Sign In Scheduling vs Apptoto: Which is Best for Appointment Scheduling & Messaging?

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes

When it comes to appointment management software, finding a solution that combines the ability to create beautiful, flexible booking pages with highly customizable appointment reminders and messages is a challenge. Those that offer the most versatile scheduling capabilities and page design often severely limit or ignore client messaging altogether. Conversely, platforms with the most advanced appointment reminders and messaging may provide online scheduling as an afterthought. Apptoto and Sign In Scheduling stand out in a crowded landscape by recognizing that appointment-based businesses need powerful scheduling features and messaging capabilities combined.

Apptoto and Sign In Scheduling help businesses eliminate no-show appointments and late arrivals, reduce administrative costs and time, and grow bookings and profits. However, there are critical differences between the platforms. That’s why we’ve created a comprehensive comparison that dives into both solutions’ features, usability, and customization options. Whether you’re looking for robust integrations, comprehensive messaging features, or user-friendly design, this article will help you select the best platform for your appointment management needs.

Jump to a Section:

• Company Overviews
• Features, Functionality & Customization
• User Interface and Ease of Use
• Integrations
• Support and Training
• Pricing
• Security and Compliance
• Customer Reviews
• Recent Product Updates

Company Overviews: Apptoto vs. Sign In Scheduling

Apptoto started in 2010 to help appointment-based businesses wage war against costly no-shows and increase their repeat business by automating appointment messaging. The platform has evolved into a full appointment management system, allowing companies to offer online booking, collect payments, deliver targeted marketing campaigns, and send two-way business messages, alongside Apptoto’s incredibly robust appointment messaging and reminder features.

One of Apptoto’s key features is how it seamlessly integrates with your business’s existing calendaring and customer records management tools. After syncing your current calendars to Apptoto, you’ll immediately have a view of your upcoming appointments with existing clients. Within minutes, you can launch customized online booking pages to make it easier for new and existing clients to book with you. The platform offers you the ultimate flexibility to customize booking settings on the backend. You control your team’s availability, the appointment types you offer, appointment duration, time padding, staff assignments, and more. At the same time, your customers get an effortless booking experience on the front end.

Apptoto stands above other online appointment scheduling solutions by combining those robust scheduling features with customizable, personalized appointment messaging. With Apptoto, businesses can create and send unique messaging sequences based on almost any information available in the appointment event (whether someone booked through an Apptoto online booking page or not). Confirm the booking, send appointment reminders, and follow up afterward using any combination of text messages, voice calls, and emails (based on your client’s preferences for being contacted).

Whether you create one sequence for all your clients or 100 unique ones, Apptoto allows you to personalize the messages at scale by pulling your client’s unique details into every message. Finally, messages aren’t just one-way either. Clients can respond to confirm, reschedule, or cancel appointments, which will automatically sync to your calendars, or they can message you directly with 2-way business messaging. With its robust but easy-to-launch features, Apptoto is ideal for businesses that want best-in-class scheduling with appointment messages that engage your customers at every step.

Sign In Scheduling (formerly 10to8) was acquired by Sign In Solutions in July 2023. The platform is an appointment scheduling system that aims to give businesses back valuable time, whether they are sole proprietorships or enterprise businesses. Sign In Scheduling offers a straightforward online booking page setup, robust messaging features, and a clean interface.

Of all the appointment scheduling apps evaluated thus far, Sign In Scheduling is the most similar to Apptoto in its focus on integrating online scheduling and robust appointment messaging functionality. Like Apptoto, Sign In Scheduling offers the ability to customize SMS and email messages for new booking confirmations, booking changes, cancellations, reminders, and follow-ups. Sign In Scheduling also enables clients to confirm appointments via a link or text message response . This is not a feature we’ve seen offered by anyone other than Apptoto at this time. If you want to create different messages for each service type, you’ll have to manually update these individually, which could be time-consuming if you have multiple.

Sign In Scheduling keeps its online booking page customization relatively simple, as well as its availability settings. Each staff member sets their available hours, and new bookings are either assigned automatically (if two or more staff members have availability at the same time) or via an individual staff member’s booking page. However, more complex booking assignments (ordered, lead routing) do not appear to be available. One important thing to note is that for clients who do not self-book themselves using online scheduling pages, your staff must create appointments within Sign In Scheduling. Any appointments booked within your existing calendar solution will sync to Sign In Scheduling as “Busy” and will not be opted into any messaging or reminder sequences.

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Features, Functionality, & Customization

Apptoto and Sign In Scheduling offer a robust appointment scheduling and reminders/messaging solutions. Below is a comparison of key features offered on Apptoto’s and Sign In Scheduling’s paid plans.

