We get it; Mac users do things differently, including the way they schedule meetings and appointments. To help our Apple fans out this week, we’ve reviewed the best choices of scheduling software for Mac users.
Why Do You Need Scheduling Software, Boss
If you’re a solopreneur, a boss, or a team leader, you know how difficult it can be to book a meeting. Every meeting takes at least a dozen emails before it’s organized.
You propose a date and time, and the client comes back with a different date and time. Then there’s the mandatory back and forth until you agree on what works for you both. With any luck, there are only two schedules to align and no more than that.
While everyone flexes their patience, you suddenly realize that there is an easier way to do this; that is, to use scheduling software.
Not only does it help to automate setting up meetings, but with the right software, you don’t have to lift a finger to organize your daily, weekly, and even monthly dairy. No matter the size of your company, scheduling software can help you:
- save valuable time scheduling and booking meetings
- increase your profits by making it easier to get bookings confirmed
- lower your bottom line with reduced admin costs and increased time being productive
The right scheduling software can take your business to the next level. It’s not just Windows users that get to have the latest, best software to play with. Here’s our definitive list of the best scheduling software for macOS.
Is Scheduling Software Right For My Business?
If you spend a lot of time juggling and organizing meetings, or you send dozens of emails to set up an appointment, then you can benefit from booking software. Scheduling software can automate this process, making it easier to get down to business.
Does Apple Have A Scheduling App?
Every Apple device has Apple’s Calendar app preinstalled on them. This booking app helps you track your appointments. However, unlike most of the apps we review here, Apple’s Calendar is pretty limited and requires a lot of manual work.
The Best Scheduling Software For Mac (Our Reviews)
1. Book Like A Boss - Overall Best Online Booking Platform
We start our review with the overall best online booking platform winner. That’s right, Book Like A Boss is an all-in-one landing pages builder designed to make bookings and sales for your business.
With more than 40,000 users and a simple-to-follow, 17-minute setup, it’s easy to see why this platform is a top software choice for different businesses.
This popular online scheduling tool is platform-independent, meaning both Mac and Windows users can use it.
You also don’t need to worry about complicated system or hardware requirements and incompatibility issues. As long as your Mac can handle an internet browser, you’re good to go.
Book Like A Boss (also known as BLAB) is easy to pick up and use. In fact, it takes only 17 minutes to go from signup to having your booking page published. This ease of use will save you time and money when onboarding new staff or adding team members to the scheduling pool.
With BLAB, you get to create a landing page where your clients can effortlessly manage the entire booking process. There are quite a few benefits to using an automated scheduling system on the client side.
Your clients will feel like they are a priority. They will also feel like they are always in control. No doubt doing this helps to increase customer loyalty by providing a hassle-free customer journey.
On top of that, it saves you loads of valuable time and money when the always-online landing pages convert leads into customers. You don’t need a sales representative when the page does all the work for you, and there’s no need to only take bookings during working hours. Now you have a 24/7 system to fill your schedule automatically.
The platform-independent software integrates incredibly well with a variety of productivity tools. Some of our favorite integrations include Apple Calendar (formerly ACL), Zapier, PayPal, Stripe, Office 365, Zoom, and even Mailchimp.
This integration means that you never even have to leave the Book Like A Boss platform to access your most loved and most used tools. You could even continue to use them and let the booking platform automatically organize and schedule your business.
You’ll end up focusing on running your business and not getting stuck trying to schedule events, meetings, classes, or appointments.
Who It’s Right For
Book Like A Boss is excellent for anyone who wants to effortlessly create a landing page where prospective customers or leads can book a service, classes, or meetings.
Some of the people that love this easy-to-use booking software are:
- Solopreneurs
- Coaches
- Tutors
- Sales teams
Pros
- No system requirements
- Integrates well with a variety of favorite apps
- Highly customizable
- Create outstanding booking pages
- Automated booking system
- Take payments
- Collect customer information
- A 14-day free trial is available
Cons
- No mobile app is available, although it is entirely mobile-optimized
2. iMeetingX - Several Apps In One
The next entry on our list of best scheduling software for Mac is the daunting iMeetingX. If you aren’t familiar with iMeetingX yet, don’t worry. This new kid on the block does have handy features to impress.
With iMeetingX you get access to a variety of useful productivity and scheduling tools. You can easily keep all the essential information about a meeting in one place. Of course, having that information in one place makes it easy to quickly lookup important details.
You can track contact details, the meeting’s agenda, notes, objectives, location, and dates. There’s even the option to add attachments to your meetings.
iMeetingX believes in making life easy. That’s why you get the option to create templates based on your meetings. With templates, it’s quick and easy to create recurring appointments. To help save you even more time, you can upload participant details in bulk.
