Good Value if You Dont Want the Bells and Whistles
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I use Bookafy to manage appointment setup with current and future clients. A lot of time can be wasted trading emails, texts, and checking calendars to set up a meeting. Bookafy helps save time by allowing the client to pick a convenient time for them at any point during their day without having to wait for our answer. Bookafy also helps me control when I can meet with clients and when I focus on work by limiting availability. Since it allows me to synchronize with multiple calendars at once, I don't have to worry about overlapping with personal meetings or medical appointments. Bookafy also lets me assign meetings to a specific user, which allows me to delegate better.
Pros
- Calendar synchronization
- Payment collection
- Booking page is intuitive
- Covers core scheduling needs of a business
Cons
- Embedding specific meetings on a website is not clearly visible and limited in customization options. Someone with HTML knowledge could handle it all but most business owners don't have that knowledge. Also, when it embeds, it's not as responsive and it seems very crowded
- It doesn't have the ability to have private meetings accessible to customers. This means that I can't have a hidden meeting scheduler that I sent only to my VIP clients as a special bonus. I have to make the meeting public for it to allow someone to book. All competitors of Bookafy have this feature
- Personally, I don't understand why the meeting types and setup are inside the "Account Settings" area. To me, the creation of meetings and their setup should be a front and center menu
- I find the user interface outdated and clunky. Feels like a collection of embedded tables rather than sections and rows. Somehow the look affects how intuitive I perceive the back-office of the platform. It reminds me of 1990s website designs... Not visually appealing and crowded screens
Most Important Features
- Calendar sync
- Zoom integration
- Straight forward booking process
Return on Investment
- I ended up trying Bookafy thanks to a lifetime deal so the savings on subscription payments is great
- It has saved me countless hours of back and forth trying to setup a meeting with someone
- Automatic time blocking on my calendar and spacing of meetings have saved me from tardiness and not having time to eat.
Alternatives Considered
Calendly, Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company and MeetFox
Other Software Used
Evernote, Trello, Systeme.io