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User Interface and Ease of Use

Apptoto: When you first sign up for Apptoto, you are guided through the Setup Wizard. You’ll be directed on how to sync your existing calendars to Apptoto first, which will pull in all your current and upcoming appointments and any address books associated with your email. Appointments will automatically be displayed on the “Appointment” agenda tab in an easy-to-scan list-style overview, although you can also choose to utilize a week or month view.

Whether you create an appointment in Apptoto or on your existing calendaring platform, Apptoto will sync all of your appointments including all information included in the event. Furthermore, these appointments will be opted into your appointment messaging and reminder sequences (including custom sequences if they contain specific keywords or triggers). Finally, Apptoto highlights appointments in different colors based on whether clients confirm, cancel, or reschedule.

Within Apptoto, additional features and tools are available throughout the platform. That includes:

• “Booking Pages” to create online scheduling pages
• “Messaging” to customize appointment reminder, confirmation, and follow-up messaging, and delivery timing
• “Inbox/Outbox” to two-way text message your customers
• “Contacts” to view your address books or create new contacts
• “Dashboards” and “Tools” to view reporting and analytics

Each tab of Apptoto has multiple ways to customize the platform’s various tools and functionality to your business’s unique needs. This extensive range of options is accessible on all subscription plans, with only a few minor exceptions. For example, you can utilize different branding (including custom CSS), content, and templates on every booking page you create even on our lowest plan.

Apptoto is incredibly feature-rich, meaning it may have a higher learning curve than other platforms. Our team regularly releases updates to make Apptoto even easier and more intuitive. Of course, our support and training resources are always available via the “Help” button in the top-level navigation.

Sign In Scheduling: When you first sign up for Sign In Scheduling, you are asked for some basic info about yourself and your business and how many sites or locations you have. Once you’ve entered all that, a booking page is immediately generated and set live for you (which is convenient but can be a bit jarring before remembering you must share it before anyone can book with you).

Like Apptoto, Sign In Scheduling enables you to see appointments on a Calendar view via the “Calendars” tab. Appointments are viewable on either a daily or weekly basis. Once you sync your calendaring app to Sign In Scheduling, you’ll see your existing appointments listed as “Busy” and blocked off in red (note: occasionally, the system had difficulty syncing a handful of events from our Google Calendar to the Sign In calendar).

You can create new appointments on-the-fly in Sign In Scheduling or pick recurring services from a drop-down list. To create a recurring service, you’ll need to enter settings like service name, duration, buffer time, location, pricing, and what time frame changes can be made to the event. Appointments booked via your online booking page will also be automatically added to your Sign In Scheduling calendar and synced calendaring solution (such as Google Calendar, iCal, etc.).

Sign In Scheduling also offers an address book to store client details in its “Attendees” tab, an “Inbox” (where Sign In users can write or respond to clients and booking requests), and “Reporting.” If you want to edit appointment messaging or customize your online booking pages, these are both found under the “Setup” tab. There you will also find other options including payments, integrations, and enterprise features (such as HIPAA compliance and Multi-Factor Authentication).

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Integrations

Both Apptoto and Sign In Scheduling want to make appointment management as efficient as possible for their customers, and integrations are a key part of doing so. For example, both platforms integrate with popular calendaring tools like Google Calendar, Microsoft Office, and iCal to sync appointments. A complete list of each platform’s integrations can be found below:

*Zapier allows you to connect your chosen solution with thousands of additional apps in their app integrations library.

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Support and Training

No matter how intuitive a platform may be, you will inevitably need help setting up a feature or figuring out where an online booking went wrong. Access to a strong support team that responds promptly ensures you’re satisfied with your chosen solution.

Apptoto offers a mix of support and training materials for everyone whether you want live support or prefer to figure it out yourself. When you sign up, you can walk through an easy-to-follow onboarding flow to get your appointment messaging and booking pages up within 10 minutes or less.

Have questions? To talk with Apptoto’s customer success team members, you can navigate to the Support Center to chat, email, or call. You can also access Apptoto’s extensive knowledge base, training videos, Blog, Product Notes, and Feedback forum, where you can learn about Apptoto at your own pace or leave feedback! Finally, Apptoto’s team is regularly recognized for its high-quality support and customer care via client testimonials and third-party review sites.

Sign In Scheduling’s standard available support channels include email, chat, and a knowledge base. Premium support (call support and priority backlog support) is only available on the Enterprise plan. Since Sign In Scheduling is headquartered in England, users should expect their support/chat hours to align accordingly. The platform also has a YouTube channel with helpful how-to videos, a Facebook community, and a Blog.

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Pricing

When comparing appointment management software, it’s crucial to compare upfront pricing and look at each product’s offerings and feature sets. For example, do you have full access to all the necessary features and customization options from the outset (and can experiment with them during the trial period), or are you required to upgrade to a top-tier or enterprise pricing plan to unlock these capabilities? Below, we compare Apptoto and Sign In Scheduling’s pricing and trials to help you make the best decision for your business.

