The Best Booking Website Builder for Online Appointments

Offering online bookings is a must for businesses like salons, restaurants, and clinics. It’s also important if you provide professional services, like consultancy and coaching. Clients can easily check your available slots and make an appointment, without having to call your office. 

With the right tool, you can create a website with efficient booking functionality. This will enhance the customer experience, potentially resulting in more appointments for your business. 

In this post, we’ll look at the top website builders for businesses that take online bookings. We’ll then show you how to get started with one of these tools. Let’s dive right in!

The Best Website Builders for Online Bookings (3 Options)

Whether you run a bustling restaurant or a growing fitness studio, having a powerful booking system can help you attract new clients and retain existing ones. 

It enables them to book an appointment at their own convenience. They won’t need to find the time to write an email or try to reach you during office hours. 

This will also be beneficial for your business operations. It reduces manual scheduling, and you can minimize no-shows with automated reminders. 

So, let’s look at the best booking website builders. 

1. HeroBuilder

HeroBuilder is an AI website builder by NameHero. You can use it to create any type of site and accept bookings:

HeroBuilder creates your professional website in WordPress, which is the most popular content management system (CMS). If you’re short on time or have no design skills, you’ll be pleased to learn that HeroBuilder can generate an entire website for you.

You’ll just need to provide some information about your business and specify your preferences for the site. Then, HeroBuilder will create a website that includes the booking plugin Simply Schedule Appointments:

With the free version of this plugin, you’ll have access to the following features:

• Unlimited booking calendars
• Customizable booking forms
• Advanced scheduling options and blackout dates
• Email notifications for customers

You can use HeroBuilder for free for four days. Then, you’ll need to purchase a premium plan to unlock full access to your website. 

With an AI HeroBuilder plan, your website will be hosted on NameHero’s secure servers. Plus. you’ll be able to connect your site to a custom domain name and create email accounts for your business. 

2. Squarespace

Squarespace is a renowned platform known for its stunning and professionally designed templates. While it’s often associated with creative portfolios and online shops, it’s also an excellent choice for websites that need an online booking solution.

Squarespace has its own scheduling software that you can use for classes, appointments, and virtual or in-person sessions:

If you offer classes, you can set size limits (for group sessions) and add registration forms to gather information about each attendee. 

You’ll also get access to comprehensive calendar settings. For instance, you’ll be able to add daily booking limits and set scheduling rules to minimize unwanted gaps between appointments. 

Squarespace lets you send automated confirmation and reminder texts. You can also manage clients and appointments and track your calendar from the mobile app.

When it comes to payments, Squarespace gives you several options. You can use Stripe, Square, or PayPal, collect deposits at booking, and accept payments in person. 

Finally, it helps you encourage bulk appointments with packages and make recurring revenue through subscriptions. You can also offer gift cards, which is ideal if you have a beauty clinic or a spa. 

3. Wix

Like Squarespace, Wix is a flexible website builder with a dedicated booking feature. Its scheduling software enables you to manage your bookings, payments, clients, reminders, and more, all from the same place:

With Wix, you can display your services alongside a timetable, so visitors will be able to see your availability or class schedules. You can even collect client information with custom booking forms, and offer waitlists for popular services. 

Wix also provides easy calendar management. You can set default business hours, adjust bookings for different time zones, create booking rules, and more. 

When you create a website with Wix, you’ll be able to accept payments in more than 40 currencies. The website builder supports PayPal, Stripe, Alipay, and many other payment providers. It also integrates with popular accounting tools like QuickBooks.

How to Create a Website that Accepts Online Bookings

If you want ease of use and full customization control, HeroBuilder is the best booking website builder. 

With this tool, you’ll get a fully functional, AI-generated website within minutes. You’ll then be able to edit your pages, add more features, and start accepting online bookings straightaway.

Step 1: Create a HeroBuilder account

To get started, sign up for a free HeroBuilder account. You won’t need to provide any payment details, and you can upgrade to a premium plan once your four-day trial is over. 

HeroBuilder will ask you to provide some information about your website and business. This will enable it to create a site that’s tailored to your needs and preferences.

First, you’ll want to provide a name for your site and enter a description. Let HeroBuilder know that you want to accept online bookings through your website:

After that, you’ll need to select your goals for the website. Make sure that Get appointments is one of them:

Next, choose between a multi-page or single-page site:

HeroBuilder will now generate a selection of beautiful designs, based on your niche and preferences:

Choose your favorite design, then select the pages you want to include in your website. As you can see, HeroBuilder has created a booking page for you: 

Once you’re ready, HeroBuilder will build your website in WordPress. You’ll be able to edit it with the user-friendly Site Editor.

Step 2: Customize Your Website

HeroBuilder will open your homepage in the WordPress Site Editor. Here, you can click on any block on the page, like the heading or call-to-action button, and customize it:

You can also add, rearrange, and remove blocks as you see fit. 

If you want to change your site colors and typography, select the Styles tab and configure your preferences. For instance, you might use a different font for all headings on your website, and add another color for buttons. 

Save your changes, and click on the WordPress logo in the top left corner to navigate to the admin dashboard.

Here, go to the Pages tab and choose a page that you want to edit:

WordPress will open your page in the Block Editor, which is very similar to the Site Editor. Once again, you can edit, remove, and rearrange any blocks on the page:

HeroBuilder comes with an AI assistant that helps you create paragraphs, posts, headlines, and more. Simply enter your prompt within the Block Editor:

As you can see, there are many blocks and features in the Block Editor, so take some time to familiarize yourself with them.

Step 3: Configure Your Booking System

Now, let’s set up the booking system. HeroBuilder installs Simply Schedule Appointments on your site, which you can access by navigating to the Appointments tab in your WordPress dashboard.

This will take you to the plugin’s setup wizard:

First, you’ll need to confirm your timezone, date format, and contact details. You can then set up your first appointment type:

For instance, you’ll want to specify the duration of that appointment, the start times and availabilities, the number of bookings per day, and more:

You can also select the customer details that are required for the booking to be successfully processed:

When you’re done, you can create another appointment type or configure more settings for your bookings. For example, you can set up email notifications for your clients, add blackout dates, enable calendar events, and more:

Simply Schedule Appointments also lets you view and manage upcoming appointments, and add manual bookings:

Remember that you need to add the booking form to your site. To do this, open the page where you want to display the form and add the Appointment Booking Form block:

Then, use the settings on the right to select the appointment type and edit the design of the form:

Note that to accept payments through your booking form, you’ll need to upgrade to the pro version of Simply Schedule Appointments. The plugin supports payments via PayPal and Stripe. 

Conclusion

HeroBuilder is a powerful AI builder that will generate a website for you within minutes, complete with booking functionality. Your site will be built in WordPress and you’ll have access to a booking plugin that includes features like unlimited appointment calendars, customizable email notifications, blackout dates, and more.

To recap, here’s how to create a website that accepts online bookings:

• Create a HeroBuilder account and provide some details about your business.
• Customize your website in the WordPress Site Editor and Block Editor.
• Configure your booking settings and rules with Simply Schedule Appointments

Do you have any questions about using HeroBuilder for your website? Let us know in the comments section below!