SimplyBook.me Reviews

I loved the features included with the base package and the ability to add extra features alacarte to keep costs low. Customers can self-cancel and outgoing emails can be customized. Zapier included!

The moment you need an extra feature after your first three alacarte ones, the price jumps up into the next alacarte tier. Also, you cannot create booking "buffers" or delays for different departments. For example, if you want customer service customers to wait at least 1 hour before booking a customer service call, but want coaching customers to wait 24 hours before booking a call, it cannot accommodate those different delays in different departments. The entire company must be either a 1 hour delay, or a 24 hour delay.

It has a wide range of (theoretically) great features. App is handy.
It is not as pricey as many others.

As a tourguide I was long looking for a booking tool to make my tours easier to book and generate automated invoices. Simplybook.it does that on a simple level, but after several years in use it really frustrates me, that their (paid) features are not really thought-through in the end (and they don't care to change it).

Examples:
Group booking feature makes it possible, that one person can book a tour for e.g. 4 people, which is great. Invoices then are also correctly generated for the price of 4. But if the customer cancels their group booking, it is not possible to do that for the group of 4 people, instead technically the cancellation is 1 out of 4 bookings of this group, and 3 remains. Oddly the invoice remains unchanged for 4 people, and the calender shows 3 bookings inside the group.

That brings up several inconveniences:

1) I have to confirm the customers, if they wanted to cancel the whole booking or if they only wanted to cancel single people in the booking (100% wanted to cancel the whole group and arent even aware they did not). So I have to cancel the remainig 3 manually.

2) If I have to cancel a group, I need to cancel x-times. So the customer receives x-confirmation emails. That just makes me appear bothering and unprofessional.

3) The amounts of the invoices are not affected from any cancellation, so you really need to be careful not to mess up your accounting

Which brings me to the central flaw (bug in my opinion) of simplybook.me:

Cancelled bookings (group or single) still have a generated invoice in the system and are not flagged as cancelled, but pending (and so have no different status than any other open invoice). So to have a correct invoice journal at the end of the year or quarter, you carefully need to filter the invoices to status "paid". Otherwise your accounting is full of wrong revenues due to invoices from cancelled services.

Another bug in the group booking feature is that it is only available on service selection level (eg. tour 1, 2 and 3). If you set the widget to only show tour 1, there is no possibility anymore to book for a group.

If I reach out to their customer service to improve on all this, I get more or less the same answer over the years: it is like it is and I dont get a sense of ambitions to change or update (sometimes they offer me some kind of workarounds with other paid features - haha).

I find this pretty frustrating, because this tool could be so much better than it is right now if they actually listen to their customers. But they refuse.

The level of assistance.
Professional trainer
Creative solutions
Very helpful

The "slide" view calendar is hard to read
Set up times for services with the slide bar is challenging

Easy to set up & use. Good price. Ability to create classes.

That so many features require a higher priced plan. Would like to see more of the add-ons included in the beginning plans. Also would like to see form creation and ability to send. And a way to create more detailed notes and client management.

It’s pretty accurate and I am able to book clients worldwide

There are a lot of features and to change address i have to cancel my subscription and redo

Very easy to use (once you get a hang of it) and client facing time zones so there is no confusion with scheduling time.

I would like to be able to block out time without marking the business as closed for that particular day. Would also like the calendar sync to pick up items place directly in my Google calendar and block out time in SimplyBook.me.

- Accept online payments with different options (including debit cards)- Meeting confirmation after payment- Automatic billing/automatic emails with receipt and invoice- Upsell products- Real-time calendar synchronization- Video meetings- Different categories/services- Cloning services to offer in other languages- Drawing up different agendas for different services- Always in control- TOP helpdesk- Widget code for every service in every category, full integration on your website- Huge number of features- Most of it can be customized

- There are so many features that the learning curve is slow and long, but it's a huge advantage to customize most of the features, so it's necessary to go through them. Once you are there, you have a top service to offer on your website.- At the moment only 1 reminder can be sent, but they are working on making it possible to send multiple reminders.- Limited number of video meeting apps (2: Teams & google) are connected by default, but you can expand with zapier.- Some bugs in the software when using code for text.- Some difficulties when using Teams without customer login, but when you do the video meeting via your web browser instead of the app, then all is fine (except for custom background)

Pros: What did you like most about SimplyBook.me?I like that fact that I was able to adapt my business to use the SimplyBook solutions.

Cons: What did you like least about SimplyBook.me?In order to use many features of SimplyBook you will need to buy the more expansive plan, and the price is above the market average.

Simple to set up and use, friendly customer service.

Difficulty in adding certain payment options and integrating Pay Pal etc.

