Picktime vs Setmore
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentPicktime compared with Setmore
Setmore is the better-known free-tier booking tool with a cleaner interface and a large installed base, but its free plan is oriented to staff calendars rather than resources, and it charges more per user for its paid features. Picktime models rooms and equipment properly and is cheaper. Setmore is the safer, more polished choice; Picktime the more capable one for the money.
Choose Picktime if
Very small service businesses, tutors, clinics, studios, libraries, and equipment rental operations that need staff and resource booking together, and cannot or will not pay salon-platform prices for it.
Choose Setmore if
Very small service businesses on tight budgets: salons, barbers, tutors, trainers, small clinics, and independent practitioners who want online booking, reminders, and card payments for either nothing or five dollars a head.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Picktime | Setmore |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Scheduling | Scheduling |
| Starting price | $0 (Free), then around $3 per user per month billed annually (free plan available) | $0 (Free), then $5 per user per month billed annually ($12 month to month) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Freemium with per-user pricing on paid tiers, billed annually, and tier limits expressed in team members, resources, locations, and classes rather than in bookings. Appointments are unlimited on every tier. | Freemium, with a capped free plan and a single per-user Pro plan. Annual billing is dramatically cheaper than monthly. Enterprise is a custom quote. |
| Free plan | Free covers 3 team members, 3 resources, 2 locations, 2 classes, and unlimited appointments, with email notifications, the hosted booking page, PayPal payments, 8-plus integrations, and mobile apps. | Up to four staff logins and 200 appointments a month, with a public Booking Page, online and in-person payments, email confirmations and reminders, website widget, mobile apps, and Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and Zapier connectors. Setmore branding is shown. |
| Free trial | The free plan serves as the evaluation path; no credit card is required to sign up | The free plan serves as the evaluation path; Pro features can be trialled from within the product |
| Best for | Very small service businesses, tutors, clinics, studios, libraries, and equipment rental operations that need staff and resource booking together, and cannot or will not pay salon-platform prices for it. | Very small service businesses on tight budgets: salons, barbers, tutors, trainers, small clinics, and independent practitioners who want online booking, reminders, and card payments for either nothing or five dollars a head. |
| Setup time | An hour or two. Define team members, services, resources, and locations, connect a calendar, and publish the booking page. Resource modelling takes the most thought because it is where the real scheduling logic lives. | An hour or two for a working booking page: add services with durations and prices, add staff and their hours, connect a payment processor, and embed the widget on your site. Most of that time is deciding your policies rather than configuring software. |
| Learning curve | Low. The concepts (staff, services, resources, locations, classes) map directly onto how a small service business already thinks, and there is nothing here that requires training. | Low. Setmore is deliberately simpler than Acuity or SimplyBook.me, which is both its main appeal and the reason businesses eventually outgrow it. Staff can be trained on the calendar in a single sitting. |
| Platforms | Web application, iOS and Android apps, Hosted booking page, Website embeds | Web app, iOS, Android, Windows desktop, macOS desktop, Website widget and plugin, Branded customer app option |
| Compliance | GDPR | HIPAA via the Setmore Health configuration on Pro, PCI handled through Square, Stripe, PayPal, or LawPay |
| Founded | 2017 | 2011 |
| Headquarters | Austin, Texas, United States | Portland, Oregon, United States |
| Ownership | Privately held | Privately held and bootstrapped; no disclosed venture funding |
Strengths and limitations
Picktime
Strengths
- The only free plan in this batch that models staff, resources, locations, and classes together rather than just booking links.
- Unlimited appointments on every tier including free, so the free plan does not degrade as the business gets busier.
- Resource booking is a first-class concept, which makes Picktime viable for libraries, studios, courts, and equipment rental where staff calendars are irrelevant.
- Round-robin at around $2.25 per user per month on Pro is by a wide margin the cheapest team distribution in the category.
Limitations
- SMS reminders and two-way calendar sync are both absent from the free plan, which are the two things a service business most needs, so the free tier is better for evaluation than for production.
- No point of sale, inventory, commission tracking, or payroll, so a retail-attached business will outgrow it quickly.
- No consumer marketplace, so it brings no new clients; all demand has to be generated by you.
