Acuity Scheduling vs SimplyBook.me

Acuity Scheduling is an online appointment booking tool for service businesses. It was founded by Gavin Zuchlinski and acquired by Squarespace in 2019, and it is also sold inside Squarespace as Squarespace Scheduling. Clients pick a service, a staff member and a time from a booking page, fill in intake forms, pay a deposit or the full price, and receive email and SMS reminders, while the business manages availability, buffers and booking rules per staff member and location.

Beyond basic booking, Acuity handles the commercial side of appointments: packages, gift certificates, memberships and subscriptions, coupons, and payments through Stripe, Square or PayPal. Intake forms support conditional questions, which matters for clinics, therapists and coaches. Plans are tiered by the number of staff calendars: Starter (formerly Emerging) covers one, Standard (formerly Growing) up to six and Premium (formerly Powerhouse) up to 36 with multiple locations. There is a free trial but no permanent free plan.

Acuity fits salons, spas, therapists, tutors, fitness studios and consultants who sell time to individual clients. It is less suited to B2B sales teams that need round-robin routing and CRM enrichment, where Calendly or Chili Piper are stronger. Compared with Square Appointments it is more flexible on forms and packages, and compared with SimplyBook.me it offers a cleaner client experience, though its admin interface feels dated in places and SMS reminders have limits.

SimplyBook.me is an online appointment booking system for service businesses such as salons, clinics, fitness studios, tutors and consultancies. It started in Iceland in 2009 as a local project to move service bookings online, and SimplyBook.me Ltd is now headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus, with offices in Iceland and Ukraine. Its core job is to give a business a mobile-friendly booking page and widget so clients can pick a service, provider and time slot and pay without a phone call.

The admin side covers calendars for several providers and locations, automatic email and SMS reminders, intake forms and client records. Optional custom features add packages, memberships, gift cards, coupons, waiting lists, tips and a point-of-sale module with Tap to Pay. Plans are priced in euros and capped by monthly bookings: the free plan covers 50 bookings and one provider, while Basic, Standard and Premium raise booking limits, providers and the number of custom features you can switch on.

It fits small and mid-sized service businesses that want booking, payments and light POS in one subscription. The admin interface is dense, the feature toggles take time to learn, and booking caps push busy studios up the tiers quickly. Calendly suits meeting scheduling for knowledge workers better, Acuity Scheduling is simpler for solo practitioners, and Setmore is easier for small teams that only need a calendar.

Buying tip: count your monthly bookings before picking a tier, because SMS credits, a custom domain and your own SMS gateway are sold separately.