Best WP Scheduling Plugins For Coaches In 2025
Discover the best WP scheduling plugins for coaches in 2025 to streamline bookings and grow your coaching business effortlessly.
Looking for all the links and prices discussed during the show?
In this video, we delve into the top WordPress scheduling plugins specifically designed for coaches in 2025. Discover how these powerful tools can streamline your booking process, enhance client communication, and optimize your coaching business. We’ll compare features, pricing, and user experiences to help you make an informed choice. Don’t miss out on finding the perfect plugin for your needs.
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:12.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 300. Sorry, do this again. One, two, three. Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 132. In this show, we’re going to be looking at sketching in SaaS or WordPress. You need to be able to schedule appointments and allow people to book sessions with you, especially if you’re a coach. We’re going to be looking at, like I say, the best SaaS and WordPress solutions. Got a nice list. I’ve got some bonus ones as well that I haven’t told Kurt yet, but there we go. Didn’t really run out of time. So it should be a great show. I’ve got my ever-patient co-host, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:01:21.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, Jonathan. My name is Kurt, Kurt von Annen. I own an agency called MananaNomas. We focus largely on membership and learning websites, and we also work directly with WP Tonic and Lifter LMS.
[00:01:32.780] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. It should be a great show. We’ve got a ton of great information to give you. But before we go into the meat and potatoes, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. Coming back, folks. I also want to have the opportunity to say we’ve got a fabulous course developed by Kirk himself. It’s normally just slightly under $50, but we’re offering it at half price. Plus, if you send the invoice after you’ve done the course to WP Tonic, you can get a year’s hosting for half price. Our starter bundle, fantastic value. So that’s a great offer. Like I said, the course shows you how to build a membership website or community website on WordPress using all the best technology from beginning to end. It’s just fantastic. Plus, we have created a list of the best WordPress plugins and technologies. To get all these goodies, all you have to do is visit wp-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals. It’s a great offer, folks. Let’s go into it, Kirk. Somebody has booked an appointment for you to have a consultation. They’re wondering how to let people book appointments with them, as they probably have a membership site or coaching site.
[00:03:14.820] – Jonathan Denwood
How would you start the conversation, Kerr?
[00:03:18.380] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, that’s an interesting question, Jonathan, because you think that scheduling appointments or an appointment setting tool would be easy peasy out of the box. Let’s just pick one. But there are differences, and It really comes down to case use, use cases. What’s your budget? Do you want to pay once? Do you want to pay every month? Do you have more people on your team? So there’s a big difference between scheduling tools designed for solo users and tools designed for teams. Because if you’re trying to coordinate multiple calendars and sync things together, that can get complicated. And then, of course, payment gateways. I am a huge fan of having people prepay for appointments. And so the idea that you could schedule an appointment but swipe your credit card to reserve the time, that to me is a really big feature. And some of these tools we’re going to talk about today are easier to set up than others.
[00:04:16.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, and you’re so right. It really does depend on what you’re specifically looking for. Obviously, I’ve got a bias, and I think Kurt’s got a bias. We prefer to work in-house with WordPress as much as possible. But a number of these SaaS scheduling platforms integrate easily with WordPress. I just like having as much native WordPress as possible. It reduces complexity to some degree. Now, let’s start with the big guerrilla, Kalender. Use it myself. Use one of the others that we’re going to be talking about. It’s got a lot. I think it’s got over 700 to a million active users. Obviously, they’re free products. It’s the bulk of that. I love it and I hate it because it works, the free… You can’t take payment with the free version, but I wouldn’t say it’s crippled. If you just look, they’re just a one-off individual, and you’re looking for something that’s simple, that’s free, and works, it’s great. My problem with it, Kirk, is I think the interface is a dog’s breath, the back end. I literally have to watch about four or five videos to work out what I want to set up. I have to spend an afternoon just to find out how I want to get something set up with the bloody thing.
[00:06:02.760] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you think?
[00:06:04.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, there are certain things that seem easy, like syncing or integrating your Zoom with it. It will set up a Zoom meeting when someone books an appointment. That feature seems to continuously break on me. So either it doesn’t set up the Zoom meeting, but it sends me a message saying I need to create a Zoom meeting and forward it to my attendee, or it’ll do something even stranger, and that is it’ll schedule the Zoom meeting, but will not put the appointment in my synced calendar. So, unless my Zoom is open, I won’t receive a reminder to attend a meeting. So, because we use Calendly in a business way, it forces me to literally sign into different calendars, make sure that I’m on point. I’ve got to make sure that I’m synced. So I checked Zoom to make sure there’s no meeting scheduled. I need to check that there are meetings scheduled, right? And then I’ve got to check my calendar to make sure that those Zoom sessions are scheduled. And that’s important because if it doesn’t sync to the calendar, which is the sync or shared calendar with other tools, then that’s how you get double bookings for things.
