Bookly vs BookingPress: Here’s How They Compare (2025 Review)

Bookly vs BookingPress – which one takes the lead in WordPress in 2025? In our side-by-side comparison of some of the best booking plugins, you are about to discover the most important differences and similarities, pros and cons of both tools, and whether the features and experiences offered are enough for your scheduling scenario.

Let’s break our Bookly vs BookingPress comparison down into the most significant areas of exploration, starting from the actual user experience and continuing with integrations and payment options. Of course, we’ll mention prices to understand which plugin is worth every penny.

Appointment Scheduling Form

The scheduling forms that you can easily place on your WordPress site with either plugin are in essence user-friendly step-by-step booking forms. Both offer smooth, animated, mobile-friendly experiences. 

Scheduling with BookingPress

What exactly can you customize in the BookingPress form?

• Colors.
• Core field labels (date and time, service).
• The sequence of the steps.
• Show or hide booking steps.
• Font.
• Price and button text.
• Show or hide a booking wizard tab.
• Show or hide the search bar.
• Enable external redirection to checkout.
• Attach files.

What are the advanced options of the scheduling form?

With services of flexible durations, e.g. massage or tutoring, you can enable customers to choose the length of the appointment. Clients can also schedule appointments for multiple people at a time by employing the Multiple Quantity add-on (default functionality).

Another top useful option is integrating waiting lists – when all the slots are booked, a customer can still offer themselves to be added to the waitlist directly through the booking form. If you want to offer repeating appointments to customers, you can customize the services to be offered with this option.

All these adjustments are easily integrated into BookingPress, so you can build a truly powerful scheduling.

How to add a form to WordPress?

Easy as a pie, there is a widget for most popular page builders, like Elementor, and you can place a form or shortcode with drag and drop.

Scheduling with the Bookly plugin

Bookly forms are smooth and user-friendly, and they are totally under your control.

How can you customize Bookly forms?

• Choose from various booking form designs.
• Enable or disable specific steps (e.g., payment, extras, recurring bookings).
• Show, hide, or add custom fields.
• Adjust form colors.
• Customize the text to fit your messaging.

What are advanced features in Bookly?

• Attach files to the booking form.
• Add custom fields ($18/year).
• Add special days to the staff schedule.

How to add a form to WordPress with Bookly?

In the default WordPress block editor (Gutenberg).

Staff, Services & Locations

Both Bookly and BookingPress plugins are very powerful for building unlimited lists of services and appointments you need to sell, and staff members you can assign as performers of these services.

To accelerate and ease the workflow for service providers, both booking plugins enable staff accounts, where every member can work only with their schedule and appointments.

BookingPress has a feature-diverse staff cabinet with tons of productivity and workflow options, e.g. creating and sending a custom direct booking link to a client.

However, while this is a free option in BookingPress, Bookly charges you $39 for the Staff Cabinet extension, whereas your staff can create, approve, reschedule, or cancel appointments.

When we take multi-location businesses, such as chains of salons or clinics, BookingPress allows this capability with the Location module, accessible in Professional & Enterprise plans. It makes it easy to customize your services based on different locations and allows the location selection in the booking form. Every service can be customized to be shown with the image and description in the booking form.

Using the Bookly plugin, you need to purchase an extra Bookly Location add-on ($39), which enables your operation in unlimited locations, including the usage of custom settings in different locations (setting specific service price and staff schedule).

Both plugins allow you to customize services in various ways to maximize their sales – from packaging them in discounted bundles to adjusting dynamic prices based on different conditions.

Bookly vs BookingPress: Accepting Payments

Monetizing your time-based booking business is easier when you can collect payment in advance, filling out time slots faster and securing an appointment or place for your client. Bookly and BookingPress have a lot to offer in this area – from a great number of various payment integrations to powerful recording, billing, and upselling opportunities. We’re comparing central features below.

Payment Gateway	Bookly Premium	BookingPress Premium
PayPal	Paid add-on $29	Free, all plans
Stripe	Paid add-on $39 or free in Bookly Cloud Product	Free, all plans
Square	In Bookly Cloud	Free, all plans
Authorize.Net	Paid add-on $29	Free, all plans
Mollie	Paid add-on $34	Free, all plans
2Checkout	Paid add-on $29	Free, all plans
Razorpay	–	Free, all plans
Braintree	–	Free, all plans
Klarna	–	Free, all plans
Skrill	–	Free, all plans
PayFast	–	Free, all plans
PagSeguro	–	Free, all plans
WordPay	–	Free, all plans
PayUMoney	–	Free, all plans
Paystack	–	Free, all plans
Paddle	–	Free, all plans
Mercado Pago	–	Free, all plans
ECPay	–	Free, all plans
PayMongo	–	Free, all plans
Airwallex	–	Free, all plans
Payson	Paid add-on $29	–
PayUbiz	Paid add-on $29	–
WooCommerce integration for payments	Free	Free, all plans

BookingPress places a strong focus on worldwide payment acceptance, serving customers in Latin America, the Philippines, and many other regions, alongside more standardized options like Square or Stripe.

