There are few tasks in the professional life that are as tedious as scheduling appointments. Finding a time that works for everyone can be a losing battle of long email strings and accidental double-bookings. Then in the worse case scenario, you do have a double booking or you misread or interpreted an email, then you really look like a doofus.  Then you have to do the “walk of shame” where you have to contact one person to try and reschedule, which can often times make you appear to not have your sh!t together to existing and potential new clients or customer. This can also be quite rhetorical and annoying too.  Scheduling appointments with your clients or customers is unfortunately one those unexpected headaches that you may run into on your entrepreneurial journey.

For real…scheduling an appointment with clients shouldn’t be that hard, right?
You schedule alot of your life as it is, we do it when you go to the doctor, dentist, hair dresser, massage therapists and maybe even your fitness trainer, so why should it be so hard for a online business owner?  There are a ton of great tools out there, some cost an arm and a leg, others are inexpensive and others are free. Fortunately, I have done the research for you and have 11 awesome appointment scheduling tools you can implement into your business that are free and also have upgrades available should you need to grow with it. Each of the 11 that are listed below has some pros and cons— and while some work with a range of calendar applications, others are narrowly focused to just one or two, it really just depends on what works best for you.   One thing they have in common though is  they’re a lot easier than playing email tag.

VCITA

Vcita.com allows you to engage new and returning clients on your website, email and social. Empower clients to interact with your business anytime on any device. Deliver amazing service with a personalized client portal. Manage customers and respond to client requests – at your office or on-the-go. Simplify teamwork with shared client records, unified calendar and easy lead transfer. Automate client communication, notifications & reminders. Allow clients to set and reschedule appointments anytime, from any device. Offers an online list of services, fees and scheduling options. Reduces no-shows by automating confirmations & reminders. Stays in-sync with your phone and existing calendar – Outlook, Google, iCal and more.

Set More

SetMore.com is an easy to use web based app that lets you manage your appointments. It lets your customers book appointments with you even when you are unavailable. You will get more appointments booked than before. You will get, responsive & clean appointment booking pages, Facebook fanpage booking button, Google Calendar sync, booking button for business website, SMS/Email appointment confirmations & reminders, employee scheduling and a lot more.

Acuity Scheduling

AcuityScheduling.com is like a personal-assistant for your schedule–only better. With Acuity Scheduling, booking appointments with your clients & customers doesn’t have to be a never-ending time suck anymore. (Hallelujah!) Let your clients view your real-time availability, select the date and time that works best for them, pay in advance via Stripe, Paypal or Authorize.net, and even cancel or reschedule all on their own–without you having to drive yourself crazy.

Reservio
Reservio.com allows you to save your time and start managing your bookings in online booking software. It helps you improve your services, promote your business better and grow it faster. Organize your schedule with simple on-line calendar and stay up-to-date anywhere you go. Get repetitive tasks made automatically, accept bookings 24/7, reduce your “no-shows” with email & SMS reminders.

Simply Book

SimplyBook.me offers an extensive online booking system with reminders for medical services, beauty salons, event planners etc. We offer free version for companies with less than 120 bookings a month. Our solution offers companies the possibility to send promotions at predefined times. Companies can also choose from different design templates, customized languages, choose from extensive add-ins options to enhance the system all in order to provide their clients with outstanding service.

Clickbook

Clickbook.net is an online scheduling software that allows service providers to schedule clients in the spots that the vendors themselves prefer. As most people now manage their business and make bookings on the go, the free online scheduling software is available via a mobile app. As with most mobile apps, the layout of the scheduling program is more basic. However, it still enables customers to sign in and book appointments, while service providers can access most of their dashboard to manage their account. The appointment schedule software can be synchronized with any device that supports iCal calendar subscription which includes Windows, Macintosh, Linux and most iPhones and iPods for complete flexibility and freedom.

10 to 8

10to8.com is a FREE online appointment scheduling & online booking solution, trusted by 11,000+ independent practitioners, tutors, coaches & small businesses. Send SMS & email reminders to cut no-shows, track client notes and attendance history, let clients book your free slots, take payments and manage complex availability with calendar sync. Secure data storage with bank-rate encryption. Setup in less than 2min, and say farewell to admin woes.

Calendly

Calendly.com allows you to say goodbye to email tag for scheduling appointments, interviews, calls, demos and much more. Checks your Google or Office 365 calendar for conflicts, so you’re never double-booked. Adds new events to your calendar automatically. Phone, tablet or desktop—you and your invitees can use Calendly anywhere, from any device. Automatically email custom confirmations and reminders to invitees. Set buffer times between meetings, prevent last minute meetings, create secret event types and much more. Set your capacity and let multiple invitees schedule the same slot. Useful for tours, webinars, classes, workshops, etc. Invitees can add their meetings to their favorite calendar platform in one click. No registration or signup required to schedule.

Doodle

Doodle.com offers a wide selection of online solutions that radically simplify the process of scheduling appointments, ranging from the group event “poll” that doesn’t require registration to the professional appearance with own branding. Once registered, connect your calendar and keep track of all your polls. By using your mobile device, you can respond to a meeting poll, initiate a poll, and see all of your polls at a glance. In addition to the mobile Web app, Doodle also offers a native app for iPads and iPhones.

