The best appointment scheduling software for Australian small businesses

Each entry says who it suits best. Features and plans change, so check each vendor’s current plans before deciding.

1. Calenix: best all-in-one for service professionals. Booking pages, service and landing pages, digital business cards, email signatures, LinkDock and contact capture in one workspace. The free forever plan covers one booking type with unlimited 1-to-1 bookings; paid bookings, deposits and custom branding start on Individual, and team scheduling with round robin sits on Professionals. Reminders are sent by email.
2. Calendly: best for meeting-heavy professional services. A mature, widely recognised scheduling tool with a large integration ecosystem. Many clients have used a Calendly link before, which reduces friction. It’s a strong pick when most of your bookings are calls and video meetings rather than in-person services.
3. Setmore: best for staff-based appointment booking. Built around services and staff calendars, which suits small clinics, studios and salons that want a straightforward appointment book. Customers choose a service first, then a staff member and a time.
4. Square Appointments: best if you already use Square. Bookings connect with Square’s payments and point-of-sale tools, handy for businesses taking in-person payments. It makes most sense when Square already runs your counter.
5. Fresha: best for salons and spas. Designed for beauty and wellness, with a consumer marketplace that can bring in new customers. Salon-specific features such as staff rosters are central to how it works.
6. Cliniko: best for allied health practices. Australian-built practice management software covering bookings, clinical notes and invoicing, far beyond a scheduling tool. It’s widely used by physios, chiros, psychologists and other practitioners.
7. ServiceM8: best for tradies managing jobs. Australian-built job management with quoting, scheduling and invoicing for trades and field services. If most of your work is jobs rather than appointments, it’s worth a look.
8. Acuity Scheduling: best for detailed intake forms and packages. Owned by Squarespace, it’s known for flexible forms, packages and memberships.

If your shortlist is mostly meeting tools, our roundup of Calendly alternatives for small businesses goes further.

For a closer look at ServiceM8, Tradify, Simpro and Fergus alongside quote-visit booking, read our guide to scheduling software for Australian tradespeople. Consultants with interstate and international clients will find more detail in our guide to scheduling software for Australian consultants.

If you also serve customers across the Tasman, our shortlist of the best scheduling software for New Zealand small businesses covers NZ-built tools and NZ time zones.

A tool that works brilliantly in London or New York can still trip up an Australian business. We looked at six criteria.

Time-zone handling. With Queensland, WA and the NT staying on standard time while the southern states switch to daylight saving, correct time-zone handling isn’t optional. Every tool here supports time zones, but test how times appear to an interstate customer.

Mobile booking. Most customers book from a phone, so the booking page must be fast and simple on a small screen.

Payments. If you take deposits, check which payment providers each tool supports in Australia and whether amounts show in A$. Calenix processes paid bookings through third-party providers such as Stripe.

Reminders. Email reminders are standard. Some tools offer SMS as well, which may cost extra. Calenix sends email confirmations and reminders.

Privacy and data. Ask where data is stored and how it’s protected, especially if you handle health information under the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles.

Industry fit. Specialist tools such as Cliniko or ServiceM8 do far more for their industries than a general scheduler. A general tool is often simpler and more flexible. Our wider guide to booking software for service businesses explains that trade-off.

We didn’t rank on price, because plans change often. Compare current pricing on each vendor’s site, and factor in any add-ons you’d actually use.

Before you commit to a shortlist, work through our checklist of what to look for in online appointment booking in Australia, including the questions worth asking every vendor.

Take a fictional mobile dog groomer working across Perth’s northern suburbs. She works alone from a fitted van and takes about 25 bookings a week. Most customers message her on social media, and she spends evenings replying and juggling her diary.

Her must-haves are travel time between jobs, a deposit for first-time customers, questions about breed and temperament, and a booking page that works well on a phone. She doesn’t need a marketplace or point-of-sale hardware.

That rules out Cliniko and ServiceM8, which are built for other industries. Fresha and Square are strong, but she doesn’t want a marketplace and doesn’t use Square. She trials Setmore and Calenix side by side for a fortnight.

In Calenix, on the Individual plan, she creates event types for small, medium and large dogs with different durations, adds a 30-minute buffer for travel and drying the van, and asks two custom questions. First-time customers pay an illustrative A$25 deposit through Stripe. Her times are set to Australia/Perth, so the occasional customer who books while visiting from Sydney still sees the right time. She puts the booking link on her digital business card and in her social profiles.

She picks Calenix because she also wants a simple landing page and LinkDock for her links. If she had later hired three groomers and needed a staff-first appointment book, Setmore could have been the better fit. For a head-to-head view, see Calenix vs Setmore.