We are excited to announce the release of ScheduleOnce 5.0 – Our biggest release ever. This release includes important new features and pricing changes that will be highlighted below. A more detailed description of these new changes is available in the What’s new in 5.0 article.

New features in 5.0

Multi-user support
Multi-user plans allow you to use ScheduleOnce in a wide range of organizational scheduling scenarios. Your team can be based in one location or distributed across multiple time zones. Multi-user plans support multiple user types and access roles. You can easily create the desired scheduling scenario and deploy it to your team for a smooth and easy start.

Cancel and Reschedule
You can now cancel, request a reschedule, or set a cancellation policy for your customers and allow them to cancel or reschedule via links in the scheduling confirmation email and calendar event.

New lifecycle phases
We have added more lifecycle phases to make it easier to track activities and provide a better cancel/reschedule experience.

HTML emails
All notification emails have been upgraded to clean and structured HTML emails that provide a better user experience to you and your customers.

Calendar invites
For those who prefer not to use the Google Calendar invites – We have added our own calendar invites in the scheduling confirmation page and scheduling confirmation emails.

New Notifications section
Each MeetMe page now includes a new Notifications section that will allow you to set the notifications that you would like to receive.

Pricing changes in 5.0

We are introducing multi-user pricing and simplifying pricing for our Professional plan users. To learn more about our pricing changes please see the ScheduleOnce pricing table and the 5.0 pricing changes FAQ.

Per user pricing for multi-user plans
The pricing for multi-user plans is per user and each user comes with three MeetMe pages that can be allocated in any desired way.

MeetMe pages a la carte
It is now possible to purchase more MeetMe pages and add them to any Professional or higher account. This method will enable you to purchase the exact number of MeetMe pages that you need, rather than purchasing set packages.

Unlimited services and BookNow pages
We have removed the pricing on Services and BookNow pages and you can now use them with no limits in any Professional or higher plan.

Changes in the way we upgrade
When you upgrade to a higher plan or purchase more MeetMe pages under the same billing cycle, the first payment will be prorated to coincide with the existing billing date.

For a more detailed description of these new changes please see the What’s new in 5.0 article. If you want to understand the reasoning behind our pricing changes please read the 5.0 pricing changes FAQ.

As always, if you have any questions or feedback we would love to hear it. You can add a comment to this post, email us or schedule a time to speak with us.

Please see this list of FAQs about the pricing changes in ScheduleOnce 5.0

I am an existing customer – Will my pricing change?
No, we will not change the pricing on your existing MeetMe pages.

What happens to existing customers with Workgroup and Enterprise accounts?
When existing customers signed up for a Workgroup or Enterprise account these accounts were single-user plans – They were simply Professional plans with additional MeetMe pages. Since the Workgroup and Enterprise plans have changed and are now multi-user plans, existing customers on these plans will see that their plan name has been changed to Professional. This is only a name change -There is no change in functionality or the number of MeetMe pages that you own.

Why did you make these pricing changes?
Introduce multi-user pricing – Since the Workgroup and Enterprise plans are multi-user plans they should be priced on a per user basis, like any multi-user SaaS application.

Simplify management for Professional plan users – The Professional plan is our most popular plan. We wanted to allow our customers to purchase the exact number of MeetMe pages that they need rather than fit themselves into packages. In addition, we wanted to simplify management and reduce costs by removing the pricing on Services and BookNow pages. To partly compensate for the loss of revenue from these changes we have increased the price of an extra MeetMe page from $5/month to $7/month.

So what is your overall pricing strategy?
When it comes to pricing we have four user segments:

• Free users: We did not make any pricing changes to this plan and we will continue to provide it
• Single MeetMe page users: Use the Plus and Premium plans. We did not make any pricing changes to these plans and we will continue to provide them.
• Users who use multiple MeetMe pages: These are the Professional plan users. For these users we have made it easier to purchase the exact number of pages that they need and we have reduced their overall cost with the a la carte MeetMe page purchase and the removal of pricing on Services and BookNow pages. We did increase the price of an extra MeetMe page from $5/mo to $7/mo to partly compensate for the loss of revenue.
• Multi-user accounts: These are organizations that use the Workgroup and Enterprise plans on the account level and we can now fully support them with our new multi-user plans and per-user pricing.

If you have a question which is not listed you can add a comment to this post, email us or schedule a time to speak with us.

Update as of April 17: We have a firm date for the 5.o release – It will be live on Monday morning, April 29.

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Update as of April 1: We have received lots of feedback from early previews and are making some changes. The expected release date is in about 2-3 weeks. We will update again when we have a firm date.

