This is not a comparison of personal calendar apps. These four systems face the other direction: a public booking page your clients use, payment taken at booking, reminders, and tools for when someone cancels late or never shows up. We compare Acuity Scheduling, SimplyBook.me, Square Appointments and Setmore on the full monthly cost — subscription plus payment processing — not just the headline plan price.
Starter, billed annually ($20/mo monthly). No free plan — 7-day trial.
Basic, billed annually (€13.90 monthly). Free plan: 50 bookings a month.
Per location. Plus is $49/mo, Premium $149/mo. Processing fees apply on every plan.
Pro, per user, billed annually ($12/user/mo monthly). Free covers up to 4 users.
Plan prices are only half the bill. Every card payment also carries a processing fee, and that fee scales with your revenue while the subscription doesn't. To make the four comparable, here is one fixed model worked through with published rates only: 100 bookings a month, an average ticket of $60 ($6,000 processed), three staff, everything prepaid online at booking.
| Plan in the model | Subscription | Processing on $6,000 | Total / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setmore Pro (annual, 3 users) | $15 | $204 — Stripe US 2.9% + 30¢ × 100 | $219 |
| Square Free (all prepaid online) | $0 | $228 — 3.3% + 30¢ × 100 | $228 |
| SimplyBook.me Standard (annual) | €24.90 | $204 — via Stripe US 2.9% + 30¢ × 100 | ≈ $228.90 (mixed currency, see note) |
| Acuity Standard (annual) | $27 | $204 — via Stripe US 2.9% + 30¢ × 100 | $231 |
| Square Plus (all prepaid online) | $49 | $204 — 2.9% + 30¢ × 100 | $253 |
SimplyBook.me bills in euros on its European pricing; the total above adds its €24.90 plan to a USD processing figure for comparison only — your real total depends on your billing region and processor. Two lessons survive any currency: a $0 subscription is not a $0 system (Square Free still costs $228 here, all of it processing), and how clients pay changes the bill — if the same Square Free business took payment in person instead of prepaying online, processing drops to $171 (2.6% + 15¢), a $57 monthly difference. Prepayment is a no-show tool with a price tag; use it where it earns its keep, such as first visits and long appointments, rather than on every booking by default.
| Acuity Scheduling | SimplyBook.me | Square Appointments | Setmore | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Coaches, consultants and clinics that want intake forms, packages and firm payment rules | Classes, studios and multi-service businesses that want a booking website and many optional features | Salons and service shops that want booking and card payments in one account | Small teams that want a working free plan and the cheapest simple paid upgrade |
| How you're charged | Flat per account, by calendar count (1 / 6 / 36) | Flat per account, by monthly bookings (50 – 2,000) and providers (1 – 30) | Per location ($0 / $49 / $149) | Per user on Pro ($5 annual / $12 monthly); Free up to 4 users |
| Free option — and its real ceiling | None. 7-day trial only | Yes — but capped at 50 bookings/month, 1 provider, 1 custom feature, and no online payments | Yes — 1 location; bookings and staff calendars are not capped by count, but no-show fees need Plus | Yes — up to 4 users and 200 appointments/month on current pricing summaries; email reminders only, one-way calendar sync |
| Paid plans from | Starter $16/mo billed annually ($20 monthly) | Basic €11.90/mo billed annually (€13.90 monthly) | Plus $49/mo per location | Pro $5/user/mo billed annually ($12 monthly) |
| Payment processing (separate from subscription) | Via Stripe, Square or PayPal. Stripe US: 2.9% + 30¢ per online payment | Via Stripe, Square, PayPal and others; the processor's rate applies | Built in. In person: 2.6% + 15¢ (Free) down to 2.4% + 15¢ (Premium). Online: 3.3% + 30¢ (Free), 2.9% + 30¢ (paid) | Via Square, Stripe or PayPal; the processor's rate applies |
| Deposits & prepayment | Yes — fixed or percentage deposits, full prepayment, set per service | Yes — from Basic, as one of your limited custom features | Yes — deposits and prepayment on all plans, including Free | Yes — fixed or percentage deposits; you decide refunds case by case |
| Cancellation / no-show fees from a stored card | Yes — card on file can be charged under your policy | Policy and deposit rules are supported; stored-card fee charging depends on your payment setup — confirm before relying on it | Yes — on Plus and Premium (card-on-file rate 3.5% + 15¢ applies) | Deposit retention is supported; automatic fee charging from a stored card is not clearly documented in public materials |
| Reminders | Email on all plans; text reminders from Standard | Email included; SMS and WhatsApp reminders use paid credits | Email and text reminders, including on Free | Email on Free; text reminders need Pro |
| Trade-off to know | No free plan, and text reminders force the mid tier even for a solo practice | Every plan caps monthly bookings, and payments consume one of your few custom-feature slots | The processing fee is unavoidable and applies on the free plan too; key protections sit on the $49 tier | No packages, memberships or gift certificates; the headline $5 price requires annual billing |
Prices checked November 2026. Subscriptions are shown before tax, in each vendor's billing currency (USD, except SimplyBook.me in EUR). Processing rates are the processors' published US rates; rates differ by country — Stripe in Japan, for example, is 3.6% with no fixed per-transaction fee. Plans and rates change — always confirm on the vendor's site before you buy.
