Acuity Scheduling vs Apptoto: Which is Best for Scheduling & Customer Engagement

Turning one-time visitors into loyal, returning clients hinges on your team’s ability to provide consistently outstanding customer service at every interaction. Each step—from how easy it is to book an appointment to the quality of service you provide—is a reflection of your business.

An excellent appointment management system doesn’t just make it simple for clients to book appointments with you online. It acts as an extension of your customer service team, automatically keeping clients informed and engaged leading up to and after their appointments. Not to mention, when your team isn’t manually scheduling and rescheduling appointments or sending reminders, they can focus more time and attention on providing exceptional, personal customer service that keeps clients coming back again and again.

Apptoto and Acuity Scheduling both offer robust online booking software that helps businesses automate appointment scheduling and messaging. But when it comes to helping you add the extra personalized touch, which platform is best for your company? Check out how Apptoto and Acuity Scheduling compare in nine categories to find the right fit for you and your clients.

Jump to a Section:

• Company Overviews
• Features, Functionality & Customization
• User Interface and Ease of Use
• Integrations
• Support and Training
• Pricing
• Security and Compliance
• Customer Reviews
• Recent Product Updates

Company Overviews: Apptoto vs. Acuity Scheduling

Apptoto started in 2010 to help appointment-based businesses wage war against costly no-shows and increase their repeat business by automating appointment messaging. The platform has evolved into a full appointment management platform, allowing companies to offer online booking, send two-way business messages, collect payments, and deliver targeted marketing campaigns, alongside Apptoto’s incredibly robust appointment reminder/messaging features.

One of Apptoto’s key features is how it seamlessly integrates with your business’s existing calendaring and customer records management tools. After syncing your current calendars to Apptoto, you’ll immediately have a view of your upcoming appointments with existing clients. Within minutes, you can launch customized online booking pages to make it easier for new and existing clients to book with you. You control settings on the backend, such as your team’s availability, appointment types, duration, time padding, and staff assignments. At the same time, your customers get an effortless booking experience on the front end.

Apptoto stands above other online appointment scheduling solutions by combining those robust scheduling features with customizable, personalized appointment messaging. Businesses can create and send unique messaging sequences based on almost any information available in the appointment event (whether someone booked through an Apptoto online booking page or not). Confirm the booking, send appointment reminders, and follow up afterward using any combination of text messages, voice calls, and emails (based on your client’s preferences for being contacted).

Whether you create one sequence for all your clients or 100 unique ones, Apptoto allows you to personalize the messages at scale by pulling your client’s unique details into every message. Finally, messages aren’t just one-way either. Clients can respond to confirm, reschedule, or cancel appointments, which will automatically sync to your calendars, or they can message you directly with 2-way business messaging. With its robust but easy-to-launch features, Apptoto is ideal for businesses that want best-in-class scheduling with appointment messages that engage your customers at every step.

Acuity makes online scheduling software for businesses. Using Acuity, companies can offer online appointment scheduling to their clients with customized booking pages. Like Apptoto, Acuity Scheduling is known for providing a robust suite of online scheduling and appointment management functionality.

While its marquee product is its online scheduling pages, Acuity also has tools such as reporting, invoice management, and package, gift certificate, and subscription management. These premium features are helpful for those in Acuity’s target industries—beauty services, coaching, wellness services, fitness and sports trainers, financial services, and education—as they may offer one-on-one appointments or group events and classes. Since Squarespace acquired Acuity Scheduling in 2019, the platform has been a convenient scheduling go-to for businesses with Square websites.

Businesses can also utilize Acuity to email and text appointment notifications to clients who booked through one of their booking pages but can only customize the messaging on a paid plan. Similarly, Acuity enforces limitations on when and what type of notifications can be sent (for example, you cannot send more than three email reminders can be sent to a client) and no SMS Text reminders on the lowest-paid plan.

Acuity Scheduling is a budget-friendly and intuitive scheduling solution. Still, businesses may need to upgrade to get additional functionality such as SMS reminders and subscription and gift certificate management. Companies looking for highly customizable online scheduling AND appointment notifications may find that Acuity is limited in key areas such as voice reminders, customer matching, message timing, and customization.

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Features, Functionality, & Customization

Apptoto and Acuity Scheduling are known for their feature-rich appointment scheduling solutions. Below is a comparison of key features offered on Apptoto’s and Acuity’s paid plans.

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User Interface and Ease of Use

Apptoto: After signing up for Apptoto, you’re invited to sync your existing calendaring software, link your desired calendars, and walk through a Setup Wizard. If you have existing appointments booked on your calendar, you’ll see them listed on the “Appointment” Agenda tab and can create more immediately. As your clients confirm, cancel, or reschedule, Apptoto highlights events in different colors to give you an easy-to-scan overview of the status of each of your upcoming appointments.

