How much time have you spent sending emails today?

Most salespeople spend 21% of their day writing emails. Unnecessary emails and coordinating can take up a lot of that time. Tools like appointment scheduling apps and booking software help automate the process of scheduling meetings with potential and existing customers.

So, why should you invest in an appointment scheduling app?

You’ll speed up your sales process by allowing prospects to book meetings when it’s best for them. And it makes it easier for people to schedule time with you by eliminating any unnecessary back-and-forth emails. Plus, many of these tools sync directly with your calendar and send out meeting reminders automatically.

Ready to see some of the best appointment scheduling apps? Let’s dive in.

Here are the best scheduling apps with free options.

Free Scheduling Apps

1. HubSpot Meetings Tool

Price: Free

The HubSpot Meetings Tool lets you sync your Google Calendar or Office 365 calendar, set your availability, and have prospects and customers book time with you. Add form fields to your meeting page to capture contact information like name, phone number, email address, and more. The meeting page can be sent as a link in an email or embedded on a website or landing page.

When they book time with you, the time is blocked off on your calendar and a confirmation email is sent to the prospect or client who booked. This simplifies the scheduling process so you can book more meetings in less time. Plus, it integrates directly with the free CRM so you can keep track of your contacts and meetings. As prospects schedule meetings, HubSpot automatically creates records for new people.

2. Calendar

Price: Free (Basic, Basic Teams), $8/month (Pro), $12/month and up (Pro Teams)

Calendar is an AI-enabled digital calendar, scheduling, and time management solution for individuals and teams. It brings together your Google Calendar, iCal (Apple Calendar), and Outlook Calendar into one dashboard view that you can customize and share. The digital calendar syncs across devices as well as offers a virtual assistant that can learn your schedule and begin taking over meeting planning, invitations, and scheduling changes. The paid versions also add meeting transcriptions and a wide range of analytics so you can see how you spend your time in meetings and with people.

3. Setmore

Price: Free

Setmore is a free appointment scheduling and payments platform that allows you to create a public-facing booking page. The free account supports up to 20 staff calendars and logins so your team can begin booking meetings. And you can send automatic appointment notifications to people who book time with you.

4. SimplyBook

Price: Free, $9.90/month (Basic), $29.90/month (Standard), and $59.90/month (Premium)

SimplyBook is an online booking system specifically designed for service-based companies. You can integrate SimplyBook with your existing website, or you can create a custom booking page within the platform. They also have social media integrations that allow you to accept bookings directly from Facebook and Instagram.

Image Source: Google Play

5. Square Appointments

Price: Free for individuals, $50/month for teams of 2-5, $90/month for teams of 6-10

If you’re looking for a flexible booking and payment platform, Square Appointments is worth your consideration. Through Square Appointments, you can set up a free customer booking website, activate automated text and email reminders, charge cancellation fees for no-shows, and accept integrated payments from within one platform.

6. Appointlet

Price: Free, $8/month (Premium)

This appointment booking software allows salespeople to customize their availability, create booking pages, and send them to prospects and customers. The booking page can integrate into your website, landing pages, and emails. While Appointlet does offer a paid, pricing tier, it’s free version is free forever. It includes unlimited bookings, meeting types, and form fields.

7. Doodle

Price: Free, $4.48/month (Starter), $5.99/month (Pro), $30/month (Team), and enterprise solutions available with consultation

The free version of Doodle allows you to create meeting polls to send to clients and prospects. Just like the paid version, meeting hosts suggest meeting dates and times, and invitees vote on the dates that work for them. To remove ads from your polls, set a deadline for the poll, and collect contact information from meeting guests, you’ll need to upgrade to the premium pricing tier.

The paid version of Doodle’s scheduling software helps you find a time to meet that works for all attendees. The meeting host suggests meeting times, invite participants to indicate their availability, then the meeting host picks a final time. When the time is finalized, a calendar event is added to the host and meeting invitees’ calendars. Plus, there’s a dashboard feature where you can manage all the meetings you have.