[00:07:17.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
And so I’ve been really struggling with the Calendly set up over the last, I would say, eight or nine months. It’s really been an issue. But there’s one reason why I used to recommend Calendly all the time, and I’m not sure if it’s really as applicable now as it was then. It used to be the ubiquitous use for scheduling. Everybody was on Calendly for a while. And what was really cool about Calendly was if you went to book an appointment with somebody, it automatically checked their calendar and told you if there was a conflict. It was really cool about… If you wanted to reschedule a meeting, it would say, Oh, well, Bob’s not available Tuesday at 3:00. That was really cool. Because of its ubiquitous nature, it was able to give you the two-way information on that syncing. But now there are so many options. I don’t think that’s as important or as much of a driver as it was maybe two, three years ago.
[00:08:11.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you’re spot on because I have multiple calendars with Google. I have Pacific Time where I want to be available for three weeks, but for the full week. I don’t want it to be generally available at a specific time. And it will do it, but I had a hell of a job, and it got a bit flaky with me. I’ve got one, Touchwood, that’s rock solid, but I haven’t added it to the list, and that’s called Book Like a Boss. But I got it years ago on an Asuma special deal, a lifetime deal. It’s got their branding on it, which is the only thing I don’t like, and they want an enormous amount of money to remove their branding. But it just works. Because I’ve got the lifetime deal, I still use it. But I do, Canon D is great. It can just be infuriatingly fiddly, and also in some circumstances, not totally rock solid. Would that be a fair summary?
[00:09:30.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and I want to cut them some slack. I mean, I know they serve a lot of people. They offer that freemium example, and it gets a lot of people into the game. So I don’t want to crap talk them on the podcast and make people think not to try them. But if your needs are extended or you’re more specific about having to be super granular about when you’re available, when you’re not available, what multiple calendars to sync with, I would recommend looking at a different product. If you are a simple person with one Google calendar and the normal work week to make schedule appointments on, it’s probably great. But when you try to get in and do all these extra tweak this, tweak that, tweak the other, sync with this other thing, do some automation, I think it just gets to be a bit much for the system and things break.
[00:10:20.900] – Jonathan Denwood
On to a WordPress native solution, which we generally really like, Fluent Booking. Booking, what would you start off the conversation with Fluent Booking?
[00:10:34.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, the first thing about Fluent Booking, Jonathan, is A, it’s pretty new. In terms of software, it’s not that old. It’s what, two years? Is it a year and a half, two years?
[00:10:46.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, a couple of years.
[00:10:47.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
So a lot of people might not even be aware of it, and I don’t even think they push it that hard. It is a phenomenal tool for something that works in the back end of your WordPress website. That’s a big thing for me, Jonathan. If I can keep most stuff on the site and not have to worry about maintaining people’s connections to other third party properties, that’s just a blessing. It will hook up to payment gateways, it hookups to Google Calendar, it syncs with other calendars, it allows you to build services like a menu of services. And so if you’re into coaching or that type of a business, you You could say coaching for the first meeting free, the second meeting 30 minutes is a hundred bucks or whatever. You can build those as services, and then those services can be scheduled and prepaid for through the platform. And it’s all in WordPress. And it gives you that… I’m going to give Calendly a pat on the back here. It gives you that final user interface, like what your customers see on your website is like a Calendly experience. Pick the date, pick the time, put in your email address, hit submit, done.
[00:12:02.450] – Kurt von Ahnen
Unless there’s payment required, then it says pay. But super, super slick, and it obviously integrates with Fluent CRM, Fluent Form, and the other Fluent tools. So it’s an amazing piece of stuff.
[00:12:16.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, because the great thing is it will integrate with Fluent CRM, won’t it?
[00:12:22.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I mean, think about it. Everybody that goes to make an appointment automatically gets added to your CRM. You can tag it and in segment your list. I mean, and it’s all like out of the box works with this stuff. You don’t have to bring in WP Fusion or, automate WP or any of those things to make things work. They just connect right out of the box.
[00:12:42.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, what I didn’t also mention with Calendly, you got the free, but the standard is $12, the team is $20, but it’s per seat, per user, where we’re booking, I think it’s They’re always discounting it, but I’m giving the regular price, and that’s a five-site license, but it’s not per seat. You just pay it 199 a year, and you can have as many team members as you like. I think I’m right about that, am I?