From there, you can navigate to several areas of the platform, such as:

• “Messaging” to customize appointment reminders, confirmation, and follow-up message sequences and timing
• “Booking Pages” to create your online scheduling pages
• “Contacts” to see clients’ information in your address books or create new contacts
• “Dashboards” and “Tools” to view reporting and analytics

Within each product section, you may see additional areas or tabs for customizing Apptoto’s functionality even further. For example, in the Booking Pages section, you’ll be given the option to set up an “Availability” (1-1 appointments) or “Signup” page (group meetings/events) and then provided additional tabs to be able to customize your booking pages/processes even further. On the “Messaging” tab, you’ll be able to set up your customized messaging sequences for each of your unique appointment types, providers, locations, etc. (the sky’s the limit) or implement marketing message campaigns to remind and recall prior clients to book their next appointment with you.

Apptoto is incredibly feature-rich, with many settings and dials to help you customize everything to your unique specifications. All those features can mean a higher learning curve than other platforms, but the team also regularly updates Apptoto to make it more intuitive and easy to use (such as a recent update to the booking page creation flow). Likewise, Apptoto has an immense set of support and learning resources available to help you learn more, all readily available via the “Help” button in the top-level navigation.

Acuity Scheduling: Acuity Scheduling highlights its scheduling pages front and center, from onboarding to ongoing management. Walking through the onboarding process, you immediately create your scheduling page link, create appointment types, set your availability, and customize your page’s appearance. The options to customize your page’s appearance are relatively straightforward. For example, you can choose between two templates and add one accent color. You can include custom scheduling instructions in the font of your choice and set several other scheduling options (i.e., require a phone number during booking, hide appointment duration, show the “schedule another appointment” button). The resulting page is simple and intuitive. However, to customize the look of your page beyond the basic template, you’ll need someone with advanced CSS knowledge and the Powerhouse premium plan to do so.

After creating your scheduling page, your primary dashboard will have a view of your upcoming appointments and additional tools to manage your business. Like Apptoto, Acuity shows you upcoming booked appointments, which you can view in both a list form or a calendar view. Navigating around Acuity, you’ll see additional areas where you can 1) View basic Client contact information, Invoices, and Reports, 2) Customize your client scheduling pages and business settings such as availability, integrations, and intake forms, and 3) Set up appointment notifications.

Businesses that want to send client appointment notifications must generate templates for the emails and SMS text messages they want to send. You can use the same notification for multiple appointment types or customize it for each. However, there doesn’t appear to be an intuitive way to sequence appointment notifications together (such as SMS plus email reminders) beyond manually adjusting the timing of each notification). Likewise, the platform will only send notifications to clients who booked through an Acuity Scheduling page. So, suppose you or your team members book appointments on your calendar outside the Acuity system. In that case, the appointment will be blocked off on your calendar as busy. But it will not automatically be opted into any messages unless you recreate the appointment inside Acuity.

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Integrations

By integrating your online appointment scheduling software with your company’s other tools, you can make your appointment management even more efficient. For example, to detect your team’s availability and sync appointments to your calendar, you can integrate with calendaring tools like Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, or iCloud. Likewise, by integrating Virtual Meeting solutions with your scheduling software, you can eliminate the need to create a new custom meeting link every time you book a new virtual appointment.

*Zapier allows you to connect your chosen solution with thousands of additional apps in their app integrations library.

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Support and Training

No matter how intuitive a platform may be, you will inevitably need help setting up a feature or figuring out where an online booking went wrong. Access to a strong support team that responds promptly ensures you’re satisfied with your chosen solution.

Apptoto offers a mix of support and training materials for everyone whether you want live support or prefer to figure it out yourself. When you sign up, you can walk through an easy-to-follow onboarding flow to get your appointment messaging and booking pages up within 10 minutes or less.

Have questions? To talk with Apptoto’s customer success team members, you can navigate to the Support Center to chat, email, or call. You can also access Apptoto’s extensive knowledge base, training videos, Blog, Product Notes, and Feedback forum, where you can learn about Apptoto at your own pace or leave feedback! Finally, Apptoto’s team is regularly recognized for its high-quality support and customer care via client testimonials and third-party review sites.

Acuity Scheduling’s primary support resource is a knowledge base. They offer email support as well, but no chat or phone support. If you need advanced help, Squarespace offers a marketplace to hire third-party (non-employee) experts. Prices for top scheduling experts start between $300 to $1000. Additionally, you can find blog posts, webinars, a forum, and guides and videos under the Squarespace brand. However, scheduling-related information is dispersed amongst resources for all of Squarespace’s tools and products.