- The integration catalogue is respectable in breadth but shallow in depth; CRM connections do not match the field-mapped native connectors Calendly offers.
Setmore
Strengths
- The most generous free plan for a real service business in this category: four staff logins, 200 appointments a month, card payments, and a website widget at zero cost.
- Pro at $5 per user per month billed annually is the cheapest serious paid tier in the entire dossier, and it removes every meaningful limit.
- Online payments are available on the free plan, which almost no competitor allows, and four processors are supported including LawPay for legal practices.
- A HIPAA-compliant configuration on the $5 Pro plan makes it the cheapest route to compliant scheduling for a small healthcare or therapy practice.
Limitations
- No commerce program: no packages, memberships, subscriptions, or gift certificates, which is exactly the layer that makes a service business predictable revenue rather than per-visit cash.
- SMS reminders are Pro-only, which means the free plan lacks the single most effective no-show tool for the businesses most likely to use it.
- The 200-appointment monthly cap on free arrives faster than owners expect and is easy to hit in a busy month with two staff.
- Pro's headline $5 price is annual-only; month to month costs $12, so flexibility carries a very large premium.
Pricing compared
Picktime
Freemium with per-user pricing on paid tiers, billed annually, and tier limits expressed in team members, resources, locations, and classes rather than in bookings. Appointments are unlimited on every tier.
- Free$0
- StarterAbout $3
- ProAbout $2.25
Nothing else in this category offers staff, resources, locations, and classes on a free plan, and nothing else offers round-robin at around $2.25 per user. Picktime is priced roughly an order of magnitude below the salon platforms and below every meeting-link tool that has team features. The honest counterweight is what the price buys: no point of sale, no inventory, no marketplace, no commission tracking, no payroll, a shallow integration catalogue, and no security attestation. If your booking problem is genuinely a booking problem, and not a whole business operations problem, Picktime solves it for less money than anything else that models resources properly. If your booking problem comes attached to a till and a stock room, the saving is illusory.
Setmore
Freemium, with a capped free plan and a single per-user Pro plan. Annual billing is dramatically cheaper than monthly. Enterprise is a custom quote.
- Free$0
- Pro$5
- EnterpriseCustom quote
On price per capability, nothing else here comes close. A six-person business pays $30 a month on Pro for unlimited appointments, SMS reminders, recurring bookings, branding removal, API access, and a HIPAA option. The equivalent in per-seat sales scheduling software would be $60 to $100, and Acuity reserves HIPAA and API access for a $49 tier. The catch is scope: Setmore covers appointments, payments, and reminders competently and stops there, with no packages, memberships, subscriptions, or gift certificates, and no inbound routing at all. Judged as the value floor of the appointment-business category, it is exceptional. Judged as a growth path, you will eventually outgrow it.
Editorial verdict on each
Picktime
Picktime is the best value in this category and one of the least polished products in it, which is not a coincidence. Nothing else gives you staff calendars, bookable rooms and equipment, multiple locations, and classes on a free plan, and nothing else sells round-robin for around $2.25 a user. For a tutor, a small clinic, a library booking study rooms, or a rental business, it does the whole job for less than the price of a sandwich. The limits are real and worth stating plainly: SMS reminders and two-way calendar sync are not free, there is no till, no inventory, no marketplace, no security attestation, and the booking page will never be the reason someone remembers your brand. Buy it when the booking problem is a scheduling problem. When it becomes a business operations problem, move to Vagaro, Fresha, or Square and accept the bill.
Read the full Picktime profileSetmore
Setmore is the value floor of appointment scheduling, and that is a compliment. The free plan is a working business system rather than a demonstration: four staff, 200 appointments a month, card payments, a website widget, and email reminders at zero cost. Pro at $5 per user per month billed annually then removes every cap and throws in SMS reminders, recurring appointments, branding removal, API access, and a HIPAA-compliant configuration, which collectively undercut every competitor in this dossier, several of them by a factor of five. The limits are equally clear. There is no commerce program, so packages, memberships, and gift certificates need Acuity or SimplyBook.me, and there is no routing or CRM layer, so sales teams should not be here at all. Buy it if you run a small service business and want the fundamentals done well for almost nothing, and revisit the decision the day you want to sell a ten-session bundle.
Read the full Setmore profilePicktime profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Setmore last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.