[00:13:16.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Then, Jonathan, not for nothing, but when you and I are talking about using products that are native to WordPress, I think some people get lost on why we’re so emphatic about But think about a CRM tool. I mean, last year I had a client that was paying over $7,000 a month to be on active campaign. When we swap them over to Fluent CRM and Sendgrid, that’s a whole new world to them. That’s money they’re not spending anymore. It’s the same with these SaaS platforms. When it’s a per seat adventure, that adds up over time. When I ran my own department at Suzuki and I wanted to put people on different SaaS tools for project management and stuff like that, everything per seat. And to get that approved through corporate was like pulling teeth.
[00:14:04.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s right. Let’s go on to the next one. Yeah. Actually scheduling?
[00:14:17.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
Accuity.
[00:14:18.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Accuity. I think this happened a couple of years ago. They are actually owned by Squarespace. The thing I was going to say before we go on to that one is that the other thing I think is, I think what Fluent Booking has really done quite well is it… I wouldn’t say unusual for WordPress, But they’ve done a really good job on the UX and usability because it’s got quite a bit of power. It’s probably not the most powerful, because we’re going to be talking about in a minute about something that That’s really amazingly powerful, but it’s got a fair bit of power, but it’s not overly complicated either. What do you think I’m right about saying that?
[00:15:12.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m going to push back just a hair on you. The user interface is not confusing. That’s rather intuitive. But these WordPress direct tools, when you go to connect them to Zoom, when you go to Gmail, it’s not a lot. It’s not like you just put in your username.
[00:15:30.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Is it with the actual connecting to a Google account? Is that a lot? Or is that?
[00:15:41.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
No. So even with Gmail on an Unless something’s drastically changed with fluent booking in the last three months, you have to go in and set up an app in your Google account and then connect with that. Okay, now I need to clarify that. That is if you want to send and receive the dates. If you want to do one-way syncing with your calendar, you can do it on OAuth. But if you want to have that read/write capability with your synced calendar, you need to have the app and the connection through the site. I’m probably making it sound more complicated than it needs to be. It comes with directions. Just follow the directions and everything works.
[00:16:19.330] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s a little hurdle, though. It’s not ridiculously difficult, but I don’t think it’s as difficult if you’re trying to connect it to Zoom, though. But I’ll be All right.
[00:16:30.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
Zoom, to me, I don’t know why they’ve made that so difficult to do, but they have. Zoom is a difficult thing.
[00:16:39.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Back to this, how do you pronounce it?
[00:16:42.740] – Kurt von Ahnen
Accuity.
[00:16:43.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Accuity. Like I say, it was bought by Squarespace. They don’t have a free version. It starts at 20, for starter, standard 34, premium, 61. It does everything Carol and Dee does, but it’s more so website focus, surprise, surprise, about how it integrates with your website. I haven’t used it in anger. I’ve watched some of the back-end. It’s back-end, setting it up seems okay. I don’t think it’s the most polished of the SaaS products that we’re probably going to be talking about. What do you think about it?
[00:17:36.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
Acuity is interesting to me because there are some things that it does out of the box that I’m surprised about. For instance, it doesn’t just do Zoom, it does Google Meet. It does go to meeting. So it integrates with more than one video tool. It syncs with Google Calendar, your iCloud, your outlook. Com. And so there’s a lot of scheduling tooling tools out there. Newsflash will probably bring it up throughout this talk. But for instance, I use Outlook in my PC. My Outlook does not sync with a lot of the tools that I use for business. Instead, I have to sync it with my Google calendar and then sync those other tools with Google calendar. So Google calendar actually becomes the hub of everything rather than the calendar I’m actually using on my PC. I’m making that sound confusing, but Acuity syncs with all of those tools. But Acuity does something that is really weird, Jonathan. I don’t even know if you’ll know about this. This might be a surprise for you. So a SaaS platform with a calendar, usually copy the code out, put the code on your website. Good to go. Bob’s your uncle.
[00:18:45.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
And you got a calendar on your website. Did you know it doesn’t work with websites hosted on wordpress. Com?
[00:18:52.440] – Jonathan Denwood
No, it didn’t. I haven’t used it for years. Thank you. I haven’t touched this.
[00:18:58.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
To me, that’s the craziest thing. And I’m like, where does that come from? But it’s right in their support documents, too. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind and confusing them with somebody else. But it says the code you’ve copied to one of your pages says, Note, you can embed your schedule on sites built using WordPress, but not on sites hosted by wordpress. Com.
