Many businesses need to accept bookings and appointments through their website. Since millions of such websites are based on WordPress, it follows naturally that there is a need for good appointment plugins for WordPress. The typical use case is a private practice (ie. Doctor, Hair Dresser, Fitness Instructor, Massage Therapist, etc…)
We, therefore, went ahead and tested the options on the market and present you with the best ones we’ve found.
As you view the many different booking, appointment and reservations plugins below, bear in mind that booking functionality is resource-intensive, no matter which plugin you use. Before adding any significant new functionality to your WordPress site, you need to consider whether your current hosting can handle that strain.
Once you actually have traffic, you don’t want visitors to your site to be confronted with unexplained delays; they will not stick around if a page takes minutes to load, no matter how much they want to book that appointment to get their nails fancied. More importantly, you definitely don’t want the nail salon owner contacting you to ask why her site isn’t working!
The advice we always give is to make sure you get properly resourced hosting in place before you launch. We recommend two hosts that we have seen work out well for our readers. The choice between them comes down to money:
If you are on a tight budget, BlueHost has an excellent reputation for well-managed and well-supported shared hosting at a good price.
If, on the other hand, absolute reliability and performance are more important to you than price, WP Engine provides the best possible managed WordPress hosting, I use them for all of my most important sites, the ones that generate money.
Now, let’s dig into a collection of the best WordPress booking and reservation plugins:
Setup appointable products for WooCommerce with the WordPress Appointment Booking Plugin. It is perfectly integrated into WooCommerce, WordPress as well as Google Calendar.
It’s one of the best appointment scheduling software you can get right now. You can request payments or just confirmations, and it even allows you to receive payments for appointments. You’ll be able to keep a perfectly organized calendar and reduce no-shows with advanced notifications and reminders.
This article was written by Jean Galea and originally published on WP Mayor.