However, unlike with BLAB, iMeetingX is not an automated booking platform. You’ll still have to capture all of the details and organize the meeting manually. We would’ve loved to see some automation with this platform.
Yet, if you want a powerful meeting app for Mac and don’t mind doing things by hand, iMeetingX is a great tool. It’s handy for project managers that lead several teams and have to juggle loads of information daily.
Who It’s Right For
iMeetingX is a powerful app that eliminates the need for having several apps to organize, run and document your meetings. The built-in task manager makes it easy to stay on top of essential tasks.
Some of the people that may benefit from using iMeetingX are:
- Team leaders
- Project managers
- Personal assistants
- Sales teams
Pros
- A robust set of tools in one app
- 7-day free trial
- An iOS app is available
- Automatic local backups on your device
Cons
- Not an automated system
- Steep learning curve
3. BusyCal - A Flexible MacOS Calendar
A calendar is at the heart of every booking and scheduling software for Mac users. That’s why our next entry is the BusyCal app for macOS.
At first glance, it would be easy to think that BusyCal is an Apple Calendar clone. However, it’s much more than just a simple calendar.
This handy calendar software makes keeping track of your bookings a breeze. It automatically pulls reminders in from Apple’s Reminders.
This automated syncing will save you some time and make sure that you stay on top of the critical tasks that need to be done. BusyCal also integrates well with your other default calendars and productivity tools.
With BusyCal, you can easily add your Google, Yahoo, Fruux, Fastmail, Office 365, CalDAV, and Exchange accounts. This integration will allow the app to automatically sync between your accounts, letting you view and manage your appointments in one convenient place.
BusyCal has an Availability Panel that allows you to see when you’ll be next available quickly. There are also local weather forecasts and a task panel for keeping track of your essential tasks.
Saying that BusyCal is flexible is an understatement. You can customize BusyCal in various ways to suit your specific needs and demands better, from moving info panels around to setting it up to show you only the info you need.
However, we find that BusyCal doesn’t allow several users to collaborate on the same calendar. Book Like A Boss will enable you to add an admin user to a calendar, such as your personal assistant. Doing this allows for better and faster control over meetings and scheduling.
That said, if you’re looking for a flexible, customizable calendar for Mac, and don’t mind the price tag, then BusyCal is a viable choice for you.
Who It’s Right For
BusyCal is great for anyone that loves managing their own calendar. While it lacks automation, it provides instant control and syncs well with several popular other platforms.
Some of BusyCal’s staunchest supporters are:
- Business professionals
- Personal assistants
- Team leaders
- Solopreneurs
Pros
- Mobile and desktop apps available
- Incredibly easy to customize
- Easy to master
- Powerful calendar app
- 30-day free trial available
Cons
- It doesn’t allow collaboration
- Pricier than other options
4. Google Calendar - Best Free Scheduling Software
Chances are, you’re already using Google Calendar. Google Calendar is incredibly powerful and easy to use. Not only can you efficiently access your calendar on various devices, but Google Calendar has robust collaboration tools.
These tools allow you and participants to find the right time to meet effortlessly. All you have to do is create the meeting, add the participants and then click on the “Find a time” button. Google will then do all of the work.
It compares and matches calendars between all the participants to find a suitable time for the meeting. While this saves a lot of time, during testing, we found that Google will often schedule events a couple of weeks in the future.
Sadly, this means that there’s still a lot of manual work and collaboration involved in scheduling a meeting between you and the attendees. Especially if the meeting is an urgent one and some juggling is required.
We find that Google Calendar is great as a free scheduling tool for internal use. Perhaps, instead, use it to schedule team meetings rather than schedule appointments with your clients.
Google has a booking page feature available to paying customers. However, this booking page cannot be branded or customized with your business’s branding. Prospective clients will face a generic, pretty bland-looking booking page.
In contrast, BLAB offers you the opportunity to customize your online booking page fully. A customized booking page is far more impressive and immediately tells customers that you’re serious about business.
Google Calendar also works better when you’re making full use of the GSuite software. This software includes making use of Gmail, Google Docs, and more. If you use your business email and software such as Office 365, you’ll find that integration is somewhat tricky.
Who It’s Right For
Google Calendar, despite its limitations, is still a popular free, always-online scheduling tool.
Today, it’s used as scheduling software for mac users that are:
- Small companies
- Sales teams
- Colleagues
- Startups
Pros
- No system requirements
- Free to use
- Works well with Google apps such as Gmail
- Great collaboration
- No downloads required
Cons
- Limited features
- No, or buggy, automation features
5. Fantastical - Calendar and Tasks In One App
Our next entry has the word “fantastic” in its name, and it’s not altogether unsuited. Fantastical is a fantastic calendar and to-do list app for Mac users.
