WP Simple Booking Calendar vs BookingPress: Which is Better for Availability?

Showing available and unavailable times in the calendar on WordPress is hardly a complex task. WP Simple Booking Calendar and BookingPress are two fantastic alternatives that can assist you here. These are freemium WordPress plugins that are very popular tools – but if you need to choose just one, where should you look?

This detailed WP Simple Booking Calendar vs BookingPress comparison is made to give you all the answers!

WP Simple Booking Calendar vs BookingPress: The Main Function

How do these plugins work for those looking to manage their business time? Let’s first determine what these WordPress plugins let you create and manage when we talk about availability and services. 

WP Simple Booking Calendar:

• Primarily allows you to build availability calendars for items or people.
• Ideal for vacation rentals and appointments on a daily basis.
• Admins manage availability to display it on the website page.
  

BookingPress:

• Powerful online appointment scheduling. Salons, clinics, and service providers extensively use this WordPress reservation and availability plugin.
• Allows users to book services directly, including payment integration and automated confirmations via email and SMS.
• Includes a calendar but focuses on complete booking management, not just availability display.

Availability Calendars, Forms & Slot Booking

As for the calendar UI, the plugins in our comparison also represent different approaches.

The UI and customization of the WP Simple Calendar is centered around:

• Tooltips and legends.
• Change legend position.
• Display multiple months.
• Change the first day of the week.
• Change the start month/year.
• Display a tooltip with info (you can enter info for each day).

As for BookingPress, the plugin makes it easy to alter fully how your wizard scheduler works and functions based on the key settings you make on the backend:

• Clickable time slots with extra options (e.g., recurring option booking).
• Add photos and descriptions for services and staff members.
• Customize the colors, font, and layout of the form.
• Rename field labels (date and time, service).
• Change the sequence of the scheduling steps.
• Show or hide booking steps.
• Show or hide the search bar.
• Enable external redirection to checkout.

Find other core scheduling features compared below:

Feature	WP Simple Booking Calendar	BookingPress
Slot booking	Admin-led	Client-led and admin-lad
Booking period	Daily	Hourly
Calendars	Classic color-coded availability calendars	Modern step-by-step booking wizard
Number of calendars	Unlimited in PRO	Unlimited in PRO
Sync availability to other sites	iCa sync setup available	No
Export and import data	Yes	Yes
Availability based on staff/user	Yes	Yes
Translation	Legend items and month names translated in over 30 languages	With translation plugins
Boost bookings	No	– Sell extras – Set special prices dynamically – Online tipping – Bundled packages – Service rating – Repeating bookings

Payment Integration: WP Simple Booking Calendar vs BookingPress

BookingPress boasts a huge list of 20+ various payment methods that work for a variety of world regions.

It makes it easy for any service and appointment business, in every corner of the world, to run smooth appointment scheduling.

So far, WP Simple Booking Calendar doesn’t offer any integrations to manage payments.

Payment Gateway	WP Simple Booking Calendar Pro	BookingPress Premium
Payment methods	No	Free, all plans: PayPal, Stripe, Square, Authorize.Net, Mollie, 2Checkout, Razorpay, Braintree, Klarna, Skrill, PayFast, PagSeguro, WorldPay, PayUMoney, Paystack, Paddle, Mercado Pago, ECPay, PayMongo, Airwallex
WooCommerce integration for payments	No	Free, all plans
Offline payment (no upfront payment/at the office)	No	Free, all plans
POS support for offline payments	No	Stripe POS
Deposits	No	Fixed & %
Discounts	No	Free, all plans
Taxes	No	Free, all plans
Invoices	No	Free, all plans
Gift cards	No	In Professional & Enterprise plans

Overall, BookingPress gives you appointment booking features that are necessary for businesses like hairdressers, coaches, and clinics that operate in many locations and have complex scheduling logic.

Integrations for More Tools

As a one-stop shop for scheduling and availability, the BookingPress WordPress plugin has developed many external integrations to connect more tools the easy way. For example, you can simplify email marketing or communication with clients when using integrations.

BookingPress has a nice selection of such:

• Send automated notifications upon bookings: SMS, WhatsApp.
• Email marketing: Mailchimp, Aweber, Omnisend.
• Calendar apps: Google Calendar, Outlook.
• Analytics and more functionality: ARMember, Zapier, Conversion Tracking.

WP Simple Booking Calendar doesn’t offer any external integrations except for the iCal event sync.

Cost of the Premium Version

It’s hard to compare the price-performance ratio here because, as you can conclude, these plugins deliver solutions for slightly different scenarios and use cases. If your case, however, finds either solution a way to go, it makes sense to compare the prices and the number of domains to install the plugins on. So, here we go:

BookingPress offers various premium packages:

• Standard (1 site) – $79
• Professional (3 sites) – $129
• Enterprise (up to 20 sites) – $249

WP Simple Booking Calendar 

• 1 website – $39
• 5 websites – $69
• Unlimited sites – $139

How Do Free Versions Compare?

So, which availability WordPress plugin can be a useful thing, even without initial costs? These are the main conclusions about their free versions:

1. The free version of the WP Simple Booking Calendar offers just one availability calendar; a free BookingPress version allows you to sell unlimited services, thus, you can have unlimited availability calendars.
2. BookingPress offers payments for bookings with PayPal and on-site payments, but neither version of the WP Simple Booking Calendar plugin does it.
3. As for the necessary features, WP Simple Booking Calendar blocks iCal sync in the free version, while BookingPress limits payment gateways and service upselling features. 

Conclusion and Verdict: WP Simple Booking Calendar vs BookingPress

After you’ve read this WP Simple Booking Calendar vs BookingPress comparison, what are the key things that you need to know?

The fundamental difference in WP Simple Booking Calendar vs BookingPress is that the former is just an availability calendar, while the latter is a booking functionality with payment integration on top of the availability display.

Next, BookingPress works with hourly periods (appointments and services), while its competitor focuses on daily rentals (hotels, halls, events, and various accommodations). That’s why WP Simple Booking Calendar is better suited to use cases as vacation rental owners who need to manage occupancy, while BookingPress will assist you in displaying appointment slots and enable event organizers to showcase ticket availability. Hence, for example, the functionality in WP Simple Booking Calendar that is not present in BookingPress – iCal sync to external platforms to make available slots always accurate and avoid overbooking. The same applies to features you find in BookingPress – many of them are simply ignored in the WP Simple Booking Calendar competitor.

At the same time, both plugins can show whether the rental item/person is available and support coworking spaces in tracking desk or room reservations (in terms of the available rental period).

So, choose WP Simple Booking Calendar if all you need is a simple availability display with optional iCal syncing to third-party sites. Opt for BookingPress if you need to manage staff availability, sell time slots, and handle multiple bookings and services.

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