The 11 Best Appointment Booking Systems for Pharmacies (And Why Travel Clinic Pro Leads the Pack)
- Nand Shah
- May 17
- 8 min read
Updated: May 18
Running a travel clinic inside a pharmacy should be straightforward. But let’s be honest — it rarely is.
You’ve got screening forms on clipboards, appointments that don’t show up in your calendar, and reminders that rely on staff remembering to send them (which, let’s face it, doesn’t always happen). Patients forget their bookings, show up late, or worse — never show up at all.
What’s the common thread? A disconnect. Between systems. Between patients. And between what should happen and what actually does.
That’s why a smart, pharmacy-ready appointment system is non-negotiable. Not just any booking tool — but one that’s built with the quirks and chaos of a real-world clinic in mind.
We’ve reviewed 11 booking systems often used by pharmacies. Some are powerful but generic. Others try to be everything to everyone. But one solution stands out because it’s purpose-built for pharmacy travel clinics: Travel Clinic Pro.
Let’s break them down.
11 Best Appointment Booking Systems For Pharmacies
From all of the tools we reviewed, the team at Design Co Studio created it's own solution to travel clinic booking system. Travel Clinic Pro is the best appointment booking system in 2025 for pharmacies.
Travel Clinic Pro - Recommended Booking System For Travel Clinics
SimplyBook
WPAmelia
Setmore
Bookly
Acuity Scheduling
Square Appointments
Calendly
TidyCal
Travel Clinic Pro isn’t just a booking tool. It’s an entire booking system — built specifically for travel clinics inside pharmacies.
What makes it different?
Patients fill in digital screening forms before they arrive. No paper. No back-and-forth.
Appointments sync instantly to your clinic calendar.
Email confirmations and reminders are automated. Zero effort. Fewer no-shows.
It’s fully branded, integrates into your website, and works on every device.
Payment integration? Sorted. Stripe handles it in advance.
CRM integration? Yep. Patient info gets pushed straight into your records.
And here’s the kicker:
It’s all managed for you. No tech setup. No chasing support. Just a done-for-you solution that works.
If you want a system that actually runs your bookings while you focus on patient care, this is it.
Best for: Pharmacies running high-demand travel clinics that need reliability, automation, and a branded patient experience.
SimplyBook is a flexible, feature-rich platform — and while it isn't purpose-built for pharmacies, it does offer optional healthcare-specific add-ons. These include patient intake forms, SOAP notes, and HIPAA compliance, but they’re not part of the core product and require extra configuration.
For a pharmacy looking to run a travel clinic, SimplyBook can be made to work — but it involves a fair bit of manual setup. You’ll need to activate and customise several plugins, configure screening forms from scratch, and embed the tool into your site using its iframe or widget code.
It offers:
Online booking
Payment integrations
Some email notifications
But:
Screening forms are basic by default and require additional setup to match clinical needs
Full healthcare functionality needs multiple plugin activations and comes at a higher cost
Without technical support, setup can be time-consuming and unintuitive
Good for: Clinics with in-house tech support or admin time to customise workflows and manually stitch together the features they need.
Popular with WordPress users, WPAmelia is a plugin that offers sleek booking options directly within your site. It’s visually polished and gives patients a smooth booking journey, especially if your clinic website is already running on WordPress.
WPAmelia provides a centralised dashboard where staff can manage appointments, view daily schedules, and assign bookings to individual practitioners. The system supports SMS and email reminders, Google Calendar sync, and recurring appointments — useful features for maintaining patient engagement.
However, there are some caveats:
Screening forms aren’t built-in; you’ll need to use third-party plugins or integrate a form builder manually.
Reporting tools are fairly limited unless you upgrade to the premium tier.
Integration with other platforms like CRMs or marketing tools typically requires Zapier, which adds cost and complexity.
That said, WPAmelia works well for clinics that already have the tech infrastructure (and a WordPress-savvy team) to piece things together.
Good for: Tech-savvy pharmacies using WordPress who want full control over the booking UI but are comfortable managing integrations and workarounds. We recently implemented WPAmelia for Widcombe Pharmacy in Bath.
Pros:
Clean UI for patients
SMS/email notifications
Google Calendar sync
Cons:
Requires WordPress setup and maintenance
Form functionality is limited — no dedicated screening form builder
Integrations beyond Google Calendar need Zapier or dev work
Setmore is simple, intuitive, and easy to get started with. It’s popular with beauty and wellness businesses — but also used by some smaller clinics for basic appointment scheduling.
We’ve seen pharmacies use Setmore as a quick way to accept travel clinic bookings online, especially when starting out or running seasonal campaigns. For example, one pharmacy in the Midlands used Setmore during the summer travel season to manage vaccination bookings. They linked the booking page from their website and relied on email notifications to keep staff informed.
While it helped reduce phone traffic and manual diary entries, the setup fell short on clinical features. There was no way to capture pre-appointment screening forms, no patient record syncing, and no CRM tie-in. Staff still had to manually gather information and chase patients for follow-up details.
Pros:
Clean interface
Free plan available
Email notifications and calendar sync
Cons:
No patient screening forms
Limited customisation
Doesn’t support CRM or healthcare-specific workflows
Good for: Budget-conscious setups that need something quick and basic, but may outgrow it once demand increases or clinical complexity rises.
Bookly is a highly customisable booking plugin for WordPress. It gives you full control over your booking flow, letting you define service types, add staff schedules, customise forms, and manage notifications with precision.
For pharmacies with internal web developers or IT support, Bookly’s flexibility can be a major advantage. You can build tailored screening workflows, manage multiple calendars, and even create tiered service categories. Its form builder allows for custom patient intake questions, and with add-ons, you can expand functionality to include SMS reminders, Google Calendar sync, and online payments.