Acuity (owned by Squarespace) is the most complete client-booking tool of the four: custom intake forms, packages, memberships, subscriptions and gift certificates sit alongside the booking page. Pricing is flat per account and turns on calendar count. Starter ($16/mo billed annually, $20 monthly) covers one calendar with email reminders. Standard ($27/mo annually, $34 monthly) covers up to six calendars and adds text reminders, a waitlist, packages and memberships. Premium ($55/mo annually, $69 monthly) covers up to 36 calendars and adds API access, HIPAA support and an AI booking assistant. Payments run through your own Stripe, Square or PayPal account, so the processor's fee comes on top of the subscription.
SimplyBook.me gives you a multi-page booking website (or a widget for your own site) and a marketplace of 70+ custom features you switch on as needed — intake forms, classes, memberships, packages, coupons and more. The catch is in the pricing model: every plan caps both your monthly bookings and how many of those features you may enable. Free allows 50 bookings a month, one provider and one custom feature, with no online payments. Basic (€11.90/mo billed annually) raises that to 100 bookings, five providers and three features, and unlocks payments and deposits. Standard (€24.90/mo annually) allows 500 bookings and 15 providers; Premium (€49.90/mo annually) allows 2,000 bookings and 30 providers with unlimited features.
Square is the only one of the four that is also the payment processor, which simplifies the stack: the booking page, the calendar, the card reader and the payout all live in one account. Free ($0 per location) includes a booking website, unlimited staff calendars, email and text reminders, deposits and prepayment. Plus ($49/mo per location) adds the enforcement layer — no-show and late-cancellation fees from a card on file, a waitlist, class bookings and Google Calendar sync. Premium ($149/mo per location) adds resource booking (rooms, chairs, equipment), staff management and advanced reporting. Remember that processing fees apply on every plan, including Free: 2.6% + 15¢ in person and 3.3% + 30¢ online on Free, slightly lower on paid plans.
Setmore keeps the choice binary: a genuinely usable free plan, and one paid tier. Free covers up to four users with a booking page, online payments through Square, email confirmations and reminders, and one-way calendar sync; current pricing summaries cap it at 200 appointments a month. Pro ($5 per user/month billed annually, $12 monthly) removes the caps and adds text reminders, two-way sync with Google and Office 365, recurring appointments, deposits, Stripe and PayPal payments, branding removal and API access. What Setmore deliberately doesn't do is commerce extras: there are no packages, memberships or gift certificates.
Each system meters something different: Acuity counts calendars, SimplyBook.me counts bookings, Square counts locations, Setmore counts users. Estimate your own numbers for each — the cheapest plan on paper is the one whose meter runs slowest for your business shape.
Run the model above with your real booking count and average ticket. At any meaningful volume, processing is larger than the subscription, and a "free" plan can cost more overall than a paid one with lower online rates.
If you need deposits only, all four can do it. If you need to charge a stored card when someone cancels late, your shortlist narrows to Acuity, or Square on a paid plan. Pick the policy, then check which tier actually enforces it.
SimplyBook.me, Square and Setmore all let you take real bookings for $0 within their caps; Acuity gives you a 7-day trial. Put one real week of bookings through your top two candidates and watch where the caps and reminder limits bite.
Sometimes. If clients book free consultations and pay you separately, a simple scheduling link may be enough. These four earn their cost when money and attendance are part of the booking itself: prepayment or deposits at booking, cancellation rules a stored card can enforce, class and package sales, and a booking page that represents your business rather than your personal calendar.
It depends which ceiling you hit first. Setmore Free fits a team of up to four with moderate volume. Square Free has no booking-count cap but keeps no-show fees on the paid tier. SimplyBook.me Free stops at 50 bookings a month and cannot take online payments, so it is a trial in practice for most active businesses. Acuity has no free plan.
No tool can guarantee attendance, and we make no such claim here — vendors publish their own survey figures, which we don't repeat as fact. What the published features do is concrete: a client who has paid a deposit, agreed to a stated cancellation window, and received email or text reminders has a different commitment from a name typed into a form. Whether that changes behaviour in your business is exactly what a free-tier trial week can show you.
Because homepages show the subscription and this guide adds the payment processing fee, which every card payment carries. The model near the top of this page shows the arithmetic for each product, using the processors' published rates, so you can redo it with your own booking volume and ticket size.
Square Appointments is the only one of the four officially sold in Japan, with a Japanese interface, yen payments and local plan pricing — the Japanese edition of this guide covers its Japan-specific fees. Acuity and Setmore can display the client booking page in Japanese, and SimplyBook.me supports multilingual booking sites, but their admin tools, support and billing are primarily in English and foreign currencies, and your payment processor account must support your business separately. Japanese readers should also compare domestic Japanese booking services, which are outside this guide's scope.
Because this guide is compiled from publicly available vendor information, not hands-on testing. Every figure is a published price, limit or fee you can verify on the vendor's own pages, and every judgment (for example, that prepayment costs more in fees than in-person payment) is arithmetic on those published numbers, shown next to the claim.