SimplyBook.me reviews

I conduct digital research with psychiatric populations and I am the principal investigator of a NIH funded study that is evaluating the feasibility of delivering group therapy using mobile platforms. SimplyBook.me is an amazing solution to schedule visits with research participants. Our research participants can now book sessions with different members of our team (program coordinators, assessors, therapists). This has greatly accelerated the operationalization of our study procedures.

Honestly I cannot think of any flaws. Maybe the admin portal can be initially intimidating, but one easily learns how to navigate it and customize the experience.

I love how user friendly this software is! I found the video tutorials very helpful and the customer service was prompt and friendly. I appreciate how they would always send article links to refer back to after the chat and would email me when we got disconnected. I also love the booking site themes to choose from, they are all very well designed.

If I had to give one improvement it would be to allow users to get more than three custom features with the first upgrade tier. I would have loved to get five to test it out, and would have definitely upgraded once my business bookings began. The jump from three to unlimited is a big jump, maybe offer a tier in between for new subscribers. Other than that the software itself is pretty amazing.

Allows for a degree of automation to my business.

I can show images and descriptions for my categories and services which a lot of other systems do not.

Like the drag a slot function in calendar.

Like the SMS and email reminder system (but could be better!)

It adapts to most types of business which many others do not.

Very expensive for what it offers.
It costs a lot of money to get a reasonably functional system by paying for all the add ons and extras.
If the core was better then I would be happy to pay for my business specific add ons.
Customer service is more of a cut and paste script routine.
There is no place other than sending via customer service to place suggestions. It needs a dedicated place to post suggestions so that all other users can vote on them.
The company just say that they look at all suggestions. The problem with that is no one else gets to see those suggestions and thing Oh thats a great idea.
Plus it does not provide real life feedback doing it their way.
I made these in the very first day of use
Suggestions /Requirements for SimplyBook.me

1) Email templates should have a WYSIWYG editor
2) There should be a Block Out option when making a booking on the calendar (admin only)
3) Emails should be sent in HTML not plain text. At least an option should be available.
4) There needs to be a “Pending Booking” email template.
5) It should be possible to switch on and off any email or SMS rather than all on or all off.
6) This booking software really would benefit from and APP the website as it stands doe not even work/view properly on mobile.
7) There should be multi buy option. Customers may want to book 1 or 10 or 100 of the same service. It should be easy to add a figure for quantity required.
8) There should be a multi cart function

I appreciated how simple it was to use and set up SimplyBook.me. The functions were simple to use, and the user interface was quite intuitive. The system's high degree of customization, which allowed me to alter the booking page to suit the needs of clients as a business, was another feature I enjoyed. I really loved how easy it was to set up the system and begin going with it.

The price plans of SimplyBook.me are extremely expensive when compared to those of some other appointment scheduling software, which is their major drawback. Also, there is no option for a free trial, which can make it challenging to determine whether it will meet your demands.

Had the required appointment booking, allowing different types of appointments to be booked, but also had the added benefit of being able to sell products alongside the booking which was a requirement for this particular client. Trial allowed which was good for testing features fully.

Obviously would be great if everything was free, you have to pay for certain products. It can be a little confusing as to how the extra features are charged for.

Simplybook.me is affordable and features convenient alacarte style add-ons.
This is perfect for users who don't need some of the features, or don't need them as often.
The ability to add a questionnaire for clients is wonderful.
Appointments can be downloaded as a CSV file.
Reminders and email confirmation is available.

I did not like the technical issues and inconveniences that we have encountered using Simplybook.me.
Our clients often report that they were not able to schedule an appointment.
The pricing setup is a double edged sword, if you want to try different options to see which ones are the most helpful, you're simply out of luck if you've already exceeded the limit for the free version.

The app for me is what makes a difference in terms of accessibility as owner of a charter company with different boats.

A bit difficult to handle widgets on my website and some translation, a mid-long job which needed to be done anyway. THe Customer Service team helped me out.

Loved the simplicity of it. Very user friendly and easy to manoeuvre through. Plus hey have loads of features other softwares don’t.

My only suggestion would be to to allow individuals to bring in their own website templates as opposed to just using stock. More options in that area would be nice but even then, everything else is decent enough to do the job.

Integrates natively with many popular software and platforms. Robust API documentation and possibilities. Polished UI and UX.

Limits. The lowest tier is on par with other close competitors but the limits are low and restrictive. Businesses that have up to 500 bookings in a month might not necessarily collect payments online for all these bookings. The limits on the lowest 2 tiers have to be friendlier to small and medium businesses, otherwise only the bigger boys can afford this.

