If you own your own small business or start-up, you’ll know that it’s a challenge to juggle everything that goes along with running a business. That’s why it’s so important that you choose a free and open-source scheduling software. Making the right decision can save you time and money in the long run.
Businesses like a local mom and pop shop, right through to large, international corporations still need to book reservations or schedule appointments.
You might be a service company with reservations as your main source of work. Or, you might be another kind of company who takes meetings and appointments. Regardless, open-source scheduling software will help you a lot.
This appointment software can help you with all your booking needs and replace whichever outdated method you’re currently using. Your customers will appreciate the flexibility to book appointments online at any time rather than having to stick to your business hours.
The purpose of this post is to uncover the best open source scheduling software options.
Once you read through the list, you can choose which one is best for you.
The Top 11 Open Source Appointment Scheduling Software
Amelia Lite
If you want to opt for the free version rather than the premium plugin of Amelia, you’ll still find it amazingly helpful. The free option gives you plenty of great features and will support your booking needs.
Amelia is an excellent option because it is easy to install and does not involve a steep learning curve. After installation, users enjoy free and complete booking functionality.
It can be fully integrated with WooCommerce so that you can accept payments via PayPal or Stripe. You also get calendar sync, whether you use Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar.
With Amelia, it’s easy for your clients to book appointments thanks to its lovely user interface. It’s a perfect booking system and a simplified solution to online booking.
Plus, the settings can be highly customized to suit your needs. Not only the settings but you can also customize the booking page so that it fits your brand.
Making appointments and subsequently managing them is a breeze with the integrated capabilities.
It sends SMS reminders to both the client and the relevant employee. It also includes functions for canceling and rescheduling appointments.
You can do a test drive on the demos page where you can see how it looks both on the frontend where the booking page is and the backend where you have your dashboard.
In this way, you’ll have a good idea of how your booking website will look both on the front end and the backend.
Trafft
Trafft is a great option to use because it’s not just a scheduling tool. Trafft is a professional service business management software, a professional tool, and a digital business partner that covers different aspects of running a business.
It’s the kind of app that small and medium business owners, administrators, managers, and key staff in the service industry are using to take their processes and businesses to the next level.
How does it do that? Well, Trafft is a combination of an online no-code platform and human service from a team of service business automation experts. While that’s a mouthful, we can make it simple by saying that it provides all the necessary tools to organize schedules, accept bookings and payments, send reminders and integrate with other tools.
Trafft differentiates from typical apps and tools that automate smaller tasks like online bookings or personal schedules, and are usually hard to configure and maintain, and support is hard to get.
The Trafft app and its team do that by providing support for the complete workflow cycle of a service business, and has an extremely intuitive interface and UX.
What does that mean practically for you? You would not need to waste time on repetitive tasks like calling clients and confirming or rescheduling, and you won’t even need to hire additional people to do that.
It also comes with all the features that you need to get started, such as:
- Automatic online payment processing through multiple providers
- Two-way synchronization using external calendars (such as Google Calendar and Outlook)
- The ability for clients to reschedule
- The ability to create a call-to-action (CTA) booking page
- In-depth overviews of your business performance using key performance indicators
- Client management using email and SMS notifications and reminders
- Discount/loyalty coupons when managing appointments
- Ability to manage bookings, employees, locations, services, schedules, and more
Easy!Appointments
Easy!Appointments is an appointment scheduling software free to download. It allows your customers to book appointments.
It can sync up with your Google Calendar to avoid double-entry of information. Easy!Appointments is a better way to manage your time and make sure you don’t double book yourself.
Booked Scheduler
Booked Scheduler is a very in-depth and detailed software. In fact, it is one of the most advanced software that you’ll find that’s free and open source.
It has a myriad of features; resource status and time blocking are just the beginning. It also gives email notifications, custom fields, and time slot booking options. Surprisingly, there are many other features for this open-source project, as well but too many to list here, so you’ll just have to check it out for yourself.
