SimplyBook.me Reviews

It was easy to setup a service and calendar. It seemed like the integrations were also easy to manage.

It was not clear that each choice of integration was extra cost. Once the trial ended, I was on the ultra plan with only 6 or 7 choices from the basic. Difficult to strip down to basic. Website was challenging to customize.

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

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.

It was very easy to set up an embed on our website to allow our customers to book auto detailing appointments with SimplyBook.me, and manage and cancel their appointments themselves. It's far better than customers having to call in and speak to our manager to manually find and schedule times and write down that information, then having to contact the manager again if they need to make changes, reschedule, etc.

It's not as easy as it should be to set up a customized schedule, such as only allowing a certain number of specific services during specific time periods each day (for example, 3 full details OR 2 full details and 2 express services OR 1 full detail and 5 express services).

Their customer service is fast and polite. Their app is easy and simple to use. Their widget is easy to implement to a website. I can cancel, reschedule and book appointments fast and easily through the app. Its affordable. It syncs to my calendar. Its highly
Customizable without being overwhelming and theyre constantly improving the app.

Clients like the website version better than the mobile version. I dont like that the mobile version is annoying about logging you out so easily.

The customization aspect of everything. Although setup can be confusing, once you get past that, being able to customize it is very beneficial.

Customer Service. We were in need of specific help regarding the email platform before we switched to google and they were not very helpful. Plus, it's only through chat unless you pay for help which as a loyal client, I believe should be complimentary when needed.

I still feel like there are even great opportunities for a better end-user experience and have made some suggestions without further movement.

Best scheduling software for a recording studio out there. I've tested over 40 other booking software's and Simpybook is by far the best for a mult-location, multi-calendar, multi-staff, multi-user, etc option.

Calendar view could be easier to read & sort.

The calendar with different colours for different practitioners makes it easy to see when people have appointments. We loved that we could customise our website widget to make it on brand, and that this software gives the option for customers to add promo codes, as most others in this field do not allow this. The SOAP note feature is paramount to us as a physio clinic, and the whole system is very secure.

We need an option to attach files to our client notes, as we are a physio clinic so often have patient letters/referrals that we currently need to store elsewhere. Also, the analysis of the data is helpful but you are unable to assess how many sessions each client has had on the export option, which makes reviewing marketing efforts a bit of a nightmare. The calendar view would benefit from having a weekly view with each service providers timetable more clearly, as this can create problems for us too!

I like that you can add on features and that it integrates with WordPress. Also, we took a pretty long break due to the pandemic, but when I logged in five months later, all of my data was there, waiting for me. We have multiple income streams from finished pottery and bisque ceramics, as well as from instruction and studio rental. We use Simply Book Me for booking studio sessions. It is nice because we can control how many sessions can be booked at the same time and the customer can choose to pay via the booking site or at the session. I am excited to see that we can promote related products as well.

One downside is paying a monthly or yearly fee for something you may only use intermittently. However, the price is affordable enough that it is painless to absorb the cost into product pricing and much cheaper for us and the customer than other scheduling and/or event services.

The flow and feel of this platform, for both the administrator as well as the user, is a bit awkward. I would prefer a more modern polish to the interface, similar to other event and scheduling software. The user interface is styled similar to WordPress, but it is less intuitive. The same goes for making appointments. It takes a bit to really understand how to use it. I find that I have to do a little hand-holding with my customers. This fits with our brand, so it isn't a deal-breaker, but nonetheless worth noting.

The interface for setting up was intuitive and quick to master. There were plenty of features to cover most use-cases especially payment options for international operations such as South Africa is supported.

I did not like that I had to pay for setting up a custom domain (to link one I already own - ostensibly for SSL which doesn't make sense since this could be free or included in subscription fee) and more options are needed for managing late bookings or adding bookings to a waiting list.

Love the ease for our clients to book and it has a built in website. It integrates with square and very affordable. The websites are beautiful not very customizable but you can manage.

Very confusing! Because majority of the major features that anyone would need counts as custom feature, its so difficult to find what you need. There are settings under Welcome, Manage, Custom features, and settings. Honestly, been using this site for 6months or more and still don't know where all settings and features are, so just click click click away til you find it. Sometimes, you would have to look deeper. Example, for time schedules. OMG, ,good luck! Good thing is c\they have the best customer service on chat 24/7 so you would just have to chat with them and they'll give you a link. God bless them! Another con would be the reports! REPORTS is key guys! Reports are our roadmap! Can we get a report for all the deposits? or just add deposit column to the booking details. Lastly, marketing, you're limited if you want to get on Google's 1st page without ads.

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.

The unlimited number of service providers and services.

1) The limitation of a single company time zone. This does not work for decentralized teams working out of multiple locations. Some of us use the calendar integration as a work-around, but having to localize our availability is a huge headache.
2) I have used the pop up box on the Simplybook website to engage the "almost 24/7 support" a number of times. There is never anyone on chat, so I end up sending an email message. To date, I have not gotten a single response.