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Pricing

When comparing appointment management software, it’s crucial not just to compare upfront pricing but also to look at each product’s offerings and feature sets holistically. For example, do you have full access to all the necessary features and customization options from the outset (and can experiment with them during the trial period), or are you required to upgrade to a top-tier or enterprise pricing plan to unlock these capabilities? Below, we compare Apptoto and Acuity’s pricing and trials to help you make the best decision for your business.

Note: This comparison looks at the entry-level paid plans of each solution. Check out Apptoto’s pricing and Acuity Scheduling’s pricing pages for a full breakdown of what’s included in various plans.

Acuity’s basic (“emerging” plan) is a very affordable solution for businesses that only need to link one calendar and create one booking page and that don’t need to customize their appointment email notifications. Does your business need to sync more calendars to booking pages, send SMS notifications, customize messaging and booking pages, or offer packages, gift certificates, memberships, or subscriptions? In that case, you’ll need to upgrade to a higher package. Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that Acuity offers a shorter trial period than most of its competitors. This poses a challenge for businesses that cannot customize their booking pages and notifications and embed online scheduling into their marketing channels within a 7-day time frame.

Apptoto is best for businesses needing rich scheduling and appointment messaging features. Businesses love that Apptoto syncs new or changed appointments with their existing calendaring/CRM solution and automatically sends messages to their clients (regardless of how the client booked). Likewise, businesses can get an excellent feel for Apptoto’s functionality during the 14-day trial. That’s because they can utilize online scheduling, fully customizable appointment reminders, call, email, and voice message sequencing, auto-replies, marketing message campaigns, two-way business messaging, and top-notch customer support.

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Security & Compliance

Keeping your clients’ data private and secure is paramount. That’s why Apptoto and Acuity have strict security policies to protect your data.

Apptoto prides itself on being SOC 2 and AWS ISO 27001 compliant and achieving and maintaining other certifications and security practices. Additionally, Healthcare providers can entrust their patient messaging is secure with Apptoto’s HIPAA-compliance program. Finally, major US mobile carriers have recently started requiring that all 10-digit phone numbers (10DLC) used to send text messages be registered to avoid filtering and additional costs. Apptoto helps customers submit their 10DLC registration quickly and easily directly from the web platform.

Acuity Scheduling falls under Squarespace’s privacy and security practices. Squarespace notes that it has a security operations center and adheres to strict security and privacy measures for its customers’ data. Acuity does offer HIPAA compliance with signed BAA on their most expensive Powerhouse and Enterprise pricing plans.

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Customer Reviews

Customers love Apptoto and Acuity Scheduling, which shows in how they rank the platforms in areas such as features, customer service, and value for money. Below, we’ve outlined how Apptoto and Acuity compare on third-party review sites G2.com and Capterra.

Sources:

• Capterra (Apptoto | Acuity Scheduling)
• G2, Inc. (Apptoto | Acuity Scheduling)

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Recent Product Updates

Check out the latest product releases from Apptoto and Acuity Scheduling to see how they’re innovating in the appointment management space.

Apptoto’s Latest Product Updates:

• Track Appointment Booking Conversions: Integrating Google Ads, GA4 & Apptoto
• 6 New Updates to Simplify the Booking Page Creation Process
• Translate Appointment Messages into Multiple Languages with AI

Acuity Scheduling’s Latest Product Updates:

• Integrate “Reserve with Google” and Acuity
• Charging for Gated Content on your Website
• Get Paid with Acuity Scheduling Invoices

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Apptoto vs. Acuity Scheduling: Which is Best for Your Business?

Whether you choose Apptoto or Acuity Scheduling, you’re business will benefit from an appointment management platform that offers standout features above and beyond customizable booking pages.

Acuity Scheduling is an affordable choice for businesses looking to combine online scheduling and one-way appointment messaging with additional operational tools like invoicing and package/discount management. Using Acuity’s “Emerging” package, an individual can launch one online booking page and a preset number of appointment notification emails. However, Acuity users may find the base package lacks the full suite of tools, appointment messaging options, and scheduling customization for their business needs.

Conversely, Apptoto pairs its fully customizable online scheduling tool with robust appointment messaging features, two-way texting, and marketing message campaigns to give you multiple ways to connect with clients. So, if you’re looking for an appointment management solution whose product suite aligns with your goals of growing, engaging, and retaining clients, Apptoto’s the partner for you.

Ready to compare Apptoto vs. Acuity Scheduling for yourself? Get started with a free trial today!

Nicole Mears

Product Marketing Manager

Nicole Mears spearheads Apptoto’s marketing and communication strategies. Her focus is on empowering professionals with the insights they need to fully leverage Apptoto so they can reduce no-shows and grow appointment bookings.

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