Acuity Scheduling vs Zoho Bookings

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.

Zoho Bookings is an online appointment scheduling app from Zoho, the Indian software company headquartered in Chennai that makes the Zoho One suite. It gives individuals and teams booking pages where clients pick a time, pay if required and receive confirmations and reminders automatically.

It handles different meeting types: one-on-one, group bookings, collective meetings with several staff members and resource booking for rooms or equipment. Staff availability, buffer times, working hours across locations and multiple time zones are configurable. Payments run through Stripe, PayPal and other gateways, and video meetings can be created in Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or Zoho Meeting. The deepest value is in the Zoho ecosystem: bookings sync with Zoho CRM as leads, contacts and events, and connect with other Zoho apps. A free plan supports one staff member; Basic and Premium are priced per staff member, and Zoho Bookings is also included in Zoho One.

Zoho Bookings fits Zoho CRM users and service businesses such as clinics, consultants and rental companies that want affordable scheduling with staff and resource management. The interface is busy, third-party integrations are fewer than Calendly's and support quality varies. Calendly is the polished default for sales teams, Acuity Scheduling suits service businesses with payments and intake forms, and Microsoft Bookings is included with many Microsoft 365 plans.