The more recent versions of Booked Scheduler offer integration for payments with PayPal and Stripe that will allow your clients to book and process payments on the site.
It uses PHP as well as the Smarty template engine. The underlying technology is a little older, so it works best when you don’t want to make too many modifications to the booking software.
Meetin.gs
If you are looking for a good appointment scheduler, Meetin.gs can be your new savior. It’s a tool that helps you create meetings. You make meetings by creating your own meeting page.
Visitors can then view when you’re free and request a meeting at a time that suits you both. It has the ability to create different kinds of meetings, such as a 20-minute Skype meeting or a 15-minute long catch-up. You can also add the location, so people know exactly when and where you’re meeting.
Sync up your Google Calendar and you can either keep this private or make it public. Customize your own Meet Me link to share with your colleagues and clients.
Reservio
Reservio is a scheduling software that many service-based businesses use to stay organized. It was created to be used by gyms, salons, and doctor’s offices. It lets you make easy appointments from any device, including mobile.
The really useful thing about Reservio is that it comes in 13 different languages. It is easy to use for your customers and easy to manage on your end as well.
It doesn’t take long to learn how to use it as it only takes a few clicks to book events and manage appointments. It can send reminders to your clients either by text or email. It can also accept bookings through Facebook as well as on your website. Get access to all your client information, including booking history too.
Seantis Reservation
The Seantis Reservation system was written with Python. If you’re not after PHP scheduling software, then this is a great option.
Seantis is helpful for any appointment scheduling situation – for restaurants, gyms, meetings, classes and more. There’s no way of making online payments with this system but you can mark an appointment as paid once the customer has paid in person.
Setster
Setster is a widely-used open source calendar management system. It is used by companies in the construction, retail, and education sectors. It syncs up with your Google Calendar to avoid double bookings and double entries. It can accept payments, create notifications and manage staff schedules too.
You can access your calendar on your mobile with Setster so you can find out what’s next in your day from anywhere you happen to be. You can also set up advance notifications for your appointments, so you remember what’s on and when. Add time buffers, reminders, and confirmations to your appointments to ensure the smoothest process possible.
Acuity Scheduling
If you want to maximize your productivity and efficiency, Acuity Scheduling can help with this. Spend less time on back and forth emails trying to schedule an appointment and more time on what’s important.
This appointment scheduling app can also let you receive payments and show clients your availability. Clients can book appointments, reschedule and get reminders online so they’ll never miss another appointment.
Acuity is customizable according to your needs. It can automatically adjust time zones, taking the guesswork out of international meetings. It serves businesses with numerous staff and locations very well. It can even be embedded into your own business’ website.
Plantune
Plantune was designed to work with Windows. It is an advanced planning and appointment scheduling software that will help you with production planning.
It can design an analysis and production plan for you to help you enhance your business productivity. It can make you more efficient by using lean business concepts. It can introduce things like customer pull and controlled WIP to your business.
If you have questions about production, this software can answer them all. Whether it’s about quantities or delivery dates, this app is completely on top of it.
Pro Schedule
CyberMatrix Pro Schedule Standard makes it simple to manage multiple users. If you are in an industry where you have multiple staff taking appointments, Pro Schedule is designed to help with this.
People can even book recurring appointments with you at once. This is very useful for a range of industries, from offices to salons to gyms. Set the recurring appointments monthly, weekly, or daily depending on your needs.
Ending thoughts on the open-source scheduling software in this article
That’s the end of our open source scheduling software list. You can choose one of these depending on your business requirements. Look carefully at the list to see which one most closely matches your business needs.
If none of these match your requirements, you may consider paying for a premium software that will offer more features.
In this case, you may consider Amelia, because it is one of the most advanced booking plugins on the market. It allows your whole team to manage their appointments in one place. It is easy to use and intuitive to navigate so your staff should have no trouble when they start to use it.
With this system, you can manage payments, customers, locations, and much more. It is highly customizable which is why it is loved by a range of industries. These include salons, gyms, spas, law companies, and mechanics.
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