Zoho Bookings Review 2024 – Is It the Right Choice for You?

Main Zoho Bookings Features

Here is a rundown of the vital features Zoho Bookings has in store for its users:

• Calendar Sync
• Client Database
• Admin Access
• Online Bookings
• Multi-location bookings
• Recurring Appointments
• Automatic scheduling
• Online Meetings via Zoom and Zoho Meeting
• Notifications and reminders
• Room Booking
• Time-off management
• Mobile access
• CRM Update
• Zoho Integrations
• Third-party integrations via Zapier

The features are well-balanced and serve various types of users. While many may find the Zoho Bookings features excessive and unnecessary, other business owners find the features impressive and immensely useful. Zoho Bookings provides solutions for sales teams, recruitment, accountants, podcasts, career consultation, and meetings.

Zoho Bookings allows multi-location scheduling, which helps businesses with several locations that wish to run a single scheduling platform. There are customizable features so each user can adjust the platform as they need it. The notifications have custom fields so each business owner can add their brand and adjust these as necessary. The time-off management and special hours tracking enable better employee scheduling and keeping track of your employees.

Zoho Bookings Price Plans

Zoho Bookings has one free and two paid plans, all with different features:

• Forever Free – $0/1 staff – online meetings, notification emails, two-way calendar sync, Zoho, Google, Office365/Outlook.com
• Basic – $6/staff/month – everything from free plan, plus one-on-one service booking, online meetings, customizable emails, reports on appointments and staff, Zapier integrations, automatic time zone conversion for customers, brand color palette, custom fields in booking forms, third-party integrations, mobile apps for staff/admins
• Premium – $9/staff/month – everything from the Basic plan, plus online payments, Zoho CRM sync, three workspaces included, portal sign-up for customers, booking page hosted in your domain, recurring group events, resource booking, reports on revenue, customizable text notifications, Zoho Assist integration

If you opt for the yearly subscription, Zoho Bookings comes at a 25% discount, and you’ll get the Basic plan for $6/staff/month and the premium plan for $9/staff/month. Also, the adding of workspaces will cost you $12/month.

All the plans include unlimited customers, one-on-one service bookings, online meetings via Zoom and Zoho Meeting, online bookings, manual bookings, canceling and rescheduling, two-way calendar sync, automatic notifications, reminder, and cancelation emails, mobile app for admins and staff, notes on bookings, adding custom fields to booking forms, admin privileges, and a mobile-responsive booking page.

To test the features of the Zoho Booking plans, you can use the 15-day free trial of the Premium plan. During this period, you can test all the features and see how the Zoho Bookings features work for your business. After the free plan ends, you can continue with the forever free plan or upgrade to a paid plan. The thing to note here is that Zoho Bookings will keep your data should you change your mind in the future.

To see the differences in plans, I’ve prepared the following table comparing the features of the most popular price plans of some of the most notable online scheduling apps:

Zoho Bookings Compared To Its Main Competitors

To compare the features of Zoho Bookings against its competitors, we’ll use Acuity Scheduling, Setmore, and FindMyShift. These come with free plans with features to suit very small businesses or freelancers with simple scheduling needs.

Compared to Acuity Scheduling, Zoho Bookings has a more specific feature set at a lower price. Zoho Bookings is a part of the Zoho platform, and the integrations with the rest of the Zoho apps are seamless. Zoho Bookings supports client scheduling and employee scheduling, as do Setmore and FIndMyShift.

I’ve tested all of these and found that all offer very similar features and have similar prices, so it comes down to personal preference which one you’ll select. In the table below, I’ve made a side-by-side comparison and rated the most common criteria:

Zoho Bookings User Experience

Zoho Bookings, like the other Zoho apps, has a very smooth user experience. The platform is very elegantly designed, and every vital link is easily visible and readily accessible. The main dashboard has links to the calendar, reports, customers, and user profiles.

To help better discern between the different appointments, users can add notes and use color-coding. The customer profiles hold all the client’s basic information and custom notes for each different appointment type. The team scheduling feature allows customers to choose a particular staff member. It also enables tracking time-off, vacation time, and days off for your employees.

Zoho Bookings provides three types of booking pages: staff, service, and workspace. The templates are customizable; the booking pages can be embedded into your website under your domain to improve user experience. Zoho Bookings allows customizable notifications via email and text.

Zoho Bookings Integrations

Zoho Bookings supports plenty of integrations with different apps. It integrates with all the Zoho apps, as well as many third-party apps, and over 2000 other apps via Zapier:

Zoho Apps Integrations:

• CRM
• Meeting
• Sites
• Calendar
• Assist
• Flow

Calendars:

• Google
• Microsoft Office 365
• Zoho Calendars

Online Payments:

• PayPal
• Stripe
• Authorize.net
• Razorpay

CRM, Marketing and Support

• Zoho CRM
• Zoho Sites
• Hubspot
• Salesforce
• Mailchimp
• ClickSend

Online Meetings

• Zoho Meeting
• Zoom
• Google Meet
• GoToMeeting

Team Chat

• Zoho Cliq
• Microsoft Teams
• Slack

Customer Support

As a part of the Zoho platform, Zoho Bookings uses the same customer support as the other Zoho apps. It means that Zoho Bookings users will get the same high-quality customer support Zoho Books, Zoho People, and the other Zoho services.

The customer support team is available via email, phone, and live chat. The support agents are knowledgeable and helpful in solving all client inquiries. Apart from the customer support agents, Zoho Bookings also provides a help center, knowledge base, FAQ section, community portal, and a forum.

Conclusion

Zoho Bookings is a cloud-based online booking and scheduling platform, part of the numerous Zoho family of apps. The platform is well-designed, with features to suit small businesses from different industries like professional services, education, personal care, fitness, wellness, healthcare, home services, real estate, and other similar industries.

There are three price plans – one free and two paid plans with well-rounded, balanced built-in features and plenty of third-party integrations to support small businesses, sole proprietors, freelancers, and entrepreneurs. The main emphasis is on client self-service, where the clients see the available openings and make an appointment sited to both sides.

It helps businesses in many ways; for example, sales teams can make better sales, support teams can manage more problems, and in-app payments significantly reduce no-shows. From everything I’ve learned about this platform, I’ll state that Zoho Bookings is a user-friendly online bookings app that can improve the everyday dealings of many small businesses.