[00:19:21.720] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s much older, isn’t it?
[00:19:23.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, it’s bizarre.
[00:19:28.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Like you say, it has a lot of integrations. I’ve got the pricing, I wouldn’t say it’s steep. I presume it’s per seat. Again, in my notes, I can put if it’s per seat, I don’t I can’t imagine it is. But I can’t swear. Like calendly, it’s per seat, like starter. I’m not sure about that.
[00:19:56.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
They have it more like up to six bookable calendars, up to 36.
[00:20:01.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, that’s how they’re doing it, is it? Right.
[00:20:04.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
I fell under the same question, right? Is that one person with 36?
[00:20:10.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, because they’re not making it very clear, are they?
[00:20:13.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, they’re not. I don’t find it amazingly affordable, but I think because of the level of integrations they have, they might pick up clients that way. For instance, let’s say I’m on active campaign and I’m looking for a scheduler to work with active campaign, well, good luck, unless I’m going to plug in Zapier or something like that. But this integrates directly. So maybe that’s how they’re getting some of their folks and charging a higher dollar.
[00:20:42.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Because if it is per user, it’s a bit steep, isn’t it? If it is, but they don’t make it very clear if it is or not.
[00:20:53.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. And I have a hard time picturing somebody with 36 bookable calendars.
[00:20:59.440] – Jonathan Denwood
No, even you could. Let’s go to the last one of the first half, Amelia WP. We offer both Fluent Booking and Amelia at WP Tonic as part of our hosting packages, folks. Amelia is a bit of a beast. It does a ton of stuff, doesn’t it? It really It offers everything so you don’t have… If you want a booking calendar and you’re running a business and you want people, you’re running a small business, like a service business, a plumber. Let electrician, behind me, hairdresser. When you’re looking for people to book, plus pay, plus some other things, it will do everything. So it’s trying to do everything so you don’t have to use woocommers, really. But it’s a bit over the top if you’re just looking for a simple individual calendar system, isn’t it?
[00:22:08.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
Oh, man, Jonathan. Amelia, to me, it’s almost like a website platform inside a website because each booking item can have its own featured image and gifts and all these things. And so it’s almost like I picture the event calendar. You can almost have, here’s our events, here’s our featured image, here’s our this, here’s our that, and the people can sign up and pay. And it has different levels inside of it. You could say up to five people can book this session, up to 10 people can book this session. It’s almost like booking an event, but it’s not. I mean, it really is an appointment scheduler, but it just has so much flexibility and so much energy in the game that if you have a a really highly integrated need for scheduling, this would be one of the tools to look at. It’s set up is not the easiest. It’s set up as a jump.
[00:23:10.460] – Jonathan Denwood
No, it’s nowhere as easy as fluent booking.
[00:23:14.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
But once you set it up, this thing’s amazing.
[00:23:17.160] – Jonathan Denwood
It is. I think I’m right about this. If you go with the starter, which is 49, you can’t take payments. I think the payment functionality only starts with the standard at 99. And then they got Pro 184, Elite at 638. I think the Elite is the unlimited agency plan or something. But it is amazing. But I would only advise you to look at it if you’re a service business and you’re looking to take payments and booking and you’re looking for something that’s got a lot of flexibility and a lot of functionality built with it. It’s been around for a number of years and the team behind it are very experienced.
[00:24:08.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
See, and I was looking at the starter plan and it says you can do square payments. It’ll connect to square on the starter plan.
[00:24:18.300] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s confusing. I might be wrong.
[00:24:20.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. To me, I was like, well, it’s awesome because you can do payments with whatever. But if you were actually visit the pricing page, folks, you’re going to see that there are We have great many things that are crossed out on the starter plan that come on the standard plan and even more on the pro plan.
[00:24:37.980] – Jonathan Denwood
I would advise you to look at it is 99 per year.
[00:24:42.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
At least the standard plan.
[00:24:44.900] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll go with the standard plan, but I’d say it’s 99 per year, not per month per year. We’re going to go for a break, folks, and we got to load more SaaS and WordPress scheduling calendar solutions for you. Hopefully, you found the first half enlightening. I think we’ve done… Well, Kirk’s done a good job. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. I’m coming… We are coming back, folks. I want to point out we got a great free resource. We’ve got the Membership Machine Show Facebook Group. If you’ve got any questions that come up during these podcasts, you can go to Facebook, put in the Membership Machine Show Facebook Group, join, and you can ask us some questions, and it’s totally free. Like I said, it’s just a great resource. We’ve got a small community of WordPress and people like you trying to build a successful, membership, community-focused business in 2025. Join us there, folks. On to something that’s totally different to Amelia and some of the… Because Amelia is totally customized. I think Booking is pretty customizable, but not to the extent Amelia is. You can literally… That’s what they like.
