Best scheduling apps of 2022 TechRadar Skip to main content TechRadar is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here's why you can trust us. Best scheduling apps of 2022 By Brian Turner Contributions from Stefan Ionescu published 7 September 2022 Be on time, all the time (Image credit: Pexels) The best scheduling apps make it simple and easy to plan, make, and meet appointments, whether in the office or on the go. There are many different apps out there you can already use to manage your schedules. The most obvious would be calendar apps (opens in new tab), which are great for keeping dates and sending notifications, but might not offer so much flexibility when it comes to providing essential information about your schedule. Then there are todo list apps (opens in new tab), which are less about making schedules as much providing a list of outstanding tasks, but these lack the immediacy of dedication scheduling software, and the same applies for note-taking apps (opens in new tab) you might already be using to plan your day. What scheduling apps offer is the ability to better manage your schedule in a more specific way than existing apps, such as by allowing you to differentiate different types of meetings easily, such as one-on-one meetings or group meetings. Additionally, they can accommodate round-robin notifications in which you can share meetings automatically with multiple people based on specific criteria. Additionally, scheduling apps can make it easier to set up meetings with external contacts, such as by providing a way to directly set up a contact through your website. Of course, scheduling apps will always come with their own calendar notifications, which commonly integrate with the most popular third-party apps, to make it easier to manage schedules with whichever office software platform you're currently working with. Here therefore are the best scheduling apps currently available. We've also featured the best time management apps. The best scheduling apps of 2022 in full (Image credit: HubSpot) 1 HubSpot Meetings Helps you schedule meetings with easeToday's Best DealsVISIT SITE (opens in new tab) Reasons to buy+Free version available+Third-party integration+Shareable links Reasons to avoid-Limited customer support-Limited free version-Expensive You can use the HubSpot Meetings app to arrange meetings with people within your company or external users with ease. The platform makes the process easy to carry out. One of the best things about HubSpot Meetings is that it has a free version that you can use to plan meetings with ease. However, this version doesn't have some practical scheduling features. You have to pay for a premium HubSpot package if you want to make the best use of the app. The meetings feature falls under HubSpot's CRM suite, which is pretty expensive. The prices are steep, but don't fret. The Starter plan is enough if all you want is the meetings feature. It doesn't make sense to purchase the more expensive plans except you need all the sophisticated features of the CRM suite. Read our full HubSpot Meetings review (opens in new tab). (Image credit: Setmore) 2 Setmore Helps you set more meetingsToday's Best DealsVISIT SITE (opens in new tab) Reasons to buy+Free plan available+Excellent customer support+Desktop/mobile apps+Third-party integration Reasons to avoid-Limited free plan-Syncing issues-Occasional glitches-Expensive Setmore assigns a unique subdomain for your business, which is akin to a website for your business that clients can visit and book appointments. You can control what's available on the website and what it'll look like from your backNot only that, you can add prices to appointment slots and collect payments online. Another great thing about Setmore is that there's a version you can use without paying a dime. You can use this free version to schedule unlimited appointments, which is great. However, it lacks some noteworthy features, e.g., SMS reminders, recurring appointments, and customized notifications. You must get a paid package to make the best use of the app. Overall, we consider Setmore an excellent appointment scheduling tool. It makes it easy for businesses to fix appointments with their clients and adhere to them. Its best features include the payment gateway integration and the widget that allows you to add a booking page on a personal website. However, the app is significantly more expensive than many competitors. Read our full Setmore review (opens in new tab). (Image credit: SimplyBook) 3 SimplyBook A productive appointment scheduling platformToday's Best DealsVISIT SITE (opens in new tab) Reasons to buy+Free version available+Intuitive interface+Notifications/reminders+Multi-lingual Reasons to avoid-Relatively costly-Weak customer service-No money-back guarantee SimplyBook is very much focused on setting up an interface to allow clients to directly book appointments with your business, using a web-based interface or mobile app (iOS or Android). You can change the looks of your firm's online booking page by selecting from several templates available on the platform. However, there's not much variety in the design of the templates. One especially good thing about the app is that you can use a custom domain name for the booking page instead of the Simply.Me subdomain. This feature comes at an additional cost but is a clever way to differentiate your business. You can also collect payments for bookings, thanks to the platform's