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Formidable Team / Last Updated November 18, 2023

How To Create An Appointment Booking Form in WordPress

Ready to turn your site into an appointment scheduling solution? With just two plugins, you can create a booking form in WordPress in no time. Here's how!

how to create appointment booking forms in WordPress

Approximate read time: 7.5 minutes

Ready to streamline your online scheduling and elevate your service game? Then today's your lucky day!

In this post, we're diving into the quickest and easiest way to add a booking system to WordPress website. We'll use two great plugins, Formidable Forms and Simply Scheduling Appointments, to add a booking engine to WordPress without using a single line of code.

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Perfect for business owners looking to optimize their time and boost client commitment with upfront payments, this duo makes booking and billing a breeze.

So say so long to scheduling headaches and hello to a smoother, more efficient approach to booking management.

It's time to get your WordPress site working smarter, not harder!

The best WordPress booking plugin pair

If you're looking for the cheapest and easiest way to add online appointment bookings to your website, you only need two WordPress plugins: Formidable Forms and Simply Schedule Appointments.

What is Formidable Forms?

Formidable Forms booking plugin for WordPress

Formidable Forms is a super flexible WordPress form builder that makes creating all kinds of web forms and applications simple.

From basic contact forms to searchable databases, this plugin lets you build everything you need for your site without needing to code.

Check out all the features of Formidable Forms to learn how else it can help you create a great WordPress site.

What is Simply Schedule Appointments?

Simply Schedule Appointments

Simply Schedule Appointments is a streamlined WordPress appointment scheduling and booking plugin. In the developer's words, it offers "just the features you need without the clutter and confusion of features you don’t."

Simply Schedule Appointments helps with:

  • Unlimited appointment types, each with its own unique set of restrictions,
  • Advanced scheduling options,
  • Blackout dates,
  • And plenty more.

Its calendar integrations also let you instantly sync a Google calendar to WordPress forms.

But in their mission to create a streamlined WordPress appointment booking tool without bloat, the Simply Schedule Appointments team felt like there was no reason to reinvent the wheel when it came to building appointment booking forms.

And that's where Formidable comes in! Together, these two make a powerful appointment-booking pair.

Now, let's see how to get them on your site so you can start taking reservations today.

How to create an appointment booking form in WordPress

Follow these five simple steps to add online bookings to your WordPress site.

  1. Get the plugins
  2. Create a new appointment type in Simply Schedule Appointments
  3. Create your basic WordPress appointment booking form
  4. Add and configure the Appointment form field
  5. Publish your booking form

    Step 1: Get the plugins

    The first step is to install and activate Formidable Forms and Simply Schedule Appointments on your WordPress site. If you don't have the plugins yet, grab the appointment booking plugin here and click the button below to pick up the form maker.

    Formidable Forms Pro Feature

    There are free versions of each plugin, but you'll need the premium versions to create a booking form on WordPress.

    Once both are on your website, you're ready to start building your first booking form!

    Step 2: Create a new appointment type in Simply Schedule Appointments

    An appointment "type" is a specific kind of appointment you want people to be able to book via your form. For example:

    • A 30-minute phone consultation
    • A one-hour personal training session
    • A particular medical procedure
    • A specific guided tour
    • A certain service requested

    To start, go to Appointments → Appointment Types in your WordPress dashboard and click Create a New Appointment Type.

    Setup Simply schedule appointments booking plugin

    At the top, enter basic details like the name of the appointment type and the duration.

    Appointment types for booking

    Next, you can use the options below to set up more advanced details.

    First, use the Availability section to control the times when you're available for bookings.

    Calendar Schedule availability in WordPress

    These are the times people will choose from when submitting a booking form.

    Next, use the Scheduling Options section to control restrictions like the number of this kind of appointment that can be booked per day, how much notice is required before an appointment, and how much time should be left before and after a reservation.

    Schedule appointments with restrictions in WordPress

    Formidable Forms will automatically apply these limits to your booking form.

    Check out any other settings and customization options that are relevant to your needs. Then, click the Save button to finish creating your appointment type.

    Step 3: Create your basic WordPress appointment booking form

    Next, head to Formidable → Forms → Add New to create a new form.

    To get started, add the basic fields for information that you want to collect from people who book appointments. For example:

    • Name,
    • Email,
    • Phone number,
    • Etc.

    Depending on whether you're making forms for hotel bookings or restaurant reservations, you may have other information you'd like to collect during the booking process.

    So feel free to take advantage of all of Formidable Forms' custom fields to collect as much information as you need.

    For example, you can insert a File Upload field to let people attach a file or add Checkboxes and Radio Buttons to select preferences like whether to receive SMS notifications about their appointment.

    Schedule appointments with custom fields in WordPress

    And you could even accept online payments in your booking form — we'll show you how a little later in this article.

    Step 4: Add and configure the Appointment form field

    Now, add the Appointment field to your form to let people choose a date and time from your calendar.

