vCita is a marketing-focused CRM for service providers. According to the vendor, the product helps service providers move clients through every stage of the sales cycle: from the first point of contact to closing, upselling and follow-up. vCita is a lightweight CRM with the following features: - Manage appointments, payments, and clients - Access info & respond to clients on the go with a mobile app - Invite clients to…
$29
per month
Zoho Bookings
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Zoho Bookings is a calendar syncing and appointment booking app for consultants, firms, and small business.
It makes client communication extremely easy - we can message and schedule online appointments. Clients really like those options. We also like the online payment portal. That way clients can pay at their convenience, and we don't end up with credit card information that requires PCI compliance. It also helps with payments. It would also help with invoicing, but unfortunately, there are only 3 linked payment options (Square, Stripe, and PayPal). If you don't use one of those payment processors, you cannot link to billing.
I've tried some of the other online booking services and while there were good, they didn't have all of the features that Zoho Bookings does and since I'm already a Zoho One subscriber, it doesn't cost me anything more. I think virtually any type of business can use Bookings as it's not geared to a specific industry but can be customized for use in any type of industry. I would love to see salons use it as I think it can be truly a way for them to better book clients than using a paper calendar which I see many using. I also think massage therapists would also benefit but using Bookings. If you are a solopreneur or have a sales team, there's no way you can't benefit by using Bookings for your phone appointments, Zoom/Video meetings, or in-person meetings. There is also a resource function which allows you to block out conference rooms and other resources.
It still needs more robust features and customization, like workflows and such. I'm confident they'll continue improving it, but some particular customization settings aren't available, in terms of triggers, content, look and feel, but it is mostly very detailed and particular. If you're ok with adapting to it, it is an excellent tool.
Overall - easy to use. There are some missing features (like fillable pdf forms), and it also requires using certain credit card processors to link billing (otherwise it doesn't work).
I do miss the days when I could easily call up a rep and talk to them about any issues I had with the service. But I still do hear back from the customer service rep during the week within 24 hours.
A lot of things are not great as this is a new tool, but they fix it relatively quickly. They don't have a direct phone number, but Zoho support has good service overall
I found the integration with the two above is great if you're a Google Calendar user which we are not. While with Zoho Calendar we can have two way integration with Google Calendar there wasn't a need to do so. With Zoho Bookings which also integrates with Google Calendar we didn't have to worry about that as the integration with our Zoho Calendar was virtually automatic. There was also the cost consideration as the two above have a free version it was limited and didn't have all the bells and whistles we needed. Zoho Bookings provide us with everything from a single sign-on web browser and mobile app