Picktime vs SimplyBook.me
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 SimplyBook.me
SimplyBook.me is far more configurable, with a modular catalogue covering memberships, packages, intake forms, and industry-specific workflows, priced on booking volume. Picktime is simpler and cheaper but hits a ceiling much sooner. Move to SimplyBook.me when your booking workflow becomes genuinely unusual or your volume outgrows a small tool; stay on Picktime while it does not.
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 SimplyBook.me if
Consumer-facing service businesses that need to be discoverable (Reserve with Google, Instagram, Facebook, a real booking website) and that want to assemble exactly the commerce features they use, at a booking volume that fits inside a plan allowance.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Picktime | SimplyBook.me |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Scheduling | Scheduling |
| Starting price | $0 (Free), then around $3 per user per month billed annually (free plan available) | €0 (Free), then €11.90 per month billed annually (Basic) (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 subscription metered on two axes: bookings included per month and how many optional custom features can be active at once, with providers also capped per tier. SMS, WhatsApp, AI voice, extra bookings, and a custom domain are sold separately. |
| 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. | 50 bookings a month, one service provider, and one custom feature, on the core booking system with a booking website and calendar sync. |
| Free trial | The free plan serves as the evaluation path; no credit card is required to sign up | 14 days with access to most premium features and 50 bookings, no credit card required |
| 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. | Consumer-facing service businesses that need to be discoverable (Reserve with Google, Instagram, Facebook, a real booking website) and that want to assemble exactly the commerce features they use, at a booking volume that fits inside a plan allowance. |
| 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. | Half a day for a basic setup, and realistically a week for a business using the commerce features properly. The extra time is spent choosing custom features against your plan allowance and configuring the booking website, not fighting the 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. | The steepest in this dossier. The custom feature model is powerful and unfamiliar, the settings surface is large, and the interaction between memberships, packages, coupons, and services rewards reading the documentation rather than guessing. |
| Platforms | Web application, iOS and Android apps, Hosted booking page, Website embeds | Web app, Generated booking website with CMS, iframe, button, and contact widgets, WordPress and Joomla plugins, Reserve with Google, Facebook, and Instagram booking, Mobile apps |
| Compliance | GDPR | GDPR, PCI handled through the connected payment processor |
| Founded | 2017 | 2011 |
| Headquarters | Austin, Texas, United States | Cyprus, with offices in Ukraine and Iceland |
| Ownership | Privately held | Privately held, operated by Notando Iceland Ltd |
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.
SimplyBook.me
Strengths
- Reserve with Google, Facebook, and Instagram booking put live availability where consumers actually search, which no other product in this dossier matches.
- The product generates a full booking website with a small CMS, custom pages, reviews, and a directory listing rather than a single booking page.
- The custom feature catalogue is the widest in the category, covering memberships, packages, coupons and gift cards, tickets, add-ons, resources, classes, multiple locations, and client login.
- A permanently free plan at 50 bookings a month rather than a one-week trial, which is a far more honest evaluation path than Acuity offers.
Limitations
- Two independent meters (bookings per month and active custom features) make the pricing hard to predict and hard to compare against flat-rate competitors.
- Booking overages at $4 per 100 mean the bill rises with success, which is the opposite structure from Acuity and Setmore's unlimited-appointment plans.
- SMS, WhatsApp, and AI voice are credit packs at $8 per 100, so no-show reduction carries an explicit and ongoing running cost.
- API access starts at the €49.90 Premium tier and the High Load API is Enterprise-only, making this an expensive developer platform relative to Setmore or Cal.com.
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.
SimplyBook.me
Freemium subscription metered on two axes: bookings included per month and how many optional custom features can be active at once, with providers also capped per tier. SMS, WhatsApp, AI voice, extra bookings, and a custom domain are sold separately.
- Free€0
- Basic€11.90
- Standard€24.90
- Premium€49.90
- EnterpriseCustom quote
The modular model is either excellent or exasperating depending on your feature list. If the three things your business needs happen to be three custom features, Basic at €11.90 is a bargain and undercuts Acuity's entry tier while doing more. If you need memberships, packages, coupons, classes, intake forms, and multiple locations together, you are on Standard at €24.90, which is roughly Acuity Standard's price with a booking cap attached but with far better discovery through Reserve with Google and social booking. The genuine weak spot is metered communications and metered volume: SMS credits and $4-per-100 overage bookings mean the bill moves with success, and a business doing 800 bookings a month is paying to grow. Buy it for reach and configurability, not for predictability.
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 profileSimplyBook.me
SimplyBook.me is the most capable and least predictable product in this category. Nothing else here puts live availability into Google Search results, Instagram, and Facebook simultaneously while also generating a full booking website with a CMS, and nothing else offers memberships, packages, gift cards, tickets, resources, and AI voice booking from the same catalogue. The price of that reach is complexity and metering. You are constrained on two independent axes, bookings per month and active custom features, with $4-per-100 overages and $8-per-100 SMS credits on top, which means the bill rises as the business succeeds. Buy it if discovery is your hardest problem and you are willing to spend a week learning the configuration model. If you want unlimited appointments and a bill that never moves, Acuity is the calmer purchase, and if you simply want the fundamentals for almost nothing, Setmore is the cheaper one.
Read the full SimplyBook.me profilePicktime profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; SimplyBook.me last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.