How to Show Your Availability Online in WordPress: 5 Options

As a service-based company, you manage hundreds of appointments every single day. Booking dates, scheduling calls, checking availability from both sides, customers and staff, then finally set a fixed date and time which adjusts for all.

Thus, investing in an availability calendar or a booking plugin can be a smart decision for you and your company.

A WordPress plugin would help you create a color-coded calendar that allows clients to see free and booked dates. With the options like to choose per-day or per-hour pricing, and simply click on a calendar slot to make a booking. 

If you are also looking for this hassle free convenience, then we can help you find the right solution.

In this post, we will aim to address several typical situations for different business availability types by selecting the perfect WordPress plugins and explaining their functionality in creating an availability calendar.

Let’s begin.

What is an availability calendar, and why do I need one?

An availability Calendar helps your customers or visitors see the available booking slots, their timing, and date, so they can book their appointment themselves directly from your website.

You can block the holidays, not available days, or closed off days in advance. No more going back and forth messaging and calling, just to inform you are not available.

If you are already using a WordPress website for your appointment-based business, you are in luck.

In WordPress, there are a bunch of availability calendars or booking form plugins you can use to show your availability online. Big or small, all types of businesses require an availability calendar plugin or an appointment plugin.

So, let’s take a look and see, “What types of websites and businesses would need this type of solution?”

• Coaches and consultants allow clients to schedule meetings with them.
• Schools and private tutors that sell lessons and classes.
• Rental businesses that offer equipment or vehicles per hour/day.
• Hotel and accommodation owners.
• Activities and tours availability.
• Event scheduling.
• Teams and person availability.

With these, you must’ve understood the importance of an availability calendar. It’s not just a convenience but a necessity nowadays. Let’s explore the options for showing your availability online in WordPress.

Option #1: Calendar + service selection + booking form

Perfect plugin: BookingPress

Type of business: Service booking

To maintain automatic availability, that is, when your slots are available and booked, you are offered to create a schedule per person/service/location with BookingPress.

This plugin creates a step-by-step professional wizard that enables your clients to choose the service and staff member first, and then pick an available slot for the appointment.

Set your available times just once and then only receive timely notifications when the service is booked. 

More features of the plugin:

• Full WooCommerce integration.
• Multiple payment processors are available as free add-ons.
• Agile backend and timetable settings.
• Any number and type of services, staff members, locations, and schedules.
• Fully brandable and customizable booking form.

Pricing of BookingPress:

BookingPress offers a free version with unlimited websites and appointments. If you opt for more advanced features, its standard plan starts from $79 per year only.

Option #2: Single availability calendar per service/person

Perfect plugin: Booking Calendar 

Type of business: Service and event booking

Sometimes you don’t need to offer a service or individual selection. This is the case when basic, color-coded, single-item calendars come into place so that you can just place it on the page, where your service is showcased.

The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to do just that, set the availability for individual items and insert the calendar to any needed page, allowing your clients to start their booking process by picking a date in the calendar.

Your clinics interact with the calendar date picker, choose available slots, and make a booking by filling in the form. As for reservations, the plugin supports the majority of the most-needed features, such as accepting payments and sending confirmation emails.

More features of the plugin:

• Support for ics feeds to sync to other third-party services and get bookings from different platforms.
• Prices are displayed by date in the calendar.
• Flexible settings for customizing your timeslots.
• Approve, decline, or edit details in required bookings.
• Export and import bookings.

Pricing of Booking Calendar:

Booking Calendar offers a free version. However, if you require more advanced features, its personal plan starts from $41.87, which is a one time cost only.

You might like to read: 10 AI Tools for Appointment Scheduling Websites

Option #3: Pick-up & return date selection + booking form

Perfect plugin: Booqable 

Type of business: Equipment rental

This is one of the most popular booking plugins in WordPress optimized specifically for rentals, including vehicles, inventory, and more. It ships with a powerful, centralized dashboard for managing rentals, creating availability, and working with appointments.

It allows you to build a rental website form that enables clients to choose the rental first, then the preferable duration, and then select pick-up and return dates.

You can show availability of your items in a list or calendar views, which can suit different business cases.

More features of the plugin:

• Integrate it with your existing site or use the custom site builder from the company to build it from scratch.
• Fully dedicated to rental business.
• All types of payment gateways are supported.
• Create contracts and invoices right from your dashboard.
• A dedicated mobile app.

Pricing of Booqable: 

Booqable offers a 14 days free trial. If you decide to continue with it, its paid plan starts from $27 per month.

Option #4: Activity and tour duration selection + booking form

Perfect plugin: WP Travel Engine

Type of business: Tours booking

If you sell tours and activities and are looking for the appropriate booking form with such custom fields as destination, tour duration, capacity, etc., then the WP Travel Engine will help you create your tours availability.

This plugin is completely focused on the tours and travel activity management, so all the settings are all focused to help you deliver the best tour booking experiences to your clients.

It’s a breeze to add tour details, capacity, and set up its availability in a calendar.

More features of the plugin:

• Multiple integrations, including such specific ones as trip weather forecast, Zapier, currency converter, and more.
• Marketing-oriented features: group discounts, extra service sales, itinerary, and file download, legal documents, trip countdown, and more.
• Support for WooCommerce, PayPal, Stripe, and other payment systems.

Pricing of WP Travel Engine: 

WP Travel Engine does offer a free version in the WordPress plugin directory. If you opt for more advanced features, its paid plan starts from $12 per month, and its lifetime plan starts $499.

Option #5: Check-in & check-out date selection + reservation form

Perfect plugin: Hotel Booking Lite

Type of business: Accommodation booking

This plugin offers several options to show availability calendars: you can add a booking form that searches through all the rentals according to the search request or mere individual property booking calendars. That means you can rent out one property with its individual booking calendar or multiple ones using the search form with standard check-in and check-out dates.

Clients can book rooms, villas, or other accommodation types by choosing dates and per-night rates.

More features of the plugin:

• Display property price right in the calendar dynamically, including or excluding taxes.
• Sync your bookings to external sites to collect bookings across channels in one plugin dashboard.
• Taxes, fees, discount coupons, and payment gateways supported.
• Automated email notifications.

Pricing of Hotel Booking Lite: 

Hotel Booking Lite is completely free in the WordPress plugin directory. However, if you want more advanced features, its Pro paid version starts at $139 per year.

Conclusion: How to show your availability online in WordPress?

As you can see, there are many ways to show your availability in WordPress. The calendar plugin you choose will depend on the type of services you provide. Also, the booking criteria you want to meet. 

Thus, choose your Calendar availability or booking plugin while keeping all scenarios. Always check its features and how easy it is to show your availability online in WordPress.

FAQs

What is an availability calendar?

An availability calendar is a tool that shows you a visual representation of availability inside a calendar. It helps your customer book an appointment easily without confusion and conflict. It is ideal for service-based companies for managing their appointments and bookings properly in no time.

How do I add an availability calendar to my website?

There are two ways to add an availability calendar to your website. Whether you can embed a calendar from Google Calendar, or to simplify things, you can choose a booking plugin. With booking plugins, you can directly manage availability from your website alongside appointments. 

How to manage calendar availability?

To manage your calendar availability, popular Appointment plugins like BookingPress can sync with the calendar with real-time availability data to avoid confusion. 

Plus, it offers extra advanced features as well, like booking forms, automated emails, and SMS notifications. Along with easy integration with popular calendars like Google, Apple, and Outlook Calendar.