That said, the learning curve is steep. Every feature you want to use must be configured manually — and premium features often require separate purchases. Support is limited unless you’re on a paid tier, so you're mostly on your own for troubleshooting.
Bookly shines in clinics that value full control and don’t mind investing time to get the setup right. But for teams without in-house tech skills, it may become overwhelming.
Pros:
Flexible booking logic
Customisable fields
Multiple staff calendars
Cons:
Requires WordPress
You’ll need to manually manage most integrations
Limited support unless you pay for premium add-ons
Good for: Clinics with a developer or internal tech support who want complete control over how their system works and looks.
Owned by Squarespace, Acuity is sleek and professional — and offers a polished, user-friendly interface right out of the gate.
One of its standout features is intelligent time zone support, which ensures patients booking from abroad or travelling across regions don’t end up with calendar mix-ups. This is especially useful for travel clinics managing international bookings or digital consultations. It also supports multi-staff calendars, letting clinics assign specific services to designated team members with independent availability.
However, intake forms are limited. Acuity allows for custom forms, but these are basic and lack conditional logic or the depth required for travel clinic assessments. Clinics often end up collecting screening information manually or via follow-up emails, which increases admin overhead and opens the door to mistakes.
You can integrate payment options and sync appointments with Google Calendar, and reminder notifications are part of the standard package — but if you’re after deeper healthcare integrations or patient history tracking, Acuity won’t meet your needs without bolted-on tools.
Good for: Clinics that want a polished experience, are dealing with international patients, and have admin capacity to manually handle intake and backend workflows.
Pros:
Smart scheduling rules
Payment integration
SMS/email reminders
Cons:
Limited healthcare-specific features
Screening forms not tailored for travel clinics
Requires setup and manual data workflows
Cal.com is an open-source scheduling tool aimed at developers and enterprises. Its biggest strength lies in how configurable it is — if you’ve got coding skills or a dev team, you can shape this platform into nearly anything you need.
But that’s also its main challenge. For pharmacies without developer support, it’s overwhelming. There’s no ready-made healthcare mode, and you’ll need to self-host it or pay for managed plans. Screening forms, reminders, and CRM connections all require manual implementation or third-party tools.
Some clinics with advanced in-house capabilities have used Cal.com to build custom patient intake flows, connect with back-end systems, and automate reporting — but this isn’t typical. For most pharmacies, the build-from-scratch approach is simply too resource-intensive.
Good for: Clinics with full-stack development teams looking to build a bespoke, deeply integrated booking experience from the ground up.
Built for small businesses, especially in the retail and salon space, Square Appointments is great for managing simple services with payment integration baked in.
It works well if your pharmacy already uses Square POS, because you can manage bookings and payments from one place. It’s intuitive and fast — patients can book from mobile or desktop, get basic reminders, and pay in advance.
But here’s the issue: it’s not built for healthcare. You won’t find features like patient medical history, vaccine eligibility screening, or clinical form capture. Everything still needs to be handled manually, or using external tools that don’t naturally fit into a clinical workflow.
For example, you might take a booking online, but then need to email the patient separately for their screening form or store their info elsewhere. It increases the admin load and leaves room for error.
Good for: Pharmacies already using Square for other services and only offering travel bookings occasionally, without high clinical complexity.
Pros:
Easy to use
Works well with Square POS
Accepts payments
Cons:
Not built for medical use
No patient screening form features
No healthcare-grade compliance workflows
A favourite for sales and B2B, Calendly is clean and efficient — but only goes so far for clinical settings.
It’s perfect if you want to share a link, let someone pick a time, and drop it in your calendar. It handles availability, confirmations, and basic reminders well. But that’s where it ends.
Calendly doesn’t provide patient-specific features. There are no clinical intake forms, no health questionnaires, and no option to sync with a patient record system. Many pharmacies try to bolt on Typeform or Google Forms, but that quickly becomes messy and hard to track. If you need to manage vaccine eligibility, appointment triage, or consent collection — Calendly falls short.
It’s also worth noting that branding is limited unless you’re on a premium plan, and integrations require additional setup.
Good for: Clinics running very basic services or initial consultations, where no patient screening or clinical compliance is required.
Pros:
Great calendar control
Simple to use
Integration with Zoom, Google, etc.
Cons:
Not designed for patients
No screening forms or CRM
Not healthcare-specific
A budget-friendly Calendly alternative, TidyCal is ideal for simple scheduling with minimal bells and whistles.
It’s loved for its one-time pricing model — pay once and you’re in. For solo consultants or freelancers, it’s a solid choice. But for a pharmacy setting? It’s not equipped.
There’s no support for custom patient forms, no workflow automation, and limited branding. If a patient cancels or reschedules, you won’t get the kind of robust notifications or follow-up options that clinical environments rely on.
TidyCal does offer basic integrations like Google Calendar and Zapier, but even with those, you’ll have to patch together multiple tools to get something functional for a travel clinic.
Good for: Independent professionals with light scheduling needs. Not recommended for any pharmacy running clinical services or regulated processes.
Pros:
One-time payment
Clean design
Cons:
Basic feature set
No healthcare workflows
No forms, no CRM, no branding control
The Bottom Line
Most appointment tools are built for general use. They work okay. But they need extra tools, manual input, and your time to make them work for a travel clinic.
Travel Clinic Pro flips that completely.
It’s pharmacy-ready out of the box. It’s patient-focused. It’s automated, branded, and managed. And it’s designed to do what no other tool on this list can: run your travel clinic booking system for you.
👉 Want to see it in action? Book your free demo here.
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