In the tech age, online scheduling appointments and bookings are becoming more popular. Specifically, in America, it has been reported that more than 60% of customers use online booking systems before using some services.
If you run a clinic, a dental checkup, a hair salon, a yoga or pilates studio, a coaching business, a massage practice, or any session-based appointment-run business, it’s a fact that managing appointments and scheduling for your business can be a time-consuming and tedious task.
An appointment scheduling plugin will be a savior for you to streamline this process and make your life easier. As all we know, Setmore is the great plugin in this field for its user-friendly interface and extensive features.
In this article, we will delve into Setmore to explore its key features. Furthermore, we also recommend some best Setmore alternatives. We will compare their features, pricing, and customer reviews so that you can make an informed decision and find the perfect fit for your specific needs.
Forget the headaches of dealing with scheduling for each customer manually, take advantage of using the plugin real-time booking and appointment reminders really eases the procedure.
Let’s jump into the article!
Key Features of Setmore Plugin
Are you looking for a plugin that can allow your customers to conduct online bookings and payments in just one system, Setmore is a perfect plugin to support your business. And its countless other useful features, let’s explore together!
As we mentioned before, in addition to creating an appointment-scheduling system for customers, Setmore is also a great tool for businesses to monitor employee work schedules, plan schedules for internal businesses, and some other features related to schedule arrangement for many different purposes.
To make the customer’s booking process easier, Setmore allows you to create booking pages that both provide enough information for customers to book, and bring out the business’s characteristics, but are also sleek to attract customers and enhance customer experience. This booking page can be embedded on your website or social media platforms.
After setting up the booking page, you can configure the payment method to choose the most optimal payment method that customers can use for a seamless and convenient payment process.
Setmore is integrated with popular calendar platforms such as Google Calendar and Outlook so that you can display the live schedule of your business, so your customers can see your business’s available schedule to make sure all appointments are synchronized and conflicts are easily avoided. It also supports appointment reminders for your business.
Furthermore, to successfully run a business, you need to be flexible in every situation. For example, if you have to work far from the office or do most of your work on the phone, the biggest thing you need to worry about is finding support tools that can work well on both PC and mobile phone. Setmore is one of the great tools that can do that, it has a version that offers a mobile app for both iOS and Android devices.
With Setmore, you can choose the free version of Setmore to use basic features such as unlimited appointments, 100 email reminders. If you want to access more advanced features of Setmore then you need to upgrade to the Setmore Premium version to receive SMS reminders, online payments with Stripe & Square, and more.
Overview of Setmore’s Pros and Cons
Thus, with the features we mentioned above, Setmore is considered a widely popular appointment-scheduling tool because it has gained the trust of many businesses around the world. In this section, we will delve into the pros and cons of using Setmore, so you can make an informed decision on whether it is the right choice for your business.
Let’s take a more detailed look at Setmore!
Pros
- User-friendly interface: Setmore offers a sleek and intuitive interface that is easy to navigate, both business and your customers will save time in the appointment booking process, and also have a good experience when working with Setmore.
- Appointment Management: Setmore provides an effective system for managing appointments, schedules, and bookings. All processes are carried out in one system, including making payments using different methods.
- Online Booking: It is very easy for you to turn online visitors into your customers with Setmore, the first thing you need to do is provide a website with content that can attract customers. Let Setmore take care of the next thing, it allows businesses to place “Book now” buttons on any page to easily navigate customers through the booking page. Moreover, with some types of businesses that need direct contact, customers can schedule a video meeting with the business no matter where they are.
- Integration Options: Setmore is also a tool that can link with other software and platforms, allowing for a more seamless connection with other business tools.
Cons
- Limited customization options: When using Setmore, you will easily see that, although it allows some customization features, it is still very limited compared to the needs of businesses. For example, if you want to set up a separate calendar template, or customize email templates for your business, Setmore cannot support these features.
- Lack of Customer Support on WordPress Forum: As a plugin that many WordPress users choose to use, Setmore has not yet built a customer support team for WordPress users. They often contribute feedback about the plugin but do not receive any solution from Setmore.
In conclusion, Setmore is a reliable and user-friendly appointment-scheduling tool with a range of robust features. However, it does have some limitations in terms of customization and support. Considering these pros and cons, it is essential to evaluate your business’s unique requirements and explore alternative appointment scheduling software options before making a final decision.
Exploring Top Alternatives to Setmore
Bookster – WordPress Appointment Booking Plugin
The very first plugin in this list is Bookster – WordPress Appointment Booking Plugin. Only recently released, this plugin has many features that are predicted to be a craze in the booking plugin space in the coming years.