    Choose appointment types in a WordPress form

    If you click on the Appointment field to edit its settings, you can choose exactly which appointment type or service people can book through this form. You can either include:

    • All appointment types
    • A specific appointment type, if you have multiple options
    Add appointments in a WordPress form

    Hit Update to save your form, and let's move on to the last step!

    Step 5: Publish your booking form

    All that's left is to insert your form on whichever WordPress page or post you choose.

    From your WordPress admin, open up the page you want to use as your booking page and click the + icon in the block editor to add a block.

    How to add a booking form in WordPress using the block editor.

    Search for and then select the Formidable Forms block. Now choose your form from the dropdown menu, and finally, Update or Publish the page.

    And there you go! You can start taking appointment bookings and reservations on your website!

    Here's what your visitors will see on your site:

    WordPress appointment booking form example

    Once they choose a time slot, they'll see a confirmation of their time. Then, they can click Submit to submit the form data and book their appointment. Cool, right?

    Choose appointment type to book in a WordPress form

    Manage your bookings

    If you'd like, you can use Formidable Forms for notifications and reminders. You can send SMS text message confirmations or email autoresponders to create appointment reminder emails.

    Now, we're switching over to the backend.

    If you view that entry in Formidable Forms, you'll see a summary of the details, along with a link to manage the appointment in Simply Schedule Appointments:

    Backend form entry with linked booking

    And then, if you go to Simply Schedule Appointments, you'll still see all the details from your other Formidable Forms fields, along with a link to view the entry in Formidable Forms:

    Scheduled appointment shows linked form entry

    You'll also see this information if you expand an appointment in the main Simply Schedule Appointments list:

    Appointment booking example

    Take payments with your booking form

    Now that you have your booking form in WordPress, you'll want to connect it to a payment gateway. With Formidable Forms, you can choose between PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net for processing payments.

    We're assuming you already have a PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.net account. But if you don't, click the following links to create a PayPal Business account, Stripe account, or Authorize.net account.

    With your account(s) ready to go, you'll need to integrate them with Formidable Forms. You'll find the setup guides for each integration below:

    • PayPal payments in WordPress
    • WordPress Stripe integration
    • Authorize.net form for WordPress

    Once you've connected a payment gateway, you must add a Payment field to your booking form and set up payment details. Take a look at this quick guide to accepting payments on WordPress forms.

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    Hint: Make sure to test your form and payment collection before promoting your paid sessions!

    Get started with WordPress booking forms.

    With Formidable Forms and Simply Schedule Appointments, you can create flexible WordPress appointment booking forms with smart functionality to avoid double bookings, blackout certain times and dates, charge deposits, process payments, and manage all your reservations or appointments.

    Pick up our booking plugin for WordPress below and get started now!

    Create Your Booking Form in WordPress!

    To learn more about how Formidable Forms can help you improve your site, check out the great features that make Formidable Forms the best form plugin for WordPress.


    Read more posts about WordPress booking forms

    • How to add a datepicker to an online form How To Create a WordPress Form with a Datepicker Calendar
      Read More
      how to easily schedule your team in WordPress How to Easily Schedule Your Team in WordPress
      Read More
      Best WordPress Events Plugins 9 Best WordPress Events Plugins to Boost Attendance
      Read More

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    Comments

    1. kingfisher64 says

      November 11, 2019 at 1:28 pm

      Sounds very promising, will be trying out.

      Perhaps you could add which version of Formidable Forms Pro includes this field onwards just as a reference 🙂

      Reply
      • Steve Wells says

        November 19, 2020 at 10:44 am

        Hi there,
        This integration should work with all premium versions of Formidable Forms (Basic-Elite)

        Reply
    2. Siva says

      November 11, 2019 at 3:57 pm

      Looks great, but their licences seems bit costly.. single site for one year $99.... Why cannot you build some add-on that can check fix slot booking which you already have with data and time fields .. now it is just a matter of checking on different days of the week..it is all again not going to reinventing a wheel but would be a definitely great saving for customers in both money and efforts in developing the application and would make formidable best choice for more customers even for booking purpose which itself has got lot of market..

      Reply
      • Steve Wells says

        November 19, 2020 at 10:46 am

        Hi Siva,

        You make a great point. This integration allowed us to provide the functionality to users with minimal development time on our end. We would eventually like to build this functionality into the plugin, but it isn't at the top of our priority list, so until we build it, this will work for those needing booking forms.

        Reply
        • Bryan Veloso says

          March 10, 2021 at 4:02 am

          This is what I've been thinking as well. For the meantime, this will work great and it's an awesome plugin with all the needed features for appointment booking.

          Reply
    3. James Welbes says

      November 11, 2019 at 10:01 pm

      Needs to integrate with Google calendar

      Reply
      • Sal Iadicicco says

        November 15, 2019 at 10:18 am

        It does, it has a 2 way sync

        Reply
        • dan says

          April 12, 2021 at 6:57 am

          I can't get it to sync with Google Calendar if it is booked using a formidible form. It only syncs with my google calendar when I book using the short-code. Do you know if this can be fixed?