The booking calendar allows my clients to book my services directly via the calendar, linked from my site. This is a handy feature and a selling point in my business, where people want easy ways to make appointments at times of their choosing. I can customise the forms to suit my own specific needs.

The features are not always intuitively set out, so it has taken a while to find out what can be done. When I get a mail infpoming me of a booking, it would be good to get either, 1. a direct link to the new booking or the day of the booking, or 2. all the details of the booking in a mail. I would also like to be able to synchronise the booking calendar with the offline calendar in my mail client, but I have not found out how, if it even is possible.

It has some really great features that we needed - multiple locations, the ability to take appointment deposits, customise notification emails and having a questionnaire for clients to fill in at the point of booking. The ability to download our daily appointments as a CSV file is really useful - generally speaking, the amount of data we're able to extract from it for our monitoring is fantastic. The customer service is fast and helpful.

The interface took a bit of getting used to (but once you're used to it, it's fine! We have some single appointments for one person and some workshops with multiple spaces, but they have to be set up in the same way so the workshop booking interface is quite clunky from the customer's perspective. Some of the info (for example the service description) isn't viewable on mobile devices which is a shame. The recent price rises were a bit of a shock when it came to renew our subscription and unfortunately it has now become unaffordable for us to keep using.

I found it easy to set up and look pleasing for my website.

We do not require prepayment to book an appointment. However, we offer a 20% discount if the client prepays. With that offer, we get a much higher show rate. Originally, I was told this was not an issue. However, after hours upon hours of setting up the program I found that I cannot offer both options. If we require prepayment for the discounted appointments, it now requires payment for the non discounted appointments. So basically, I cannot offer how we do business. Customer service is terrible, because it is only by text. They will not let you call. Forget all the money we wasted; I am more upset about all the lost time.

you can easily modify schedules and specific days and make modifications to services. If you're running a one day promo it is so easy to set up and customize to a specific technician and day.
Having reminders for both the service provider and clients is a great feature and setting the time of the reminder also helps as it eliminates those last minute cancellations.
Sending an automated link to clients after their service to complete a review is one of the better features ! It eliminates having to remember to follow up when your schedule is busy and it completes the service. These reviews can also be used to further promote your business. Seeing the calendar in different views whether by tech per week day or month allows you to see company performance easily and also compare to other months and previous year I am one of the Franchises and we have over 40 now locates across Canada and now overseas. Many of our other Franchises were looking for a simple online booking system and I've told them about your site. It would be nice to see all of Tan on the Run use this site to streamline our bookings.

there is not much negative to say about the software. initially when you set up you get to try all features but when it's new and you're not getting a lot of traffic at first it's hard to try them all so i would only suggest that maybe after 6 months when a client sets up and has really understood and had time to really try out the software to offer this later as well. I understand as a business it might not be possible but I think I would have been more inclined to get a couple extra features to see what works.
I did try the promotion feature and found it really difficult to manoeuvre and after several failed attempts and trials gave up. It was very limiting for the discount unless you've changed this. I liked that you could select specific clients to send to but other than that it didn't work for me.
Also trying to add a service from mobile doesn't work. I couldn't get the whole screen to hit `save.

The ease of use is the best part for us. With so many people needing to use it to book their clients it is important that they can learn to use it quickly. Even those who are unfamiliar with computer technology are able to book their clients with this program! It is also great for me as an administrator that it is so easy to use because with so many people using it I often am changing their hours or days of work. With this program, it only takes a minute so I don't ever feel I am wasting time managing our booking program.

I would love if there was a way to combine two calendar views. For example, it would be really great for us if we could view the calendar by day and service provider.

Possibility that clients book themselves. Connection to our google calendar. The ease with wich you can add a service.

Not possible to book for groups, as we use it for planning our guides for farm tours etc. People can book a tour for their group, and pay per head. We really miss this functionality.
Also we have different locations people can book (instead of performers, but we use the performer tool), and it is a lot of work to plan the opening hours per location/performer (we close most locations for 5 months in winter)
We cannot send a reminder more than 3 days before the appointment. For us 7 or even 14 days would be better.

Customer facing booking system ability to book their service

This system does not accommodate for a booking deposit fee. Every other online calendar booking system out there has this feature but they don't have the other features that SimpleBook.me as. I as a prospective customer have been asking for this feature for over 3 years now. I have not moved to SimpleBook.me because of this missing feature. They have everything else I need but this one feature!