[00:26:25.460] – Jonathan Denwood
But every time I was doing my research, Kirk, Zoom Scheduler, they’re throwing a ton of money in paid search because it was sponsor, sponsor, sponsor. Every search I did, Zoom Scheduler was there as a sponsored search item. So they’re throwing a ton of money. It’s 59. 90, and it looks pretty simple, and it probably automatically integrates with, looks like it does with Google It definitely automatically integrates with Zoom, and it also integrates natively with the Microsoft products. But it’s a God It’s an ugly interface, isn’t it? A lot of Zoom products, isn’t it? The front-end and the back-end, isn’t it?
[00:27:24.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
I just have a root dislike for the Zoom stuff. I mean, Again, I’m going to use the big word ubiquitous. Everyone uses it, right? So I have it. I subscribe to Zoom. I have no interest in… It’s like when they have a mandatory update, you do the update, and then you start getting all kinds of pop-ups about, do you want to extend the conversation? Do you want to let meeting people message you later? No, I don’t want any of this stuff. I just want what I signed up for. And I feel like it’s that way in the booking tool. I feel that they They’ve partnered and they’ve gotten in bed with the Microsoft people and stuff like that. And it’s bad enough, I turn on my PC and I’m getting all kinds of ads about Copilot and all kinds of stuff for that. I just don’t have the appetite for another Zoom exercise.
[00:28:17.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, the core product is okay. It does the job, but everything else, their webinar product works. It does work. It’s got a bit pricey now, but it does work. But everything else they do, I can’t stand it. But I still prefer Zoom to Teams. I can’t stand It’s that.
[00:28:46.710] – Kurt von Ahnen
But there we are jumping back into a Microsoft discussion, right? And I don’t know what exactly happened to me and Microsoft about five years ago, but I steer away from anything that has Microsoft on Well, it’s just not very good.
[00:29:02.290] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s why. That’s my opinion. To summarize, folks, it’s 59. 90 per user per year.
[00:29:14.500] – Kurt von Ahnen
Per year.
[00:29:15.290] – Jonathan Denwood
If you just want to view, it’s not… I just think there’s better solutions. I just think there’s better solutions, but it is simple. It is not complicated. It’s just the options you’ve got and forget about stall or anything like that. You have to take what you get with it.
[00:29:38.480] – Kurt von Ahnen
Okay, but I got a question for you, Jonathan. I did not see anywhere in the write-up for this Zoom scheduler that I could take payments for people scheduling appointments.
[00:29:48.240] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t think you can.
[00:29:49.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
No. That’s been a feature that we’ve pointed out on most of the tools we’ve talked about so far.
[00:29:55.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s why I’m saying it’s simple.
[00:29:58.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, way simple.
[00:30:00.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, simple. Well, Calgary… Come on, Jonathan. It’s the heat getting to me. Calgary, the free doesn’t have payment. You got to go to the standard, don’t you?
[00:30:13.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, you’d have to pay for it.
[00:30:15.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and the same with Accutri, whatever you call it. Accuity. Yeah, I struggle with that, don’t I? On to another WordPress solution that’s been around a while. And until Fluent Booking came on. Simply Schedule Appointments. A bit of a mouthful. Really nice people behind it. Well-experienced WordPress developers. It’s got some of the problems. Well, it’s main problems, well, it’s not a problem, it’s a taste thing, is that it’s got a lot of functionality enough, and the basic functionality or the more embedded is reasonably well worked out, but it takes the whole of the back-end over WordPress. It takes everything over, and I just don’t like that. Instead of trying to keep a more native feel, so it’s more integrate with the other parts of WordPress, it just takes over everything. You still got the problem, which in true fluent booking has, where it doesn’t have this automatic connection to Google Calendar or to Zoom, where some of the SaaS products do, don’t they? What’s your thoughts about this one?
[00:31:48.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
Believe it or not, we are actually in agreement on this. I think the product-We normally agree. I think the product is good. Overall, it’s good. It It does what you want it to do. It is pretty clear. The interface is pretty clear. The screens, on tablets and phones, it looks really crisp. The user interface is beautiful. I really don’t like the decision that they made to say, Click on settings, and then boom, it looks like you’re on a different website. When you go to set things up, it always feels like you’re on someone else’s website, but you’re in your own site. That’s a bit much for me. I prefer a tool that integrates well inside my WordPress frame set and doesn’t try to recreate the wheel inside my site.