8. Calendly

Price: Free (Basic), $8 per user/month (Premium), $12 per user/month (Pro)

The free version of Calendly allows you to book unlimited meetings, connect your calendar, create a custom Calendly link, and send out automatic notifications and reminders to invitees. With the free plan, you are limited to one type of meeting.

The paid version of Calendly provides multiple meeting types like one-on-one, round-robin, collective, and group meetings. It’s great for teams and provides team pages, metrics and reporting, and administrative features to manage bookings.

9. Arrangr

Price: Free (Basic), $10/month (Pro)

Arrangr is an intelligent scheduling platform that allows users to book a meeting in under 30 seconds. In addition to helping users find the best agreed upon time to meet, Arrangr seeks to prevent all meeting miscommunication by letting contacts determine places and ways to meet all within the platform. Bonus: Arrangr is a part of the HubSpot ecosystem, so you can launch and send invitations to contacts from directly within HubSpot.

10. Meetingbird

Price: Free

Meetingbird offers a clean and intuitive meeting scheduling experience for your users. You can customize based on your unique needs with timezon detection, group scheduling, and synced calendars. Best of all, it integrates with Gmail, Zoom, and more so you can do your best work on the platforms you feel most comfortable with.

11. Rallly

Price: Free

Rallly (with three Ls) is a appointment scheduler with classic polling functionality where the members of your group can vote on the best times for the meeting or event. It also allows folks to discuss details within the interface.

12. Woven

Price: Free (Basic), $15/month (Premium)

Woven allows you to sync all of your calendars to get a complete picture of your availability. Its scheduling features are extensive, including a poller, scheduling links, and availability sharing.

13. Zoom.ai

Price: Free (Basic), $15/mo (Professional), $25/mo (Team)

Zoom.ai offers all the common meeting scheduler features such as scheduling links and internal group scheduling. However, its advantage is the powerful connections it has with your tech stack and its notification system and smart time settings for meeting buffers.

Paid Scheduling Apps

Ready for more advanced features? Check out these paid options. Each tool includes the following features:

• Meeting scheduling tool that can be viewed, managed, and edited by multiple users and administrators
• Multiple calendar views
• Contact information can be gathered from those who book meetings
• Booking and appointment notifications

14. Acuity Scheduling

Price: $0/month for 1 user (Freebie), $14/month for 1 calendar (Emerging), $23/month for 6 calendars (Growing), $45/month for 36 calendars (Powerhouse)

Acuity Scheduling makes it easy to book appointments with clients and prospects. It’s an online assistant where prospects, customers, and clients can see your real-time availability and book their own appointments. The tool allows you to send customized confirmations that reflect your branding. And appointment reminders and follow-up messages can be sent via email or text message.

15. YouCanBook.me

Price: $10/calendar/month

Connect your Google Calendar or iCloud calendar to set your availability to create a booking grid and start booking meetings. Share the booking grid on your website, Facebook page, or via email. Add custom styling, use unlimited fields, and manage your bookings using advanced tools.

16. HoneyBook

Price: $34/month, billed annually at $400

HoneyBook allows you to manage bookings throughout the entire sales process. You can book initial meetings with prospects and even send proposals, contracts, and invoices when they’re ready. It helps you manage your clients and HoneyBook integrates with other tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, and more.

17. Bookeo Appointments

Price: $14.95/month (Solo), $29.95/month (Small), $39.95/month (Standard), $79.95/month (Large)

If you’re looking for a tool that provides appointment setting and advanced tracking for how your meeting contacts move through your sales pipeline, Bookeo Appointments is the tool for you. This platform automatically updates your schedule in real-time for optimal booking and integrates directly with HubSpot to keep your contact list up-to-date based on booking reservations.

18. ScheduleOnce

Price: $15/month (up to three users), $10 per user/month (four to 100 users)

ScheduleOnce is a comprehensive tool that allows you to create nearly any scheduling scenario you can think of. Everything from group sessions to one-on-one calls, to in-person meetings, can be booked through ScheduleOnce. You can also directly connect ScheduleOnce with your website, email provider, and payment system.

Forget the back-and-forth and choose the meeting scheduler that makes the most sense for your situation. Using scheduling and booking software can save so much time, increasing your productivity on the tasks that actually matter.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.