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We are about one month away from our biggest release ever – ScheduleOnce 5.0

This release will add the following capabilities:

Multi-user support: The Workgroup and Enterprise plans will become multi-user plans. This means that you will be able to create sub accounts for your staff members while maintaining complete privacy and access control.

Cancel and reschedule: ScheduleOnce will support cancel and reschedule in all plans. Cancel/reschedule can be done by the customer or by the account owner.

Calendar invites: ScheduleOnce will now include its own calendar invites so that there is no need to rely on the Google Calendar invite email. It will be possible to send a ScheduleOnce confirmation only, a Google confirmation only or both.

HTML emails: All ScheduleOnce text emails will become HTML emails with better formatting that is easier to read.

If you are interested in our multi-user support or the cancel and reschedule functionality we would love to show you a demo and listen to your feedback.

To schedule a demo, please contact us and tell us a bit about yourself and your scheduling needs.

We look forward to hearing your feedback.

Version 4.6 has many small improvements and one noticeable change – We have reorganized some pages and settings in the Administration side of the product and made it simpler and easier to understand. This is an important change that will make it easier to expand the system while keeping it simple and easy to use.

We know that such changes can be a pain for existing customers who are already used to the product but we think that this one is so good that existing customers will like it as well.

Here are the key changes:

• All functional settings have been consolidated under a new Setup page
• A new General tab was added under the Setup page. It includes some settings that were previously in the Account page and the Group scheduling settings
• The Home page was updated with clearer terminology and icons for Group scheduling and Customer self-scheduling
• Customers on Workgroup and Enterprise accounts will see the MeetMe Profile picture in the activity stream. This will assist in identifying the MeetMe page that was used for the booking
• The Account settings have been reorganized

We hope that these changes make sense to you too. We are constantly on the lookout for ways in which we can improve the system and make it simpler and easier to use. If you have any feedback on this topic we would love to hear it.

A more detailed list of changes is available in the What’s new in version 4.6 article.

We are happy to announce ScheduleOnce 4.5 that provides your customers with a modern mobile interface when they schedule from their mobile devices. The mobile interface is also available for embedding in a web page and is great for small/narrow spaces.

With this new release, customers that use your MeetMe and BookNow pages from a smartphone will be automatically served with the mobile interface of your page. This is a modern HTML 5 web application that will work instantly and will not require any download or setup. Customers who are using tablets will be automatically redirected to the improved desktop interface. We have worked hard on the mobile interface to keep it at par with the outstanding scheduling experience that our desktop interface provides.

To see live examples of our mobile interface please see the new Solutions section and product pages on our website – They are packed with live demos for our most common scenarios.

The mobile interface is also available for embedding in small/narrow web spaces. When you open the Branded experience section you will be able to choose between embedding the desktop interface or embedding the mobile interface. Just like the embedded desktop interface, the embedded mobile interface does not mention ScheduleOnce, so that our brand does not stand in between you and your customers.

As mentioned before, we have added a completely new Solutions section to our website. The new Solutions section includes eleven pages that describe our largest customer segments. In addition, each page includes a representative live demo that clients and prospects can interact with and feel how ScheduleOnce can work for their specific scheduling scenario.

The customer mobile interface marks the beginning of our mobile journey. We are committed to the improvement of our mobile support just as we are committed to improving the functionality and performance of the application.

To learn more about the complete details for ScheduleOnce 4.5 please see the What’s new in version 4.5 article. If you have any questions or would like to contact us please use booknow.so/so to schedule a free consultation.

In July 2011 Google announced a new feature in Google Calendar – Google Calendar appointment slots.  18 month later, Google is announcing that it will discontinue its Appointment slots feature on January 4, 2012.

When Google first launched appointment slots we were very surprised. No other calendar in the world has this type of feature so why is Google crossing the line into the scheduling space? Since ScheduleOnce integrates very tightly with Google Calendar and we basically do what appoint slots do and much more, we were worried that Google might be getting into our space.

However, as time went by, we saw users of Google Calendar appointment slots that were moving over to ScheduleOnce. Many were using the free plan and some were also purchasing our paid plans. Below is what we heard from new customers when they switched over from Google Appointment slots to ScheduleOnce:

• GCal slots required that the customer sign in with a Google Calendar account – ScheduleOnce has no such requirements and customers do not need to sign in – They simply click the link and do what they need to do
• GCal slots did not work well with time zones – ScheduleOnce works great with time zones. Learn about our time zone support
• GCal slots were missing some essential features and settings that people found even in the free ScheduleOnce plan

Everyone knows that if Google wants to improve on the above they can easily do it and it is our guess that they had to take a decision – Either to improve their appointment slots and get into the scheduling space or get out of it altogether.  We are glad they chose the latter and will focus on making Google Calendar better than ever.