[00:32:37.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, it’s got reputation of being rock solid. The price is, these are per year, plus 2. 49, professional edition 2. 49, business edition 4. 99, but they are the per year prices. You do have to study because there are some key functionality that’s available available in a specific level. They also got a bit like Lifter LMS. They got this add-on model, and you have to have a certain level to have access to the certain add-on plugins that adds the functionality. But it’s got a good reputation for being rock solid. I think, like a media, I think you can customize it a bit better than Fluent Booking. I think Fluent Booking, you can customize. I think so.
[00:33:37.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
Fluent does a really good job dynamically of adapting to the overall team. I I don’t want us to say that, oh, we’ll fluence the way you’re out of luck. It does adapt dynamically. It adapts to the theme really well. I think in most cases, the fluent booking is going to meet a lot of needs. The simply schedule appointments, I think, is more clear-cut and direct on its integration levels. So it integrates with PayPal and Stripe. And to Jonathan’s point, once you add those add-ons, you activate them, you connect, and you’re done. Pretty straightforward. And the selection that they integrate with is all super popular. Like nothing is really strange or extraneous in their grouping. They connect to really well-used, well-known rock solid other products.
[00:34:32.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I wasn’t explaining myself very clearly there. Kurt was absolutely right. Fluent Booking does a really good job identifying the modern page builder using Gutenberg, bricks, whatever, and it adapts to the starter website of the theme. But if there’s some real custom thing that you want doing, both for me and simply Simply Scheduler Appointment offers more really… The thing with Simple Scheduler, it offers a lot of functionality, but it’s still a lot simpler than EMEA. But I’m not having to go with EMEA because EMEA literally does a ton of stuff. Simply Scheduler is the middle ground. At one end, these are very broad statements, folks.
[00:35:28.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
They’re easier to use for the average person.
[00:35:31.120] – Jonathan Denwood
I think Fluent Booking is at the easier use end, and then Simply Schedules in the middle, and Amelia’s on the other side. It really just depends what you’re looking to do, folks. Tie decal, really popular. It’s on the spectrum of simpler. It’s more on the simple side. They’ve got a free product. I haven’t used it, but it has good write-ups. I did look at the interface. So they got… It is a SaaS, isn’t it?
[00:36:12.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
Complete sas.
[00:36:13.590] – Jonathan Denwood
It is a SaaS.
[00:36:15.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
And to use it with WordPress, you just embed the code, the embed code.
[00:36:19.940] – Jonathan Denwood
I haven’t used it in anger, really. Have you?
[00:36:23.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’ve had customers that have used it. And the reason I have had customers that have used it is because like myself, they were suckers for the lifetime deal. Their lifetime deals are amazing. And I mean, the interface is clean, it’s simple, it’s easy. If you’re just looking for a calendar and people to book appointments, bada boom, bada bing, a great solution. And it’s and it’s simple. Invariably, what will happen is people that get more experienced in WordPress and realize they can customize everything under the sun, they’re going to realize, well, I just have this this weird code I pulled from the SAS platform, but I want it to be this, that and the other. And that’s not going to be an option for you. So if you’re looking for customizations or anything like that, then you’re going to steer towards what we talked about earlier.
[00:37:12.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Like I said, the price free or the individual plan is 144. But the reason I was confused, you got the free, you got the individual plan at 144, the agency plan at 240, but it’s per year, isn’t it?
[00:37:35.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yes. No, single payment.
[00:37:38.880] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s just a single? No, it’s not even per year. It’s just a single payment, is it?
[00:37:42.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, that’s the whole deal. It’s an AppSumo deal. It’s $79 and you get the agency plan. I think it’s a remarkable deal. It does up to 25 calendar connections with unlimited team members.
[00:37:59.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, at those prices, I didn’t realize that I’ve been hot and bothered the last few days. Actually, folks, I’m lucky to be here. I had a gas leak, and then I smacked my head and gulged my head open, folks. I read up Kirk, and I wasn’t too happy, was I? But I was bleeding to death at the time, wasn’t I? So I’m lucky to be here. So it’s been an interesting week, to say the least. I didn’t realize that. So that’s why it’s still popular, folks. When it comes to the actual front-end and back-end, I don’t think it’s the most starless, starlist.
[00:38:39.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, there’s no style.
