the need for customers to manually add their service preferences in their communication.
  • Booking payments: Integrates with third-party payment platforms to securely accept card payments during customer bookings. 

Customer support options: Chat, email, and phone support

Who should consider YouCanBook.me?

Businesses that need to create multiple booking pages for various services can opt for YouCanBook.me, as it lets you create up to 10 booking pages with its free plan. You can also view, cancel, reschedule, and keep a record of every customer interaction through the built-in booking dashboard.

Analysis accurate as of August 2023

What is the cost of upgrading from a free appointment scheduling software plan to a paid one?

Upgrading to a paid appointment scheduling app can cost as low as $5 per month or increase to $69+ per month, depending on various factors—number of users for the software, integrations, and other features. A free appointment scheduling tool typically includes these subscription plans when upgrading:

  • Free trial: No-cost plans, ranging from 14 to 30 days, give users access to all or limited software features.

  • Free version: Free software plans offer basic features and limited premium feature access, ideal for small businesses or individuals with a limited budget.

  • Entry-level: Range between $8 to $29 per month and offer limited or unlimited access to booking management, website integrations, appointment monitoring, and other basic features.

  • Mid-tier: Range between $27 to $69 per month and offers unlimited access to customized booking links, automated appointment reminders, and custom domains. 

  • High-end: Range between $49 to $69+ per month and offer unlimited access to entry and mid-level features with priority customer support.

Hidden costs associated with appointment scheduling software

In addition to the software license, there may be charges associated with appointment scheduling software, including:

  • Payment processing fees on credit and debit cards. 

  • Overage charges on the number of appointments and bookings allowed with the free plan. If you exceed these limits, you might incur additional charges. 

  • Customization costs, such as branded booking pages, custom domains, or white-labeling, which might come at an extra cost.

Frequently asked questions when selecting free appointment scheduling software

Does your appointment scheduling software offer online payment capabilities?

Not all scheduling software solutions allow you to accept payments online. However, the feature might be useful, especially if you want to centralize your appointment scheduling and payment acceptance process.

Does your software offer no-show protection?

Check for a no-show protection feature that asks for confirmation requests via email or text to ensure there are no last-minute booking cancellations or no-shows. Such a feature can help save time and resources for you and your team.

Does your software provide a booking link?

Booking links provide your customers an easy way to check out your services and accelerate the booking process in case they wish to avail of your services. Before you invest in a scheduling app, make sure to ask the vendor about the availability of this feature in advance.


Methodology

We selected the six products with the highest ratings to feature in this article. To be considered for this list, products must:

  • Have at least 20 unique product reviews published on Capterra within the past two years, with an average rating of 3.0 or higher (as of August 29, 2023). 

  • Offer a free, stand-alone version of the software (not a trial version of the software where you must purchase the product after a limited amount of time).

  • Meet our appointment scheduling software market definition: “Appointment scheduling software streamlines the process of scheduling clients, patients, and meetings. This type of software promotes efficiency by eliminating double-bookings and automating the scheduling of recurring appointments.

Read more about our editorial independence.

Product research for this article was contributed by Himanshi Arora.

Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Capterra's appointment scheduling software directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in the Capterra directory that offer them. Only products with publicly available pricing information as of August 29, 2023, were considered for pricing calculation.


Looking for Scheduling software? Check out Capterra's list of the best Scheduling software solutions.

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About the Author

Ashish Upadhyay profile picture

Ashish Upadhyay is a content writer at Capterra, helping small businesses identify the right software for their business needs by analyzing user reviews data for the highest rated products in relevant software categories. Prior to joining Capterra, he worked in insurtech, fintech, and real estate. Specializing in marketing, project, and IT management, Ashish’s works have been featured in MAST magazine and Medium. In his free time, he enjoys working out and playing video games.

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