          Thanks!

          Reply
    4. Noah Hankinson says

      November 17, 2020 at 5:34 pm

      Is it possible to integrate this into a userbase, lets say coaches who could take booking from multiple clients and set availability sessions

      Reply
      • Steve Wells says

        November 19, 2020 at 10:49 am

        Without understanding your full use case, it is difficult to say for sure, but it sounds like this would work for coaches to take bookings from multiple clients with set availability sessions.

        Reply
    5. Shaunice Halton says

      November 18, 2020 at 12:28 pm

      This seems very promising will definitely check this out

      Reply
      • Steve Wells says

        November 19, 2020 at 10:49 am

        Excellent, Glad you like it.

        Reply
    6. MAssimo says

      November 20, 2020 at 1:14 pm

      Sembra ottimo. Lo scarico e lo proverò sul mio sito web. Vi terrò al corrente del funzionamento.

      Reply
      • Steve Wells says

        November 20, 2020 at 2:18 pm

        Grazie! Spero che funzioni bene per te.

        Reply
    7. Brittney Wilson says

      November 21, 2020 at 9:51 pm

      Does this have support ford 3rd party integrations?

      Reply
      • stephywells says

        November 24, 2020 at 1:03 pm

        Yes, there is integration with some 3rd parties. It depends exactly on what you're looking for.

        Reply
    8. Tony Guarnaccia says

      November 22, 2020 at 1:53 pm

      Can each user have their own scheduling (calendar, scheduling link, etc). I’m creating an app that could use that functionality

      Reply
      • stephywells says

        November 24, 2020 at 1:04 pm

        Hi Tony. This is a feature that the Simply Schedule Appointments team is working hard on. They were hoping to have it ready for Black Friday, but it looks like it's not quite ready.

        Reply
    9. Manoj says

      November 27, 2020 at 6:23 am

      Hello,

      I tested many WordPress form builder plugins for the last one year including WPForms, Ninja Forms, and Formidable. So I can clearly say that Formidable is the best among them. It's hard to say what type of form is not available on your template collection. More than 100 built-in templates is a huge deal for the customers.

      Appreciate your product quality and support.

      All the best,

      Reply
      • srwells says

        November 27, 2020 at 1:41 pm

        Thanks so much for sharing! We always love to hear when customers appreciate our hard work. We are always adding to our template library, and soon there will be even more pre-built forms to save you time.

        Reply
    10. Sebastian Gersbach says

      November 27, 2020 at 6:56 am

      Sounds very promising, will be trying out.
      Maybe you could add which version of Formidable Forms Pro includes this field onwards just as a reference

      Reply
      • srwells says

        November 27, 2020 at 1:42 pm

        All premium versions should include this functionality.

        Reply
    11. Vinay says

      November 27, 2020 at 8:27 am

      I was recently introduced to Formidable Forms by a friend. Looks very promising. Wish I had encountered earlier. I am going to get the trial and see if it fits my needs. Many thanks.

      Reply
      • srwells says

        November 27, 2020 at 1:36 pm

        Excellent. Thanks for checking it out. Hope it works well for you.

        Reply
    12. Eduardo Romero says

      December 17, 2020 at 10:48 am

      Hello. I have the need for booking 35 seats at a library. Time slots will be of 1 hour and the users need to be able to reserve up to 3 time slots. Once they made the reservations they can't make another one for that day. Field validation for this can be the user's email. Can this be done? I already have Formidable Pro. Cheers!

      Reply
      • srwells says

        December 17, 2020 at 1:17 pm

        Hi Eduardo,
        We try not to provide support in our Blog comments since most of the time we need a bit more information in order to help get you on the right track. Could you please reach out to our awesome support team here? https://formidableforms.com/new-topic/

        Reply
    13. Phil says

      April 30, 2021 at 4:16 am

      The combination Formidable + Simply Schedule Appointments cost almost like a custom made booking solution.
      Both apps are good, but the pricing is breaking every wallet.
      Let's hope in a special offer for first adopters 😉

      Reply
    14. Michelle says

      July 18, 2023 at 10:28 pm

      As someone who personally tried Simply Schedule Appointments with Formidable Forms, I'd say pass. Go with another booking solution. It's been over a month now working with their support team and they haven't yet been able to figure out what the issue is in the form (not working for iOS on Chrome). Formidable Forms works, but this integration with Simply Schedule Appointments needs a lot of work.

      Reply
      • srwells says

        July 21, 2023 at 10:16 am

        Thanks for letting us know about this. We are always looking to partner and integrate with the best options in the space. We will take a closer look and see what needs to be done to make this better. Maybe building a native solution would be the best option here.

        Thanks again for your feedback. It helps us a ton in planning how to make Formidable Better.

        Reply

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