When is Good

WhenIsGood.net is an easy way to find out when everyone is free for your next meeting or event. Click the grid for all the times that are good for you – you get a link to email to your invitees. They see your proposed times and click on when they are free. You visit your results page and see when everyone can do. No sign-up form. No password to choose. No fuss at all.

Assistant.To

Assistant.to continually monitors your availability and will work with your recipient to find a commonly available time. Uses the same secure servers & hosting as Dropbox, SAP, etc. with 99% uptime & SSL data encryption. Remembers your most common meeting locations and availability, so you can schedule a meeting in seconds. Book meetings with one email. No back & forth. No double bookings. And it’s free!

Need a Little Extra Support?

The back-and-forth headache of scheduling will never disappear completely, but these tools will help you decide on a meeting time and iron out the details in a much more efficient fashion. Give these apps a try, and opt out of email tag once and for all.

If you know you want to take advantage of the many benefits of online scheduling (or any other form of scheduling) but don’t want to spend the time navigating the scheduling tools, remember that Alpine Small Business Solutions is here for you! We can create and schedule meetings or appointments for you to meet your organization’s scheduling needs. And if there is any other aspect of social media management or business building that you want assistance with, we’d love to help. Just shoot us an email or call us up.

There are many costs and concerns to consider when starting a new business, but one that you may not think of is quality images. When building your website, writing a blog, or doing social posts for your business, you will want to add photos to jazz up the look. Imagery is a great way to add imagination and creativity to your website, blog, and social media, but, you need to make sure you are not using copyrighted material. Finding high-quality images  can take some time, but it is worth the time to present your business in a good light. (You can also hire a virtual assistant to take the time to find good images and present you with a few to choose from.)

As important as quality stock photos are for any business, you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to get them. There are many sites that offer quality imagery that does not cost a thing. They may not always be exactly what you imagined, but you can often find something that will cover your needs at no-cost for your business.

Listed here are several sites that offer images with no charge and no issues with copy right. You can use these images for whatever you would like. Your online business manager may have others you can use as well.

Pixabay is a great tool for all your stock image needs. All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty-free for anything you like, even in commercial applications.

Morgue File contains free high-resolution digital stock photographs and reference images for corporate or public use. This site allows you to search for specific photos and has a very large archive. Be aware, there are links to other photos that you would have to pay for.

Unsplash is a great resource for high-resolutions photos. You must  subscribe to the site, but after you sign up, you get 10 new photos every 10 days.

Gratisogroahy is a free high-resolution pictures you can use on your personal and commercial projects.

Picjumbo is an easy-to-use site full of different categories of photos that are completely free for personal or commercial use.

Startup Stock Photos is an easy site that you can use all the photos from however you choose. It has an archive that you can browse through. The photos are high-quality but the site is relatively new so the archive is somewhat small still.

FreeImages is a free membership to resources for designers’ backgrounds, images, and photo collections.

Little Visuals is a subscription site. You get seven high-resolution images sent in a zipped file to you every seven days.

Life of Pix another site that allows you to use the photos however you choose with no copyright restrictions. They have a fairly large gallery that you can browse through different categories of photos.

Kabookpics is a Great place to get breathtaking Free Pictures for business or personal projects.

Death to the Stock Photo site is large and full of many different categories of photos. They send photos to you every month, but it does have an option to buy a subscription for premium options.

MMT Stock images are a free for commercial use photos by Jeffrey Betts.

Snapwire connects mobile photographers with businesses and brands that need creative imagery. Authentic, Royalty-Free photos created just for you

 

SplitShire site is run by a photographer who was sick of trying to find quality images that didn’t cost a fortune. It has a premium option that sends all the photos right to your Drop Box, but the site is large and full of categorized photos all for free.

New Old Stock has many photos that are popular or fairly well known. This site works under “no known copyright restrictions.” This basically means that the copy rights have expired or aren’t likely to be enforced, but they take no liability for their use.

RGBstock site requires registration, but is very large and full of photos that are categorized and have a search option available. The only restriction they have on the photos is that you can’t use them for anything in a resale form. In other words, you can’t print and sell their photos.

Freepik offers users, high quality graphic designs: exclusive illustrations and graphic resources carefully selected by our design team in order to provide our users with great content that can be used in both personal and commercial projects.

Bonus site… because we all like surprises

AllTheFreeStock is the one place to find all the FREE Stock Images Stock VideosSound EffectsIcons & more.. Get all the Free Stock Images, Videos, Music and Icons in one location. All of the sites under [ Free Stock Photos ] offers images listed under the Creative Commons Zero license, so you are free to use these images in commercial projects. [ Free Stock Videos ], [ Free Sound Effects ] & [ Free Icons ] offer different licenses.

I am sure there are many more great sites out there that have quality images free of charge that can be used in your small business, however, your creative heart desires. Share your favorites with us in the comments below.