Square Appointments vs booksy

Square Appointments and Booksy are both clever little systems designed to make the whole business of booking appointments as painless as possible, which is quite an ambitious goal considering the nature of human beings. They let customers click buttons instead of making phone calls, send helpful reminders to people who were never going to remember in the first place and even take payments in a manner that suggests money isn't a deeply awkward invention. Both have mobile apps, which means they can follow you wherever you go, just like guilt or the realization that you should have booked that haircut weeks ago.

Square Appointments, emerging in 2014 from the fine land of America, was designed primarily for small business owners who like their booking systems neatly integrated with their financial tools. It nestles comfortably within Square’s ecosystem, like a well-fed cat on a sunny windowsill, handling not just appointments but also invoices, point-of-sale transactions and the general expectation that technology should work seamlessly (which, of course, it rarely does). It even offers a free plan for solo users, presumably in recognition of the fact that independent business owners are often just one minor catastrophe away from living off toast and existential dread.

Booksy, arriving fashionably late in 2015 from Poland, takes a slightly different approach by leaning heavily into the beauty and wellness industry, where the ability to schedule a haircut at an ungodly hour is paramount. It operates with a touch of marketplace flair, helping businesses get discovered rather than just booked, which is a bit like giving a barber both a pair of scissors and a megaphone. There are no free plans, but there are plenty of marketing tools designed to keep customers coming back—because, after all, nobody wants to trust their eyebrows to a stranger twice.

See also: Top 10 Beauty Salon software