Bookster offers an easy-to-use interface that helps you create and manage appointments for your business. More specifically, you can create a booking form and attach it to your website to easily turn online visitors into potential customers for your business.
In those booking forms, you can add multiple services, set availability, and accept payments via various methods. Thus, when customers come to your business, with Bookster’s effective support, they will easily choose the services your business provides. When they book appointments, businesses will get notifications, this function allows businesses to connect directly with customers.
Bookster is highly compatible with all major WordPress themes and some 3rd party services, such as fullcalendar.io will enhance the interface of front-end booking calendars and other benefits.
Key Features:
- Easy-to-use interface.
- Can add and customize booking forms, such as adding images or text.
- Allow customers manual bookings or self-book online.
- Can optionally display your preferred content on your business’s booking page.
- Customize email notifications and reminders
- Compatible with major WordPress themes and 3rd party services.
Bookster offers both free and premium versions for users.
Booking for Appointments and Events Calendar – Amelia
The next plugin in this list is WPAmelia, this is a plugin perfectly designed and specifically for WordPress users. If you are building your business website based on the WordPress system, no matter what field you are in, as long as your business needs to set up an online booking system, don’t miss this plugin.
Trusted by more than 60,000 users, WPAmelia has used modern technology platforms and designed intuitive interfaces to respond to users’ favors.
When creating booking pages with WPAmelia, they will definitely be beautiful booking templates and bring a good experience to your customers. If you want to embed these booking forms in other places, WPAmelia provides a shortcode export feature so you can easily copy and display them anywhere you want.
To optimize the setup process as quickly as possible, this plugin gives you a preview in Calendar Admin View on the backend, displaying the most detailed business schedule so customers can easily choose their appointment schedule.
In addition, we can also customize the look and feel of email and SMS notifications to reflect the uniqueness of our business and provide a personalized experience for customers.
WPAmelia supports displaying templates and related features in 20+ different languages, so your business will have the opportunity to reach a variety of customers around the world.
Key Features:
- Provide great UX/UI.
- Integrated with Google Maps, online payment methods, Zoom, Google Meet, Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, Lesson Space, Facebook Pixel, WhatsApp, and Google Analytics.
- Can custom Fields for the booking forms fully adjust customers’ booking experience
- Can manage multiple employees and multiple locations of business.
- WPAmelia is designed for all devices so that it works perfectly across various devices.
- Integrated with many page builders to build websites, such as Elementor, Divi, or Gutenberg blocks.
WPAmelia offers a free version for users to try. The premium version starts from $49 annually and $198 for lifetime access.
WP Booking Calendar
WP Booking Calendar is also considered a great alternative plugin in this list. This plugin provides a modern and clear booking admin panel, so businesses can manage the number of customers booking from the website. WP Booking Calendar always helps businesses update their available calendars continuously and synchronize with the services the business provides to avoid conflict between customers.
The process of setting up a booking website for your store is also very easy with this plugin, businesses can create booking forms and attach them anywhere on your website, as long as they match the style of the page. your website. Besides, we can also customize the booking form to make it more sleek for customers visiting your website.
Your business can import or export booking data sources from various entities such as Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway, TripAdvisor, VRBO, FlipKey, and any other calendar in .ics format.
To facilitate business from time to time, this plugin also allows businesses to customize prices or discount programs and display them on the booking page.
Key Features:
- Provide a modern and clean booking admin panel.
- Can sync booking from many services.
- Get notified about new appointments and businesses can approve, decline, or edit specific bookings.
- Mobile friendly and displays well on any device.
- Support in multi-language
- Support in various payment gateways.
The free version of WP Booking Calendar is available on the WordPress repository. To use more premium features of this plugin, pay only $39.
Conclusion
In the article above, we analyzed Setmore – a plugin considered the perfect to support setting up online scheduling appointments and bookings for your business, we have briefly introduced the setup and some features of Setmore, through the pros and cons of this plugin. Besides, we also recommend some Setmore alternatives for you to consider to choose a plugin that not only fits your criteria but can also streamline your business operations and enhance the customer experience.
The fact that businesses provide booking services for customers will have quite a good effect on the strategy of the business. Not only can you attract the attention of customers because of the convenience of this feature, but they will save a lot of time when coming to your business, they will not need to wait and can easily choose a blank calendar that suits both them and your business. For businesses, you can manage customer visits, manage employee work processes, and arrange working time in a clear and specific way.
Hopefully, our article will be useful to you!
