Wouldn’t it be great if you had a 24/7 virtual assistant to help manage your business; your clients could book you anytime, the assistant could remind them about their bookings via SMS & email and all the hassle of managing your bookings would disappear.

Well, with the free 10to8 Online Booking widget for WordPress you can. 10to8 Online Booking is ideal for any business that takes bookings and wants to professionally manage their clients.

Today we will take a look at what the 10to8 widget has to offer; how easy it is to get website visitors to book you, and how it saves your time.

What is 10to8?

There are literally hundreds of appointment scheduling systems out there, but 10to8 has taken it to the next level. They’ve brought chat to their calendar, which simplifies your scheduling and keeps everyone informed in a very simple easy-to-manage way.

10to8 is based on 3 components: a powerful calendar, an online booking platform, and, most importantly, their communications system. Putting it all together into an easy-to-use product is what makes this system so powerful, making your and your clients’ lives so much easier:

• The calendar allows you to manage your bookings. It’s built for small businesses with just one staff all the way up to large practices with multiple staff working in lots of different locations. It connects to Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook and Exchange so you don’t get double-booked

• The Online Booking platform is a WordPress widget, which can also be embedded on any website or Facebook Page. Clients can see your services, available times and pay for their appointment before booking. You also get a stand-alone 10to8 booking page.

• The communications system built in to 10to8 is what really distinguishes the service. Every booking is a conversation! 10to8 sends messages and reminders for every booking between you and your client, keeping you both on the same page. Clients can reply to the reminders to ask follow-up questions. You can jump into the conversation at any point to add your personal touch from their calendar – so it’s easy to stay on top of the conversation.

10to8’s Main Features

Powerful calendar that’s very easy to set up

10to8 is one of the most elegant and easiest appointment scheduling systems to set up that we’ve seen in a long time. Where most other services overwhelm you with checkboxes and complex features, 10to8 have done a great job at hiding the complexity from you, letting you focus on the important bits. Within 2-3 minutes, you’ll have all your services ready for booking, including prices & payment information, on your website using their WordPress plugin.

Bringing Chat to the Calendar

10to8’s killer feature is that it allows you to access conversations about your bookings with clients in your calendar. Instead of having to search in your inbox or phone for emails or SMS about an appointment, you can see all the necessary information, and act on it, in one place – when automatic reminders were sent, hand-written messages that you and your clients have sent, and private notes. This is shared with your colleagues, if you run a multi-staff practice. It makes running a busy practice/clinic/business so much easier!

Integration with external calendars

Many of us have multiple calendars and any new one needs to work with the others to be truly reliable for bookings. 10to8 can connect simply and quickly with your existing calendars (such as Google, iCal, Outlook and Exchange) and block out time when you’re busy. This way you don’t need to waste time double checking, or worse dealing with painful double bookings!

“10to8 have nailed it. Their tools are modern, efficient and fresh, and their commitment to continual improvement is rarely so obvious.”
~ James Chard, Blossom Therapies

Documentation and Support

10to8’s support team is switched on and extremely responsive (help@10to8.com). They also provide plenty of support material and videos. Check them out here.

Pricing

Paid plans for larger business start at $25 per month. 10to8 also offer a free forever plan which is very generous to small businesses with no hidden fees nor strings attached. In short: if you’re booking less than 100 appointments per month, the service is free.

Conclusion and Recommendations

If you are a small business owner, tutor, therapist, consultant, I would highly recommend giving 10to8 a try. It solves a thorny problem well and has very competitive rates. The service is actively under development as well, and they constantly ship new features and improvements. Are you already using 10to8 for your business/practice/clinic? I would love to hear all about it in the comments below!