[00:38:40.960] – Jonathan Denwood
There’s no style.
[00:38:43.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
I go I get to this, Jonathan, and this is like, I know that this is a disease of mine. On one hand, I’m like-Working for me sometimes. Yeah, on one hand, I’m like, Look at this cool tool. It’s native to WordPress. We can load it up, we can We can customize it, we can do this. We can do that. We can do the other. And I get excited about it. And then on the other side of the scale is like, holy crud, look at this thing. It’s $79, unlimited team members. It builds a dedicated team page. So it gives you a team page to put everybody on. And it even does round Robin like team meetings. So let’s say you’re running a car dealership and you’re supposed to rotate the ups that come in. It’s automatically going to do that for you if you set it up to do it. And it’s 79 bucks. Like, boom, done. I can’t help but get excited about cheap stuff that seems to work. Tidy Cal just seems to work. But again, like Jonathan said, no frills.
[00:39:46.340] – Jonathan Denwood
On to motor press appointment booking. I knew nothing about this, but about a year ago, they booked, they sponsored my other podcast for a month. They just came out the blue and said, Do we like to sponsor you for a month? I don’t know why more pod… I should promote it a bit more, shouldn’t I? I looked at it and they got a free version and they got a paid version that’s 49. When they sponsored the show and looked at it and I refreshed myself before we came live, I got to say I’m quite impressed because to me, It offers a bit more than what fluent booking offers, but it doesn’t take over the whole back-end, like what’s simply scheduling, and it isn’t as massive as What’s it called? I was quite impressed with it. It offers a lot of stuff. What’s your thoughts about this? Did you know about this one?
[00:40:57.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have never used it. It integrates rates with a ton of things. And I like the idea that it’ll serve any number of employees, any number of bookings. Again, we go back to that, this is what native WordPress is like, no limitations, right? So I like that whole concept of it. But when I went to the pricing page and I tried to figure out what was what, what do we actually get here? It looked like everything was an add-on, right? So if I want If I use it with Woocommerce, that’s $79. If I want to add appointment checkout fields, it’s $49. If I want to use Square, it’s another $49. And so this is one of those use cases where You need to know what you want and be very strategic about how you sign up for the added benefits, right? And really look at what you’re doing there. For instance, they’ve Google Analytics for setting your appointments for $39. I’m like, folks, I don’t need Google Analytics to tell me if I’m making appointments or not. So I just think that’s a weird thing to focus on. But some use cases, maybe somebody wants to know how many people checked, how many people clicked on it versus set the appointment.
[00:42:14.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
I don’t know.
[00:42:17.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but when it comes to the actual… It doesn’t take the whole back end, and it gives you a lot, loads of options, doesn’t it? The paid version.
[00:42:29.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
And It’s styled nice. I mean, it’s pretty modern-looking. It’s not all antiquated and weird-looking. And it works with Elementor. It works in the standard block editor. There’s a lot of good things here.
[00:42:42.420] – Jonathan Denwood
I got a couple that I didn’t send to you because I forgot until the last minute and I thought, Oh, I better add these. Savvy Carl. I thought we’d better talk about savicoll. Com. It’s really powerful, and I think it’s got the best UX design back and front of any of the SaaS products. It’s per user, again, the The basic is $12 per user, pre-M20. I’m not totally sure about this, I might be wrong, but you know Rob Rowland? When he was the friend of the show, Rob Rowland, him and his partner, I think it was Derek Reema was his partner that started Drip. Well, after they sold Drip, I think Derek, who’s the founder of Savvy Coal, I think he went on to establish Savvy Coal, but I might be totally wrong. I’m just going by my memory here, which is bad now, it’s getting worse. But I don’t know if you know this one and that. I forgot. Then I’m, Oh, yeah, we got to have to talk about this one because it’s got some unique functionality as well, especially if you’ve got teams or groups of people. I think it’s got a really great Robin.
[00:44:22.940] – Jonathan Denwood
I think they use that term where it’s got some unique functionality, but I just-Round Robin? Yes, it. Yeah, it’s got that functionality and it works really well. I just really like the interface. Do you know anything about this one? Does this come on your radar at all?
[00:44:43.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
Are we talking about Savvy Cal still?
[00:44:45.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:44:46.740] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have not used Savvy Cal. See, you got me off guard. Are we going to talk about Sweetdash?
