free scheduling software for small business

Square Appointments

Square Appointments is the booking half of Square's point-of-sale business, so its free tier is really a free calendar bolted to a card reader: you get an online booking site, unlimited staff calendars and automatic text and email reminders, and Square earns from card processing fees rather than a subscription. That makes it a natural fit for a barber, stylist or tattoo artist who already wants payments and bookings in one place. The trade-off is that the tools which protect a busy calendar (cancellation policies, no-show fees and multi-staff booking) sit on the paid Plus tier, and the monthly fee is charged for each location you run.

Setmore

Setmore is one of the few free booking pages that fits a small team rather than a single person: four staff members share unlimited appointments, a branded booking page and card payments without paying anything. It suits salons, studios and clinics that want customers booking themselves around the clock. The free plan is deliberately thin on follow-up, sending a single email reminder per appointment, and text reminders plus two-way calendar sync only arrive on the paid Pro plan.

SimplyBook.me

SimplyBook.me is built for service businesses that want more than a calendar: intake forms, memberships, classes, coupons and a client login are all switches you can turn on. The free plan is a working version of the product rather than a demo, but it is metered by volume, so a shop taking more than a couple of bookings a day will hit the ceiling inside a month. Reminder emails are automatic on every plan, while taking payments, deposits and tips starts on the cheapest paid tier.

Picktime

Picktime is a straightforward booking tool with an unusually roomy free tier: three team members, two locations, unlimited appointments and PayPal payments, all at no cost. It handles classes and bookable resources as well as one-to-one appointments, which makes it useful for studios and small clinics. The gap is follow-up and sync, because email reminders, text reminders, Stripe and Square payments and two-way calendar sync all begin on the paid Starter plan.

Zoho Bookings

Zoho Bookings is the scheduling app inside Zoho's wider business suite, so it is the obvious pick if you already run Zoho CRM, Mail or Meeting. The free tier is aimed squarely at a solo operator, covering one person with online meetings and automatic notification emails. Its pricing page does not print a dollar figure beside the paid tiers, which are charged per user, so you have to start a trial to find out what an upgrade actually costs.

Calendly

Calendly is the default answer for sharing a link that lets someone book time on your calendar, and its free tier is the most widely used free scheduling product there is. Free accounts are held to a single event type and one connected calendar, which is enough for a consultant offering one kind of meeting but not for a business with several services. Nearly everything a small business would reach for next, automated reminders, payment collection and more event types, starts on the paid Standard seat.

Cal.com

Cal.com is the open-source alternative to Calendly, and its free tier is noticeably less restricted: one user, but unlimited event types and calendars, email and text notifications, and Stripe or PayPal payments at no cost. Because the code is open, it can also be self-hosted, which matters to businesses with privacy or compliance requirements. Team features such as round-robin routing and shared availability are where the paid plans begin, charged per user.

Appointlet

Appointlet is a meeting-booking tool whose free tier gives you something unusual: five team members rather than one. The catch is a monthly meeting quota and a single scheduling page, so it fits a small sales or admissions team taking a modest number of calls rather than a busy service business. Automated reminders, payment collection and removing Appointlet's branding are all reserved for the paid plan, which is charged per member.

Homebase

Homebase is staff scheduling rather than client booking: you build a weekly rota, your team sees their shifts on a phone, and time tracking and timesheets come with it. The free Basic plan covers a real small business, up to ten employees at one location, which is why it is the tool most often suggested to independent cafes and shops. Worth knowing before you commit: automated shift reminders, availability and time-off requests and shift trading all sit on the paid Essentials tier, and the fee is charged for every location.

Sling

Sling, now part of Toast, is a shift scheduler whose free plan is the most generous on team size here, covering up to thirty users. Free accounts get scheduling, shift alarms, time-off requests, open shifts and internal messaging, which is most of what a small hourly team needs to run a rota. Time tracking and labor-cost tools are the reason to upgrade, and text-message shift alarms are a paid feature, so the free tier leans on in-app alerts.

Connecteam

Connecteam is an all-in-one app for teams without desks, bundling shift scheduling with a time clock, checklists, chat and training. Its free Small Business Plan is unusual in that it unlocks essentially the whole product for teams of up to ten, rather than stripping features out. Paid plans are quoted as a fixed price covering the first thirty users and a per-user rate above that, which keeps the bill predictable as a team grows.

Findmyshift

Findmyshift is a no-frills web rota for managers who think in spreadsheets, with drag-and-drop shift planning, timesheets and a free time clock. It charges per team rather than per employee, so the price does not climb every time you hire, and teams of five or fewer stay free permanently. The free tier's real constraint is time rather than features: it holds only a week of history and a week of forward planning, so anything longer needs a paid plan.