Top 5 Education Appointment Scheduling Software

“Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself” – Chinese Proverb

Appointment Scheduling Software plays a pivotal role in education, as it helps teachers connect with students and vice versa. Appointment Scheduling Software allows students and teachers to remove the ‘door’ and virtually meet without the need to travel long distances or knock on doors.

Let’s explore the 5 best education appointment scheduling software to help students and teachers meet and reduce back-and-forths.

The best education appointment scheduling apps for schools, teachers, and students

1. OneCal

OneCal is a calendar platform that helps busy people better manage their calendars by allowing real-time calendar sync, easy-to-use scheduling links, and more.

OneCal Features for Education

• Intuitive Appointment Scheduling: OneCal allows you to set up your booking pages and easily get booked through them. You can set up your booking links in less than one minute and then use them to get booked in an instant.
• Individual scheduling: As a teacher, individual scheduling is useful if you want to meet with your students. You students can book just you, with the option to also invite other guests (students) to the meeting.
  
• Group Scheduling: Group scheduling allows you to create scheduling links that consider the availability of multiple people and book all of them at once. Cases where this might be useful are admissions, where multiple teachers interview a student.
  
  Compared to other appointment scheduling solutions, OneCal is quite affordable, as it starts from $5 per seat per month (or $4 if paid annually).
  

• Custom Branding: You can personalize your booking links to your preferences by setting a cover image and a brand color. Branding can be applied globally, per booking page, or turned off.
  
• Connect multiple calendars: The scheduling links offered by OneCal have multi-calendar support, so you don’t have to worry about getting double booked.
• Scheduling limits: As a professor, your time is very valuable, and a great education scheduling platform should assist you with protecting your time and being on top of your schedule. OneCal allows you to set buffer times, notice periods, booking limits, and much more, so you have enough time to prepare for upcoming meetings.
• Custom forms: Education meetings are very information-driven and often require schedulers to insert information before booking. To assist with this, OneCal allows you to create custom forms for students to fill out before booking time with you. Each question in the form can be required or optional.
  

• Copy your availability via email: A lot of communication in universities and schools generally goes through email, and oftentimes, students need help. In such cases, you can quickly select a few slots from your OneCal scheduling link and copy them via email. Students can then click the slots via email and book time with you. There is no need for back and forth or further communication.
  
• Calendar sync: If you’re a student, you can sync all your Google Calendar and Outlook Calendars in real time, ensuring that professors can see all your availability when booking time with you through Outlook or Google Calendar.
  
  The same goes for the professors who might be part-time or consultants in other schools; they can syn their Outlook/Google Calendars automatically, ensuring that their peers and students know when they’re available to get booked.
  

2. Calendly

Calendly is an appointment-scheduling platform that only focuses on providing scheduling links.

Calendly Features for Education

• Individual or Collective scheduling: Like OneCal, you can leverage Calendly to create individual or collective scheduling links.
  
• Round Robin Scheduling: You can leverage the round robin algorithm using Calendly to route meetings to different people. For example, if you have interviews in place to interview prospects, you can create a round-robin scheduling link, which assigns the meeting to a certain professor based on the set condition.
• Custom Forms: Using Calendly, you can ask students custom questions before booking, making sure that you have all the information needed to hold your meetings.
• Accept payments: Calendly integrates with Stripe, allowing you to accept meetings only after receiving a payment. This is very handy when you offer educational services and get paid hourly or per meeting.
• Data tracking: Calendly integrates with Salesforce and Hubspot, allowing you to create and update booking records on those platforms.
  

3. Appointly

Appointly is an appointment-scheduling software focused on businesses, making it more expensive than the competition

Appointly Features for Education

• Class scheduling software: Appointly asks a couple of questions during the onboarding, one of which is the service you provide. You can select Classes and events and then add your service menu. Schedulers can then book a time with you and select the service they want to book time for.
  

• Custom forms and questions: You can add custom questions to your booking links to get the information needed for the students, etc.
• Customization: You can add a business logo and customize emails, making the booking link more personal and aligning more with your brand.
• Discount Coupons and Offers: If your courses are paid, you can offer discount codes and run offers, which can be a helpful tactic for growing your sales.
• Internal Appointment Management: Most appointment scheduling software doesn’t allow users to create appointments within the platform; the only way to do so is by using the booking link. With Appointly, you can sign in to the dashboard and create appointments for the services you’ve added.
  

4. SimplyBookMe

Similar to Appointly, SimplyBookMe is a service-based appointment scheduling platform that targets businesses and offers specific features for each industry. SimplyBookme is relatively cheaper compared to Appointly, but it has a cap per number of bookings per month. For example, the Basic plan, which starts at $9.9 per month, only includes 100 bookings per month.

If you expect a large number of bookings, Appointly might be a better option, as it doesn’t limit the number of times you can get booked.

SimplyBookMe Features for Education

• Ability to list services: Given that the target audience is service industries, you can add your services, and then schedulers can use them by booking time with you.
• Customization: The booking platform provided by SimplyBookMe is quite customizable, and it comes with themes. Based on the theme, you can add images to showcase your services, such as a cover image. Emails can be customized as well.
• Opening hours: If you offer courses, you can add opening and closing hours, allowing your customers to know when you’re free to be booked.
• Coupons and Gift cards: Similar to Appointly, you can leverage this feature during marketing campaigns and share promo codes on your socials, emails, etc., so others can enjoy your service with a discount. You can also leverage the Loyalty System, built-in with SimplyBookMe, to reward your most loyal customers.
• A lot of native integrations: SimplyBookMe integrates with Google My Business, Instagram, Facebook, WordPress, and other CMS systems, allowing you to automate your bookings.

5. Cal.com

Cal.com is an Open-source appointment scheduling solution that rivals Calendly in features.

Cal.com Features for Education

• Round Robin Scheduling: You can create round-robin scheduling links that distribute the meeting host based on the conditions you configure. Round Robin scheduling requires you to invite a team to Cal.com, which starts from $15 per user per month.
• Plenty of integrations: Given that Cal.com is Open Source, integrations are one of the stronger points, as the community contributes, supporting with bug fixes and new features.
  
• Free for individuals: If you plan to use Cal. com as an individual, you can use it for free. This is suitable for professors or students who want to share a scheduling link with others so they can book them.
  
• Payments: If you require payments for your meetings or education consults, you can accept them via Cal.com or Stripe.

Which appointment scheduling software is better for booking time with your students or teachers?

Choosing an appointment scheduling platform for educational purposes depends on your needs. Generally, OneCal or Calendly are solid choices if you want individual or connective scheduling.

If you have very specific needs, consider looking into SimplyBookMe or Appointly, as they target businesses and have very specific solutions.

Use OneCal as your education appointment scheduling solution

You can use OneCal as your education appointment scheduling platform, allowing peers or students to book time with you seamlessly. The onboarding is very simple, and you’ll have your booking links ready in minutes.

Sign up for OneCal for free, there is no need for a credit card or other information.