[00:44:58.360] – Jonathan Denwood
I got another one. I got another one that came on my radar. When I was doing my research for this episode… Oh, by the way, I’m not blowing our trumpet. My God, I looked at… I did a fair bit of research for this, looking at YouTube and online reviews and that. A lot of the reviews on YouTube for these products are awful. I’ve been terrible. But this other one came up a lot, called calcal. Com.
[00:45:44.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
That one I’ve heard of.
[00:45:46.340] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s getting a lot of positive reviews. They got a free product, they got a Team 15, an Organization 37. I presume that’s per user, but I’m not sure.
[00:46:04.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
Per month per user.
[00:46:06.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Pardon?
[00:46:07.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
Per month per user.
[00:46:10.120] – Jonathan Denwood
Per user. But a lot of people are raving about it, but I haven’t used it, and I don’t know if they’ve just been doing a social media campaign on YouTube with influencers. It seems It’s open source, though. I didn’t know that. You got to pay for it, but the code is open source. I presume you can get your hands on the code and host it yourself. I didn’t have enough time. Oh, here you are. Starter Kit. Build your own scheduling app with our Starter Kit. I presume you can self-host this yourself, but it looks very similar to Calgary, don’t it? It’s got that look, hasn’t it?
[00:47:08.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. So I have experience with Calcom from one specific client, and that was because they required HIPAA compliance. So there was something about this product that made it HIPAA compliant. So there was that. And then, yeah, if you go to the pricing page, it says self-host it, like self-host cal. Com. Install instructions right here.
[00:47:33.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, so it is HIPAA compliant.
[00:47:38.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. And so with the HIPAA thing, I think it has to be on a certain server or something like that, or I got lost in that. I’m not a HIPAA expert, but my client required it because they had to be HIPAA certified to have scheduling.
[00:47:55.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I normally We normally host, we normally advise, if they want that, we advise them to use Microsoft 360 and use X because you can integrate it, look it down, which I hate doing, but Because I don’t like Microsoft products. So you want to surprise me, is there any calendar that we haven’t mentioned that comes on your radar?
[00:48:27.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
I just, sucker for a lifetime deal. I signed up for that sweet dash thing years ago, and I use it to run a good portion of my business. It has a booking calendar in it that is just like everything else, has a learning curve to set up. But once I set it up, it’s been rock solid for three years. It makes my appointments, it syncs to other calendars, lets me charge people for appointments in some instances before we meet. It works really well.
[00:48:55.120] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, let’s just wrap up. Let’s look at book like A BAS.
[00:49:02.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Looks like a BAS.
[00:49:06.020] – Jonathan Denwood
I am not a fan. I interviewed the founder of this. It’s been around a while. I found it to be rock solid. And what’s their pricing? So. Yes.
[00:49:26.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s like a boss.
[00:49:28.300] – Jonathan Denwood
Pardon?
[00:49:29.400] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m just making I’m making fun of the accent. Books like a boss.
[00:49:32.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, Book Like a Boss. Espresso is like ten dollars a month, billed yearly. You’ve got to cough up yearly. I’ve got the lifetime, and then they got matcha, cappuccino, and latte. They’re into their coffee, folks. And that’s the freelance. And then teams. It’s a sliding scale. It starts with three users. I eat the Sliding Scale. It’s been rock solid, folks, Book Like a Boss. I got it on the lifetime. The actual calendar, I think, is reasonably good. They offer a website, a landing page, landing pages and other stuff. I’m not too sure about all that, but the actual calendars, the product you bought, it’s been rock solid. To set it up, it’s more intuitive than Calendly, but I wouldn’t say it’s fantastic either. There are one or two things that if I want to change, I have to really delve in and read their help section, but they do have a lot of help documentation and videos. I think that’s a good one. I think we’re going to wrap it up now. We’ve delved in, we’ve covered a ton, haven’t we? So what’s the best way for people to find out more about you, Kurt?
[00:51:15.480] – Kurt von Ahnen
To connect person to person. LinkedIn is a good spot. So Kurt von Ahnen at LinkedIn. If it’s business-related, mañana no más.
[00:51:24.940] – Jonathan Denwood
If you want to support the show, folks, if you’re getting value out of our weekly show that Kirt gives you all this info for free. The way you could help us out is to go to iTunes or Spotify on your phone and leave us a review. If you’re using your phone, and most people listen to their podcast on the phone, it’s really easy to leave a review on both the iTunes and Spotify apps. And good, bad, or different, it really then promotes us to new people. We’ve been growing lately on the podcast. More people are listening to and downloading it. And if you can do that, that really does help both me and Kirk. We will be back next week with another topic that will enable you to build a successful membership or community-focused website in 2025. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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