Bookfresh vs. Setster for Online Appointments

Posted by David Chism | Wed, Apr 21, 2010

 Bookfresh vs. Setster for Online Appointments
Update 5/8/2017 Since writ­ing this post back in 2010, many appoint­ment book­ing soft­ware has sur­faced. I have set­tled on using You​Can​Book​.me. It works with iCloud, Microsoft and Google Cal­en­dars. That is enough for me! Update: 4/3/2014 It has come to my atten­tion that con­sumers are hav­ing more prob­lems with Book­fresh sup­port. One per­son told me they can­not get in touch with them by phone at all. So I am not endors­ing Book­fresh and have not for sev­er­al years. This is an old­er post com­par­ing (at the time) two good pro­grams. If you are using Google Cal­en­dar, I high­ly rec­om­mend you use and try: www​.you​can​book​.me (they have the best ser­vice and can cus­tomize it to fit your needs). Set­ster is still a great prod­uct as well. Do you remem­ber the days before cell phones? Con­trac­tors and busi­ness own­ers had pagers and Day­timers. I remem­ber my dad telling me that when he worked in the field paint­ing for a home­own­er, he’d have to ask the home­own­er if he could use their phone to make a call or dri­ve to the near­est pay phone. Life was sim­ple. Ask­ing to use some­one’s phone was not an incon­ve­nience. It was nor­mal. The days of pagers, pay phones, day­timers and peo­ple wait­ing 24+ hours for a response are over! Now con­sumers want quick and fast response. If they send an email, they get impa­tient if they do not hear back from a con­trac­tor with­in 2 hours or less. Some con­sumers don’t even like talk­ing on the phone. They would pre­fer sched­ul­ing their appoint­ments online at their con­ve­nience. Well, to keep up with tech­nol­o­gy and this fast pace lifestyle, Book­fresh and Set­ster have made it a lit­tle eas­i­er for busi­ness own­ers to allow prospects and cus­tomers to sched­ule appoint­ments online. Book­fresh and Set­ster are online sched­ul­ing and appoint­ment book­ing soft­ware. A vis­i­tor can now go on to a con­trac­tor’s web­site, click on the Con­tact Us” or Book Now” but­ton, select a ser­vice, view avail­able time slots and sched­ule an appoint­ment. Both of these com­pa­nies have made online sched­ul­ing a breeze. 
Which one do I like best? It is hard to say. I like them both. Book­fresh seems to have done a bet­ter job mar­ket­ing them­selves and has more tes­ti­mo­ni­als from places like the New York Times and USA Today. Set­ster, is a younger com­pa­ny yet is slow­ly becom­ing a threat to com­pete neck to neck with Book­fresh. Pros of Bookfresh
  • Mobile friend­ly: brows­er-based web­site to view and accept appointments
  • Attrac­tive and Easy to Use.
  • Avail­able on your Busi­ness Face­book Page and Email Campaigns
  • Has a mini site” for your com­pa­ny. This could replace your com­pa­ny con­tact page com­plete­ly. It is easy to use and search-engine friendly
  • Inte­grates pret­ty well with Out­look and Google Calendars
Cons of Bookfresh
  • Cus­tomer sup­port, in my opin­ion does not exist. Enough said.
  • For con­trac­tors, there is no func­tion to sched­ule spe­cif­ic areas of town. In oth­er words, if you want to sched­ule appoint­ments in the same zip code or area, there is no way to do this. Book­fresh makes sched­ul­ing easy for the con­sumer only.
  • Book­fresh takes a con­sumer away from a con­trac­tor’s web­site. This is not good from a mar­ket­ing per­spec­tive. It should be a pop up menu with the con­trac­tors brand and iden­ti­ty. When a con­sumer clicks on the Book Now but­ton, Book­fresh takes over.
Pros of Setster
  • Easy to for your cus­tomers to use on desk­top or mobile devices.
  • Cus­tomer Ser­vices. Each time I’ve had an issue, they’ve respond by email well…and even picked up the phone and called me to make sure I was happy.
  • Pric­ing is good. Com­pa­ra­ble with Book­fresh, You​Can​Book​.me and others
  • Brand­ing of Set­ster is lim­it­ed. A Con­sumer stays on a con­trac­tor’s web­site when book­ing an appointment.
  • You can have a devel­op­er cus­tomize Set­ster any­way you’d like!
  • Easy to install but­tons for email mar­ket­ing, web­site and send­ing busi­ness emails.
  • Works very well with Google Calendar.
  • Invoice and Accept Pay­ments online (Inte­grates with Quick­books, Fresh­books and PayPal)
Book­fresh and Set­ster are great pro­grams! My per­son­al favorite of the two: Set­ster Con­sumers use these fea­tures and seem to like the ease of them. If Book­fresh would have bet­ter cus­tomer ser­vice, I’d give them two thumbs up. Until then, Set­ster takes the cake.

About David Chism

David Chism started his business out of a passion for helping small contracting businesses grow, be more profitable and become better known to their target clients. One lifelong hobby of David is using techie gadgets. So this blog is a place where he writes about technology, marketing ideas, just for fun (humor), personal thoughts on small business and more.

     
   
       

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