integration with various payment gateways, such as Stripe, PayPal, and Square. There's good social media integration, too, allowing you to accept bookings directly from your Facebook and Instagram business pages. After testing the ins and outs of SimplyBook, we can confidently say it provides great value by helping businesses easily get appointments from customers. However, the app is not without its faults, which include being costly and having weak (live chat-only) customer support. Read our full SimplyBook review (opens in new tab). (Image credit: Square) 4 Square Appointments Lets you book meetings fair and squareToday's Best DealsVISIT SITE (opens in new tab) Reasons to buy+Free version available+User-friendly interface+Square payments integration Reasons to avoid-Expensive-Limited customization-Limited booking templates Although Square Appointments is primarily aimed at users of the main Square service, any business can sign up for it. However, the free plan lacks many functionalities compared to the paid plans. Hence, you'll need to upgrade to a higher version to make the best use of the app. You can manage appointments easily from the web-based interface or mobile app. The primary way to do that is by creating a dedicated online booking website for your business. Square provides in-app tools for this purpose, including design templates that you can select from. However, the variety of templates are limited. After selecting the templates, you can also choose custom colors, layout, and pages to differentiate your booking website as much as possible. Then, deploy it when you're done! Your bookings website will be assigned a unique subdomain attached to Square's official domain name, i.e., businessname.SquareUp.com. Customers can visit your unique address and schedule appointments with you directly. We consider Square Appointments a decent app for businesses to take appointments from their clients without difficulty. As a plus, it provides many ways for businesses to receive payments easily. However, we noticed some drawbacks, such as being expensive. Read our full Square Appointments review (opens in new tab). (Image credit: Appointlet) 5 Appointlet Makes online scheduling easier for everyoneToday's Best DealsVISIT SITE (opens in new tab) Reasons to buy+Free version available+Intuitive interface+Multilingual Reasons to avoid-Limited free version-Limited third-party integration-Limited customization Just like any software, the first step to using Appointlet is creating an account. You can do that using your email or your existing Google or Office 365 account. After signing up, the app prompts you to select a unique name that it'll use to create your scheduling page URL. The URL takes the form of www.App.Link/your-name, and it's where you'll send your users to schedule appointments. Hence, the ideal name to choose will be that of your business. The app also prompts you to complete several steps, including setting your availability schedule and setting up a sample meeting, but you can skip them. Though, we'll advise you to create your unique availability schedule at this point because it makes things easier. The importance of doing so is to keep your calendar in sync and prevent double bookings. One of the drawbacks of using this platform is that it doesn't let you customize the template of your booking site. Hence, all enterprises using Appointlet tend to have booking websites that look similar, which isn't ideal for those who prefer differentiating themselves. The only thing you can change is the logo, name, and welcome message. Read our full Appointlet review (opens in new tab). (Image credit: Zoho) 6 Zoho Bookings An effective appointment scheduling software for businessesToday's Best DealsVISIT SITE (opens in new tab) Reasons to buy+Free plan available+Reasonably priced+Reminders/notifications+Payments integration Reasons to avoid-Slow customer support-Limited free plan-Difficult to setup Like many other scheduling apps, Zoho assigns a unique subdomain attached to the zohobookings.com domain name for every user's booking website. However, it does allow you to extensively customize your business's booking page. You can change the theme to make your business stand out visually from competitors or customize the form fields through which you'll receive information from clients. If your business requires payment to schedule appointments, you can handle that easily with Zoho Bookings. The platform lets you receive payments directly from customers, thanks to integration with third-party payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal. You can also send personalized appointment confirmations to every customer that books an appointment or send automated reminders to ensure they don't miss their meeting. If you want to arrange appointments with clients as easily as possible, Zoho Bookings is a smart choice. The major advantages of the platform are the ability to customize your booking page and receive payments from customers through third-party payment gateways. However, we observed some drawbacks, such as its limited customer support. Read our full Zoho Bookings review (opens in new tab). (Image credit: Appoint.ly) 7 Appoint ly Make it easy to schedule appointments with clientsToday's Best DealsVISIT SITE (opens in new tab) Reasons to buy+Free plan available+Automated reminders+Third-party integration Reasons to avoid-No mobile app-No payments feature-No-refund policy Like most