What I like about the software is that you can print to an excel document/or PDF
A requirement of my program is to show graphs and attendance, your software does that automatically and the graphs are clear, color coded and easy to read.
This software is improving every year, with add ons and custom features, Always seeking ways to simplify the software to accommodate clients like myself.
The software is not time consuming and has been benefit towards my own program

One least con: is payment method. I use this software for my program as stated, I have to ask my boss to use his credit card for the business .
Suggest if possible to be directly invoiced each time wanting to make a payment. like a subscription or text messages added on.

I have used this software for close to 5 years and it's still simply the best in the industry for my needs. There are plenty of scheduling solutions out there but this platform is easy and flexible and consistent. I have never had a problem with implimentation and the developers are SO accessible that even if I did, they would be right on a solution. They are constantly adding value for the user and this value translates into satisfaction in our client's experience. Value for the cost is the best perk. You would be hard pressed to find another product that does as much for as little.

One limitation is the lack of a merge feature. Because users input their data anew, there is the potential to have multiple entries for the same client in the client database.

It has a great level of scalabibility: we started with a free plan to give it a try and turned out very efficient. The technical support is incredibly responsive via chatting, efficient and friendly. They always solutionned my issue almost instantantly. It has a lot of nice integrations (Google Calendars, facebook, etc). You can embed the booking widget in your own webistem, or use the simplybook .me website fro your company.

The old widget is the only widget which has a look and feel which fits with our own website. I am afraid it will be soon discontinuied. Please develop some more theme, sober and neutral!

its easy to setup. and i find it very useful for my business.
i would make some improvements do.
thanks

a few things.....
1) The mobile view is not very friendly and the look and feel for mobile is not responsive i would optimize all the templates for mobile, since 90%+ of all my customer book their appointments on mobile.
2) The calendar sync with google does not work very well, when a customer cancels or reschedule an appointment the google calendar doesn't updates and you cant see all the customer info (name, phone, mail, etc) in the google calendar
3) you cant book half hours.
4) There is no simplybook app for apple so i can manage my business in an app.

Easy of use, many integrations with other software. Fast interface, simple

The app has a very big flaw design that cannot be worked around.
If you charge by the hour it is impossible to configure it. Every service and product has a static price which does not depend on duration. How is this even possible in a booking app?

Let's say you are providing lessons. You try to create the service. The duration is fixed and so is the price.
So if you want to create 1, 2, 3, 4-hour sessions, you have to create "service-addon" one for each set of hours. So if you want anything from +1 hour to +10 hours you have to create 10 service add-ons just because they do not have per hour price.

But I could ignore that. This would be a one time work that I would do. Here is the real deal-breaker.
Let say you have created your +1 +2 .... +10 hours for your service.
Now you want to add real add ons to the service. For example use a video projector, VR-facilities, etc.
You create that add on service, but the price you assign is based on a fixed time and does not take into account the total number of hours of the whole service.

This means, in the previous example, if the customer chooses +1 hour or + 10 hours, the cost for the "video projector service add on" would be the same!!!.

How can a booking software ignore the duration of an appointment?

I love this booking tool compared to every other one out there, but it isn't as great as it could be. It is the easiest tool to use with the most features that I need available, but you give up certain flexibility when you have an all in one tool like this.

I wish the service providers could see the sessions in their timezone just like the clients can, but the system only allows you to show the company timezone and I have providers working all across the United States. I also wish the packages and memberships were more flexible. My packages page is super crowded because for example I have to set 3 different high school 10 hour tutoring packages for different sessions durations (i.e. 30 min, 45 min, 60 min) when other systems have the ability to have me put this all in one package where the client picks the duration. I also don't like how if they cancel a package session then it takes away the credit even though I setup a 24 hour cancellation policy. Even if they cancel in time, the session credit disappears. I also wish the packages had a service filter like the memberships do.

I love how easy it is to set up. My clients can easily book appointments and write reviews for my business.

I wish there was a better option for automatic reminders. I was paying for the text messages but they stopped working after a while and I could never get it fixed.

I have set up the online ticket booking for some events we are running in December.
I looked at all kinds of event software but they did not deliver exactly what we required for our tasks.
Due to current limitations we needed tickets that staggered start times accross 5 days.

I had previously used the software for a photography business and it worked perfect for that task so I knew my way around the software and configured it to meet our event needs.

I found I was unable to resent a confirmation email to a client, may be me, but I could not find a way through their booking to resend so had to PDF print their ticket and send via normal email. (not the end of the world but an inconvenience)

Configurability, I´m in Brazil so was very important to be able to translate all the text and notifications to portuguese. Is the most complete software in its category so far, and I searched for a long time before choosing.

No support for local credit cards or payment methods. Lack of a user level that can create and remove bookins but is not a administrator. Add-ons and plugins are too expensive.