This Mac-based calendar app is easily located in your menu bar, your desktop, as well as your iPad, Apple Watch and iPhone. So, it’s pretty straightforward to always stay on top of your bookings.
We find that it’s straightforward to change the design to suit our needs. You can choose between yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily views. All views come in both a light and dark theme to suit our system and styling.
The Fantastical app makes booking meetings easy. With a couple of clicks, you can propose multiple times or even create templates for your recurring meetings.
Unfortunately, unlike BLAB, this doesn’t eliminate the back-and-forth emails required to set up most meetings. You’ll still have to propose and counter-propose locations, dates, and times, which is something that an excellent scheduling software tool should eliminate.
On the other hand, Fantastical has a beautifully designed task panel, which keeps you updated with important tasks while you book and organize your meetings. Tasks can also be synced with the Todoist app, making it quite handy if you have the app installed.
Who It’s Right For
Fantastical is a beautifully designed, well-thought-out calendar app. While it lacks the more professional booking features, as seen with other platforms such as BLAB, it’s still a popular choice for many Mac users.
Fantastical is often used by:
- Small businesses
- Solopreneurs
- Managers
- Consultants
Pros
- Beautiful and easy-to-use interface
- Several templates
- Can schedule recurring meetings
- Available across most Apple devices
- Well documented support
Cons
- No automated booking features
- A pricy monthly subscription
6. Schedule It - Overall Best Booking Software For Project Managers
The next entry in our list of best choices of scheduling software for Mac users is the ever-evolving, enterprise-ready Schedule It.
Schedule It isn’t a new booking software tool available to Mac users. In fact, it’s been around since the late 2003’s. It’s undergone several iterations since its initial launch.
At first glance, Schedule It looks complicated. You might find that it does have a seriously steep learning curve. However, should you master it, you’ll discover Schedule It offers exceptional scheduling abilities to you and your team.
Schedule It allows project managers and busy team leaders to schedule various activities and resources within the company. With this software, managers get to track everything from tracking your staff and their availability to staying on top of equipment availability and more.
All of this information helps the busy manager better plan the available resources and ensure that the business is running as efficiently as possible. Doing this can save the company considerable amounts of money.
While the interface is a drag-and-drop interface, we find that specific tasks, such as getting a quick overview or setting up a meeting, are still somewhat labor-intensive. You’ll probably spend some time managing and organizing your resources and events here.
On the other hand, we were pretty pleased with Schedule It’s excellent analytics. The easy-to-generate reports will show you how your equipment, resources, and employees are being utilized at any time of the day, week, or month.
You can also export the reports and then share them with your team to find ways to improve your efficiency. Schedule It isn’t the only scheduling software that realizes how crucial accurate analytics are.
Even Book Like A Boss provides analytics through Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics. All of these data metrics are important to ensure that your company runs efficiently and makes a maximum profit at all times.
Who It’s Right For
Schedule It isn’t easy software to use. So, if you plan on signing up for it, keep in mind that there’s a steep learning curve. You’ll also spend considerable time mastering and unlocking the powerful features behind this business resource scheduling tool.
However, this tool is excellent for:
- Project managers
- Construction managers
- Large teams
- Complicated business environments
Pros
- Incredibly powerful scheduling software
- Detailed analytics
- Ability to tag and categorize tasks and meetings
- Comprehensive support
- Available on various Apple devices
Cons
- Complicated
- Expensive monthly fee
How To Buy The Right Booking Software
So, you’ve decided that it’s time to start automating and streamlining your business. Congratulations! The right booking software can take your business to the next level. It’s essential to choose the right platform to make your life easier.
While not every business has the exact same needs, we find that some general, universal truths can help you choose the best booking and scheduling software.
- Do you want your booking software to integrate with your website?
- Do you want to automate the booking process?
- Do you want a landing page that can convert visitors into customers?
- Do you want your booking software to integrate with a variety of other tools?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, we recommend looking at the Book Like A Boss platform. BLAB has all of those essentials covered, and you’ll quickly see that it’s easy to increase your sales when you choose the right scheduling software.
Conclusion
Investing in the right scheduling software is a must. It’s the one software tool that can make your business act as if it’s a big business. You’ll find that scheduling software can save you time and money while improving the customer’s journey.
You’ve already done the hard work, and that’s by researching the best scheduling tools for Mac users. Your next step is to choose the right booking software and start to make your professional life more manageable.
Today, we find that Book Like A Boss is the best booking platform for Mac users. The platform integrates and syncs with various other tools, such as Office 365 and even Facebook Pixel.
There’s even a free pricing tier available where you can test the software out and start booking like a boss. So, it won’t cost you anything to try it out.