appointment scheduling software, Appoint.ly has a free plan that every business can use. This free plan provides access to the platform's basic features but has many limitations, e.g., allowing only one event type. One good thing about Appoint.ly is its integration with popular calendar apps, such as Google Calendar and the Outlook calendar. Hence, you can set up your availability by connecting with your online calendar, rather than inputting the dates and times manually. The integration enables Appoint.ly to block busy slots from your calendar and automatically add new meetings to it. Though it helps businesses get bookings easily, the app lacks one critical feature; receiving payments. Many rival apps let businesses charge for bookings and receive payments directly through third-party gateways such as Stripe or PayPal. Not having this feature places Appoint.ly at a major disadvantage compared to them. Otherwise, Appoint.ly is an effective solution for businesses to take appointments from clients online. Read our full Appoint.ly review (opens in new tab). (Image credit: Picktime) 8 Picktime One of the best appointment scheduling appsToday's Best DealsVISIT SITE (opens in new tab) Reasons to buy+Free plan available+Payments/Invoicing features+Cost-effective Reasons to avoid-Limited customization-No-refund policy-Limited free plan Picktime offers three plans; Free, Starter, and Pro. As the name suggests, the free plan doesn't require any payment. With it, your business can arrange unlimited appointments on a unique online booking page. However, it has many limitations compared to the paid plans, e.g., no SMS notifications/reminders and limited to three users within an organization. What the paid plans do well is bundle multiple users into a single monthly package, which can make it very cost-effective. In contrast, many competing apps charge for each user, which can be expensive for businesses with many employees. Picktime an excellent platform for businesses to schedule appointments and manage bookings. It's cost-effective, easy to use, and provides a comprehensive feature set. But, it's not without flaws, such as having limited customization options and a no-refund policy. Read our full Picktime review (opens in new tab). (Image credit: Doodle) 9 Doodle An easy way to schedule anythingToday's Best DealsVISIT SITE (opens in new tab) Reasons to buy+User-friendly interface+Highly secure+Fosters collaboration Reasons to avoid-Aggressive upselling-Expensive-Advertisements (free plan) With Doodle, individuals or enterprises can schedule and coordinate meetings without difficulty. You can create a dedicated booking page for your business that people can visit and schedule appointments directly. Similarly, you can create multiple pages for different services you offer (for premium users only). Doodle also allows you to enable "power settings" to prevent overbooking. These settings include a maximum number of daily bookings, buffer times, minimum notice time, meeting intervals, etc. To prevent no-shows from clients, you can enable Doodle to send an automatic reminder 24 hours before their booked appointment. A benefit of using Doodle is its third-party integration. The platform works seamlessly with many external applications that provide additional functionality, e.g., Zoom Video, Outlook, and Zapier. After testing Doodle, we can confidently say it's an effective tool that helps businesses or individual service providers arrange appointments conveniently. However, it is relatively expensive. Read our full Doodle review (opens in new tab). We've also featured the best time and attendance systems. Which scheduling app is best for you When deciding which scheduling app to download and use, first consider what your actual needs are, as sometimes free platforms may only provide basic options, so if you need to use advanced tools you may find a paid platform is much more worthwhile. Additionally, free and budget software options can sometimes prove limited when it comes to the variety of tools available, while higher-end software can really cater for every need, so do ensure you have a good idea of which features you think you may require. How we tested the best scheduling apps To test for the best scheduling apps we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, whether as a download or as an online service. We then tested the service to see how the software could be used for different purposes and in different situations. The aim was to push each scheduling app to see how useful its basic tools were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced tools. Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar (opens in new tab). Brian Turner Brian has over 30 years publishing experience as a writer and editor across a range of computing, technology, and marketing titles. He has been interviewed multiple times for the BBC and been a speaker at international conferences. His specialty on techradar is Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, covering everything from office suites to IT service tools. He is also a science fiction and fantasy author, published as Brian G Turner.With contributions fromStefan Ionescu Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to theTechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Thank you for signing up to TechRadar. You will receive a verification email shortly. There was a problem. 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