When we first launched our small beauty clinic, we sought out Simplybook.me to help manage our limited appointment bookings and client base. After over two years of use, we've seen our business grow rapidly, and Simplybook.me has scaled with us every step of the way.As a startup, we needed an intuitive, easy-to-use platform that could handle online bookings for our barebones staff. Simplybook.me provided just that with their basic plan. As our appointments filled up, we upgraded to higher tiers that unlocked more features. This allowed us to sync with business calendars, process payments, send reminders, and more.Now with multiple staff members and a bustling schedule, Simplybook.me continues fitting our needs perfectly. Their plans are flexible and affordable even for higher volumes of bookings. We can customize the platform with our branding and tailor it exactly to our clinic's workflow.Simplybook.me has been an invaluable partner from our humble beginnings to now operating a successful, growing enterprise. Their scalable platform and features have allowed us to focus on clients, not bookings. We're excited to continue evolving with Simplybook.me for years to come. It's an essential tool for any small business aiming for bigger things.

The number of custom features is pretty limited in each plan. For example, for having a fully working payment option like accepting online payment and deposit, you need to activate two or 3 custom features out of the maximum of 4. I wish they increase those limit in the future.

I love the free website and online scheduling.

It glitches and needs to bre refreshed frequently. No option to put notes on a client. Only on appointment. I would like to put a pets name on file as well as their owner. Notes for the client would suffice. I haven't been able to figure out how to add text reminders.
I wish there were more useful options for enabling more add ons for the 300. I upgraded to 300 just to allow one more add on. It paid for itself with that but I would like to add more and cannot justify paying more.

Easy to use, almost trouble free (works almost every time). Interface is appealing, and customers can access site very easily.

1. My customers frequently complain that they cannot book an appointment. This is because it is not very clear that a time slot has already been booked and they need to try and search for another one that is not.

I think to overcome this, a pop-up message should appear at the booking site every time someone tries to book a time slot that is taken already. The message could read "This session is already booked or there is insufficient time available to book this time slot. Please try another time slot". The little red sentence that currently appears on your system is rarely seen by my customers nor is the dimmed grey lettering of the time slots evident enough for customers to realize the slot is taken already.

In addition, you can provide a week or month-at-a-glance view of the time days/time slots already booked and those available so customers can easily see which ones to select.

2. It would be great if I could add a link from my Simplebookme webpage so customers can click on to view more information about a service or product than what is allowed from your site.

It's affordable and it's not hard to set up. Open your account then list your services and availability dates and you're ready to go. The admin app is a quick way to manage everything and there's also the client app that does the same thing on their end.Notifications can come in through email or SMS. I like that because I've missed important things coming in through email. On my phone after there are 3 or 4 they don't display individually anymore. On the other hand I always check SMS and they don't group together. Integrate with Facebook, Google, Stripe, PayPal, etc.I would say it's a simple way to do your booking.

It is affordable unless you're wanting the add on packages. Honestly they do get expensive. If you can operate without them it's no big deal though.

The ease of use. It almost has it all. great software that fits almost any business. lots of extra features available that you can work with it the way you want.
I've looked at different booking solutions and found SimplybookIt not only has the best solution, but it also has the best price/quality ratio! And the Support team has been very helpfull for me. Even when using the free version!

There are still parts I want to mention. A number of functions that I consider essential are optional, so you have to opt for the more expensive monthly subscriptions. I think the price difference (I don't have any employees) is a bit too high.
My clients are people within a 30 kilometer radius, so I would like to give my clients the feeling that they are booking locally. For now, there are parts that show that it is an international booking system. For example, that you have to choose your country in the address details.
The invoicing part may become more mature, I can for example not let my customers pay through our widely used system 'Ideal'. I need to be able to translate more words into this invoice section than is possible now. Oh and a widget for both a contact form and booking instead of a button ;) would be nice! It seems that I have a lot to notice, but it is constructive criticism, in which I believe they will pick it up.

SimplyBook.me allows users to accept payments through Stripe and apply membership scheduling and payments (two major pluses for me). Furthermore, SimplyBook.me allows me to customize (within significant limits) the look and feel of the platform to more-or-less conform with the look and feel of my website. It has an easy to use and intuitive user interface (not being very tech savvy, for me this is a very important feature). Within twenty to thirty minutes you can have a subscription, a customized interface, and have the platform embedded (or otherwise set up) on your website. Additionally, for those who need it, SimplyBook.me is HIPPA compliant. For most people (myself included) the free subscription will be all you need.

I like this platform and can see very few cons with it. But I'll do my best to come up with a few (or at least one). Here it is, and although it might seem insignificant, success is in the details: SimplyBook.me does not have a "look busy" feature. Meaning, it doesn't automatically allow for a certain percentage of time slots to appear full. The result is if you are just beginning your business and have a lot of "empty time" you (in this case me) end up looking rather pathetic. But with a "look busy" feature a certain percentage of time slots are automatically filled allowing the service providing (in my case as a mental heath therapist) to appear busy and in high demand. The higher the demand appears to be the more willing the potential client is to book. The lack of this feature is the difference between a B+/A- and a solid A+.

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.