[frederickcook]

Very simple, aesthetically pleasing interface. My only complaint is that I don't immediately see how this is any better than the alternatives (sending an email which gets sucked in by Google calendar, Outlook, etc.). Also, I'm asked to start putting information before I have a chance to find out.

Didn't investors have a saying 10 years ago, YAC (Yet Another Calendar)? What makes this clearly different?

[psm42]

Hi there. Thanks for taking the time to look at it (and to comment!). I'm still working out the best way to call out its differentiating feature - which is really aimed at people/businesses accepting bookings, rather than people making them. Once you have an account on the site, you can configure details of the business(es) for which you accept bookings, and when people send you a booking request, the interface asks them to provide information that you need to accept the booking (e.g. what type of booking you're making, at which location, etc.).

In fact, the whole app that you've looked at is really just meant to be a big funnel for the actual service. The paid part is a comprehensive web-based app for managing bookings for a small business, aimed at being used at the front desk (and indirectly by clients booking through the site).

[swombat]

Agreed. It's definitely something people need, but isn't it something people already have?

[bensummers]

Can you point to a really good SaaS system for handling appointments and billing? (please! I'm looking for one)

Three random use cases:

* Medical and pseudo-medical practices

* Oven cleaning companies and other property maintenance services

* Advice services

Does something like Google Calendar work well for that? You could use it when you have a diary secretary in the way, but not if you want a self-service element.

[bkorte]

I hope it's not out of line to point out a competitor in a post like this, but a very good friend of mine has this service:

http://www.24hrassistant.com

She primarily sells to hair stylists and those people, but has lots of different customers that use it in pretty out-of-the-box ways...

[bensummers]

Interesting. That's close to what I had in mind, thanks.

[simonk]

http://www.tungle.me ties into Google Calendar & Google Apps as well.

I know a company that build billing for medical and they tried to build out a product like this but the people running it just hated it. They either get people all booked in horrible times or for a non-busy place people see that and associate it with being bad. One solution they never tried is trying to make it like the Apple store booking engine.

[ktsmith]

This is probably the best version of online booking I've seen or had to use. The problems with most of these sites is the fact that they require you to send customers to a third party. If tungle.me could run embedded in the clients site, and integrate in any meaningful way with existing client databases it would be a home run. As it is my own clients will continue to request the very basic booking system that I have built simply because the customer never has to leave their site and it will take advantage of their existing customer database and billing systems.

[psm42]

People using bookingly.com to accept bookings have the option of adding a booking widget to their site, which lets people make bookings with them directly on their site.

[troyk]

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3...

genbook.com seems to have some decent traction in the space

[psm42]

Check out http://bookingly.com/help/manager_trial as it may be what you're looking for.

[kareemm]

i'm building www.easycalapp.com for self-employed people who take appointments. it's in early beta right now but we'll be rolling it out to a wider group in the next month.

[zackattack]

Send me an email (zackster@gmail), I'm interested in prototyping this.