So we would like to extend a warm welcome to all Google appointment slots users. ScheduleOnce is a great alternative to Google Calendar appointment slots and our free plan can do everything that Google Appointment slots could do and much more. All you need to do is to signup on the scheduleonce.com/pricing page.

We are a month away from releasing the mobile user interface for the customer side. This means that when your customers access your MeetMe or BookNow pages via a mobile device, they will be automatically served with a dedicated mobile interface.

The mobile interface is a modern HTML 5 application and does not require any download or setup.

If you would like to preview the new interface and provide us with feedback we will be happy to send you some links to MeetMe and BookNow pages that you can test on your mobile device.

Please send an email to contact@scheduleonce.com and tell us about the type of scheduling that you do so that we can send you the relevant links.

ScheduleOnce is well known for its robust time zone support. Release 4.3 takes this a step further by allowing you to set the time zone on the MeetMe page level. This means that you can have different time zones for the different MeetMe pages in your account.

This change enables two scheduling scenarios that are highly requested by our users:

Scheduling for frequent travelers: If you travel often, one of the biggest challenges in scheduling your appointments is the need to manage scheduling for at least two locations and time zones – Your home location and the destination location. With release 4.3 you can create a MeetMe page for each travel destination, set its time zone to the destination time zone and use date-specific availability to specify the days and times of your stay in the local time zone. On the Google Calendar side you create a new Google Calendar and set it’s time zone to the destination time zone. In your MeetMe page you select this calendar as the calendar in which bookings will be created and you are all set. You can now send the MeetMe page link to people that will be meeting with you in the destination, and the bookings will be created in the destination time zone.

Accepting appointments for team members in different time zones: You can now create multiple MeetMe pages for multiple team members where each member is in a different time zone. The MeetMe page for each member will be set to their local time zone and the bookings will be created directly in their calendar according to their local time zone. This setup is very useful for virtual teams such as sales teams, online tutors, consultants and more.

Please note that as a result of this change the time zone setting has moved from the Booking section to the Availability section.

If you have any questions about this release or if you would like to discuss your time zone scenario please use booknow.so/so to schedule a free consultation.

It is a known fact that the best leads are those that come to you and not the ones you chase. These leads have a clear compelling event and are looking for quick and professional engagement with your business. Using online appointment scheduling to capture appointments with website visitors will quickly identify those high-quality leads by giving them a direct channel to professionally engage with your business.

To that extent, we would like to enable our customers to use ScheduleOnce as a completely integral part of their own brand, so that the ScheduleOnce brand does not stand in between you and your customers. Just like a white-labeled solution, our new branded experience features will allow you to capture appointments with leads and customers under your own brand and process:

Brandless embed: Embed the core interaction component of a MeetMe or BookNow page without the profile information frame, the header, and any mentioning of ScheduleOnce. See a live example.

Custom website buttons: Create professional call to action buttons that can be added to any web page or used as a floating button at the bottom right corner of your website.

Automatic redirect upon booking submission: Automatically redirect to a web page of your choice when the booking is submitted. This can be used to redirect to a thank you/landing page and also as a means to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns by adding tracking code such as Adwords or Google Analytics code to the target page.

To complete this experience you can also customize the name label on emails that are sent to your customers and provide an end-to-end scheduling experience which is all under your brand.

Branded experience features are available in Professional or higher plans. To see the full list of features in this new release please see the What’s new in ScheduleOnce 4.2 article.

To learn more about Branded experience features please see the Branded experience article.

Release 4.1 is all about signing up and signing in. We have redesigned the sign up and sign in process and we are introducing sign up via a ScheduleOnce ID as the primary sign up method. In addition to the new ScheduleOnce login we have also implemented different mechanisms to eliminate most of the confusion that is sometimes caused by the Google and Facebook logins.

Starting from this release, people that want to sign up for a ScheduleOnce account can do so with their email and password of choice. We are no longer relying on Google or Facebook logins as the only method of authentication.

How does it affect existing customers? There is really no change.  Existing customers that signed up via their Google or Facebook ID must continue to sign in with that channel. It is not possible to access your existing account via the new ScheduleOnce login.

If you are an existing customer and would like to switch to a ScheduleOnce login you will have to delete your existing account and sign up for a new account using the ScheduleOnce login. If you have a Professional account or higher we can manually merge your existing Google or Facebook login with the new ScheduleOnce login. Contact us if you are interested.

The redesigned login gives our customers more choice and we hope that it will improve the sign up and sign in process and make it easier to access ScheduleOnce.

In addition to the new ScheduleOnce login, this release also includes a number of minor improvements. To see the complete list of changes for this release please read the What’s new in 4.1 article.