The vast number of add-ons are paid optional extensions in Bookly, but in BookingPress, you get access to ALL payment gateways for free even with the cheapest plan. Integration with the WooCommerce plugin, which allows for adding any lacking payment method, is easy to set up at no cost with both appointment-scheduling WordPress plugins.

Let’s look at other important payment processing capabilities too, for example, whether your service business can charge a deposit instead of the total booking cost before the appointment, and more.

Payment Features	Bookly Premium	BookingPress Premium
Offline payment (no upfront payment/at the office)	+	+
POS support for offline payments	–	Stripe POS
Monetary deposit payments	+	+
Deposit %	+	+
Discounts via coupons	Paid add-on $39	Free, all plans
Dynamic (conditional) discounts	Paid add-on $29	In Professional & Enterprise plans
Taxes	Paid add-on $39	Free, all plans
Invoices	Paid add-on $39	Free, all plans
Gift cards	In Bookly Cloud Products	In Professional & Enterprise plans

But we are talking about WordPress giants for scheduling here, therefore, those features in the table are far from all the powerhouses you can have.

Service upselling features of BookingPress:

• Automatically suggest and sell related services in the form (extras).
• Set the special price of the appointment depending on the hour of the day (In Professional & Enterprise plans).
• Allow online tipping – from customers to chosen staff members.
• Sell services in bundled packages.
• Make appointments recurring to maximize revenue.
• Add ratings and reviews to add more trust to services.

Payment advantages of Bookly

Bookly also offers similar upselling capabilities like ln BookingPress, but guess what, you need to pay for features you want to use:

• Selling service extras – $49
• Add a package discount – $29
• Recurring appointments – $39

Integrations with Extras Apps & Services

Integrations play a key role when you need a booking form connection to specific services. If the reservation plugin provides it, it means you can easily connect to third-party apps or platforms. Both plugins, naturally, provide integrations with such needed services as email marketing, calendars, and more.

BookingPress gives you multiple tools out of the box:

• Email marketing: Mailchimp, Aweber, Omnisend.
• Calendar apps: Google Calendar, Outlook.
• Notifications: SMS, WhatsApp.
• More: ARMember, Zapier, Conversion Tracking.

Bookly doesn’t lag behind – if you need any quick integration, you have (but as usual, for some extra cost). You’ll get access to:

• Outlook.
• Mailchimp.
• Google Maps.
• Advanced Google Calendar.
• SMS (Bookly Cloud Account).
• Whatsapp ( Bookly Cloud Account).

Overall, the selection of the software and apps you can connect is very well presented in both solutions, you can send automated emails and SMS for booking-related actions.

Who Steals the Show: Bookly vs BookingPress?

BookingPress vs. Bookly – what should you choose? We’re eager to visualize some of the key differences in the table below: 

Compared Features	Bookly	BookingPress
Premium core plugin cost	$99	Standard – $79Professional – $129Enterprise – $249
Free version	Available	Available
Payment gateways	2 free, 8+ paid add-ons	All free with any plan
Multiple business location	Paid add-on	Free
Staff cabinet to manage bookings	Paid add-on	Free
Edit and reschedule appointments	Yes	Yes
Booking forms	Fully customizable	Fully customizable
Email marketing tools integration	Paid add-ons	All free with any plan
Recurring appointment scheduling	Pad add-on $39	Free
Sell services in packages	Pad add-on $29	Included in Pro & Enterprise plans
POS integration	–	Stripe POS
Bookings statistics	Integrated	Integrated
WooCommerce connection to the booking form	Free	Free

There’s no doubt that we’re dealing with mature and powerful WordPress booking plugin alternatives here. BookingPress offers dozens more critical and advanced features for free, for example, location selection or individual accounts for staff members. There’s nothing wrong with Bookly charging for specific features – unless the list keeps growing and you want maximum capabilities. Then, the cost rises, and you start asking yourself: does that price make sense when I can get these features for free with alternative solutions?

Related articles:

• How to Show Your Availability Online in WordPress: 5 Options
• What Are the Best Appointment Booking Plugin Features
• How to Manage Bookings During Peak Demand and Maximize Revenue