Sign In Scheduling has three plans, Pro, Premium, and Enterprise, with the most affordable plan (Pro) starting at $424.80 per year. Sign In Scheduling’s pricing plans consist of three elements: seats, bookable appointments per month, and message credits per month. You get up to 3 seats, 120 appointments, and 1300 message credits monthly on the lowest plan. But, based on your needs, you choose to “top off” or increase the number of seats, appointments, or messages you need independently from each other. Features are limited on the Pro plan (e.g., three booking pages, one pre-selected page theme, no voice messages, no email customization), although message credits are plentiful.

You’ll have to upgrade to the Premium plan starting at $840.96 per year if you need advanced features like their multiple time zone management or AI-powered Smart Messaging. Sign In Scheduling offers a high level of customization with their pricing plans, but ultimately, it feels unnecessarily complicated. The lack of a monthly payment option may also be challenging for small businesses that cannot pay for the total upfront cost of an annual commitment.

Apptoto is best for businesses needing rich scheduling and appointment messaging features. Apptoto’s pricing plans work on a sliding scale, with users and automated message credits increasing at each level. When you sign up for Apptoto, you have full access to all of the platform’s features and functionality. This includes email, SMS, and voice call appointment messages, unlimited booking pages, payments, messaging campaigns, auto-replies, multi-time zone support, 2-way business text messaging, AI-powered message translation, and more.

Businesses can get an excellent feel for Apptoto’s functionality during the 14-day trial (during which you can send unlimited automated messages). Finally, Apptoto offers both monthly and annual payment options. Ultimately, Apptoto offers much more functionality and fewer limitations at a lower monthly pricing point, making it the better value.

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Security & Compliance

Keeping your company’s and clients’ data private and secure is paramount. That’s why Apptoto and Sign In Scheduling have strict security policies to protect your data.

Apptoto prides itself on being SOC 2 and AWS ISO 27001 compliant and achieving and maintaining other certifications and security practices. Additionally, Healthcare providers can entrust their patient messaging is secure with Apptoto’s HIPAA-compliance program. Finally, major US mobile carriers have recently started requiring that all 10-digit phone numbers (10DLC) used to send text messages be registered to avoid filtering and additional costs. Apptoto helps customers submit their 10DLC registration quickly and easily directly from the web platform.

Sign In Scheduling takes security and compliance seriously. Sign In Scheduling meets IS 27001, PCI DSS, CCPA, and GDPR standards. Likewise, Sign In Scheduling offers HIPAA-compliant scheduling and messaging. However, while Sign In Scheduling notes that the Amazon Data Centers they use are SOC and SOC 1 accredited, there is no mention of whether their company is SOC-compliant.

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Customer Reviews

Customers love Apptoto and Sign In Scheduling, which shows in how they rank the platforms in areas such as features, customer service, and value for money. Below, we’ve outlined how Apptoto and Sign In Scheduling compare on third-party review sites G2.com and Capterra.

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Recent Product Updates

Check out the latest product releases from Apptoto and Sign In Scheduling to see how they’re innovating in the appointment management space.

Apptoto’s Latest Product Updates:

• Track Appointment Booking Conversions: Integrating Google Ads, GA4 & Apptoto
• 6 New Updates to Simplify the Booking Page Creation Process
• Translate Appointment Messages into Multiple Languages with AI

Sign In Scheduling’s Latest Product Updates:

• 10to8 New Features Q1 2023
• How to Navigate the Updated 10to8 Calendar View
• Making Your Messages Smarter

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Which Will you Choose? Apptoto vs. Sign In Scheduling

Apptoto and Sign In Scheduling offer a valuable array of online scheduling and appointment messaging features to help companies manage and grow appointment bookings. Ultimately the platform you choose should meet your business’s unique set of appointment management, scheduling, and messaging needs (which is where free trials come in).

That being said, Apptoto’s more robust set of integrations, customizable messaging, online booking page styling, availability management, and multi-way calendar event sync make it a standout choice for businesses that want to manage appointments both in and outside of the platform. If you’re looking for a solution that blends efficiency with personalization, Apptoto is a top choice for your business’s appointment management needs.

Ready to compare Apptoto vs. Sign In Scheduling for yourself? Get started with a free trial today!

Nicole Mears

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Product Marketing Manager

I am the Product Marketing Manager for Apptoto, where I spearhead all marketing and communication strategies. I love deriving actionable insights from our clients’ feedback and success stories and utilizing this to enhance how Apptoto communicates and educates clients about its product. Ultimately, I want to ensure every client can seamlessly adopt and maximize Apptoto to achieve their unique needs and goals.