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Faced with finding an appointment reminder and scheduling solution, many people just flip a virtual coin. There are so many solutions it’s hard to know which is the best answer for a company or individual. Online searches aren’t much help. Articles that cover the 10 or 15 best solutions never have the same list. How can you decide which solution is the right one? To help you analyze these key features, let’s compare Apptoto and GoReminders.
When it comes to appointment and scheduling platforms, there are several key categories to evaluate, including customer support and training. Other features to look at include:
- Calendar Management
- Automation and Integration
- Customization and Ease of Use
- Value
Calendar Management
Managing your calendar is at the heart of a scheduling application. However, the feature list for most applications is extensive. Before you look at possible solutions, identify the critical features you or your business requires. It’s easy to get lost in the array of features and end up with a solution that doesn’t meet a key feature.
Here are a few of the features that Apptoto provides:
- Appointment Management
- Appointment Reminders
- Appointment Scheduling
- Automated Online Scheduling
- Availability Management
- Booking Management
- Calendar Management
- Calendar Sync
- Call Reminders
- Payment Collection
You Can Ask to Reschedule
Apptoto allows you to easily ask any appointment (or list of appointments) to reschedule with a click of a button. Those clients are then presented with times that match your availability based on rules you can set up.
Group Multiple Appointments
Apptoto can group multiple appointments with the same client on the same day and easily send just one reminder for all of them. For example, a mom can receive just one reminder for all 3 of her kid’s dance lessons in one day. Or if a dental office schedules multiple appointments on their calendar for one patient during their visit (such as cleaning and then checkup), they can just get one message for both.
Realtime Updates on the Appointments Screen
Apptoto updates in real-time whenever clients confirm/cancel/reschedule appointments. Thus, you can stay in touch with your clients on a second-by-second basis.
Additional features include multi-lingual support, online payments, and reporting.
In comparison, GoReminders does not support availability and booking management, call reminders, or online payments. However, it does provide a client database for those organizations that do not have a contact database in a CRM or email service. Apptoto allows information to be shared using import/export capabilities for those using an in-house contact solution.
Automation and Integration
What functions are automated? For example, will the platform automatically sync calendars? If the web-based appointment scheduling doesn’t sync with in-house calendars such as Outlook or Google, time must be spent reconciling multiple calendars. Manual reconciliation can consume a significant percentage of a company’s workday for busy offices with multiple employees.
- Because Apptoto interfaces with multiple calendar solutions, employees spend less time syncing schedules manually. GoReminders offers integration to Outlook and Google, while Apptoto integrates with over 20 solutions.
- Both GoReminders and Apptoto support recurring appointments, allowing users to set recurring appointments for automated scheduling. These solutions also provide automated scheduling of appointments and reminders.
Solutions vary in what features can be automated. Some allow automated scheduling and rescheduling; others automate reminders and confirmation requests. What’s important is how the automation happens. Does the solution use rule-based automation like Apptoto, or does it require configuration on a per-incident basis?
Full-Featured Realtime Inbox/Outbox with CRM Features
Apptoto’s inbox/outbox allows you to easily manage messages for hundreds or thousands of upcoming appointments. From there, you can see all the messages for just one day’s worth of appointments or all of them. You are notified immediately when someone responds. Lastly, you can easily send attachments and images when texting and emailing.
Keep Your Calendar Full with Scheduling Campaigns
Apptoto’s campaigns feature allows you to target a list of clients and send messages to them until they book an appointment with you. This is useful for Financial Advisors (for example) who have a list of clients/VIP clients that they have to meet with every 6 or 12 months. Apptoto’s campaigns can be configured to send messages when those anniversaries roll around.
Customization and Ease of Use
How customizable is the scheduling solution? Depending on your plan’s tier, many solutions will let you replace their brand with your logo/brand. If displaying your brand is important, you may have to upgrade your plan to receive that capability. Goreminder allows brand removal and replacement at the top tier of its service plans. Whereas Apptoto provides the service on all but the starter plan.
More Flexibility with Contact Extraction
While Apptoto and GoReminders both have the ability to extract phone numbers and email addresses from your existing Appointments, Apptoto can be configured to only extract phone numbers and email addresses that you actually want messages sent to.
Apptoto also has the ability to match appointments to contacts by Name, which can save you time.
Apptoto can also be configured to use custom fields to match appointments to contacts.
Tight Salesforce Integration
Apptoto direct Salesforce integration allows you to pull appointments, contacts, and any custom object into Apptoto as an appointment or contact.
Apptoto’s online booking also works directly with Salesforce.
SQL Connector
Apptoto can pull in appointments and contacts from a local SQL Database. This is great if you have a local on-premise database or use an older system and need more.
Full feature Appointment and Inbox/Outbox search
Apptoto has lightning-fast appointment and message search.
Every business is unique, and most require custom fields. Is it an appointment or a session? Do you want specific data collected about your client? If you’re asking for personal identification information, are you in compliance with the latest regulations? Again, knowing the customization requirements ahead of time makes it easier to shorten the solution list.
Customer Support
Customer support and training may not seem like the place to start when evaluating software, but it quickly becomes a priority as you try to use the solution. For example, how do you contact customer support?
- GoReminders provides online support through Chat and emails to a Help Desk. If your employees prefer to try self-service options such as knowledge bases and FAQs, Apptoto client reminders offer a customer portal with a knowledge base and community forum as well as chat, emails, and phone support.
- Training is another factor to consider when looking at customer support. Apptoto provides real-time online training, videos, documentation, and webinars. GoReminders offers documentation, live online training, and webinars.
Think about how you or your employees learn. If you are like most customers, you want a self-service option that includes a knowledge base and community forum.
Value
For most business owners, value is a deciding factor. If all other categories are equal, cost becomes critical. For example, Apptoto’s pricing plan offers multiple plans and tiers of service. Plans can be implemented month-to-month with no signed contract or annually (with discounts included). The base plan starts at $39 per month (or $120 annually – that’s just $10/month). Other pricing plans include (but aren’t limited to):
- Six calendars, unlimited messaging, unlimited appointment scheduling, premium integrations, and 900 auto-message credits for $78 per month.
- Ten calendars, unlimited messaging, unlimited appointment scheduling, enterprise and SQL integrations, and 1,500 auto-message credits for $130 per month.
- Sixteen calendars, unlimited messaging, unlimited appointment scheduling, all integrations, HIPAA-Compliance, and 2,400 auto-message credits for $208 per month.
Comparatively, GoReminders offers a three-tier subscription plan.
- Tier 1: The starter plan includes one calendar, one text or email reminder per appointment, and 15 appointments per month for $25 per month, paid annually.
- Tier 2: The business plan has unlimited calendars, 75 appointments per month, and three reminders per appointment for $50 per month. Additional blocks of 75 appointments are available at $50 per month.
- Tier 3: The premium plan has unlimited calendars and 75 appointments per month, with additional blocks of 75 available for $50 per month. The premium plan begins at $200 per month.
Ready to learn more about the value of Apptoto for your business? Contact us online or by phone today.
