I wanted to cover another popular solution when it comes to scheduling tools that work with Infusionsoft – but it’s been a while since I had any real world experience with AppointmentCore, so I turned to a few friends of mine who use this tool daily.
I asked the questions I thought would help you understand what AppointmentCore is, why it’s valuable, and decide whether or not it’s a fit for your business.
Big thanks to Francis Jones (KHJ Consulting), Mike Harris (GoldFixe Solutions), and Moshe Gotfryd (Maximind.ca) for their contributions below.
What is AppointmentCore?
Francis: “It is an online scheduling software. It allows your audience to find a convenient time to talk with/meet you without having to do the ‘does this date and time work for you’ dance.”
Mike: “AppointmentCore is a powerful scheduling tool that is specifically for Infusionsoft. It allows you to tie your business and personal calendars together so you’re never double-booked. It can then capture contact information, payments, and trigger automation when someone books, reschedules, and/or cancels.”
Moshe: “AppointmentCore is the easy way for clients and co workers to schedule your time”
Who should use AppointmentCore? (…and who shouldn’t)
Francis: “It is for any business that has a desire to give their customers and prospects an option to schedule time with them. The only businesses I have worked with that don’t find it helpful are businesses that schedule appointments all over the place and therefore can’t reliably use it for scheduling. For instance, a pest control company that does appointments all over town. If he or she lets me book an appointment on my own, how will the system know when it’s ok to open up the next time slot. There are too many variables.”
Mike: “AppointmentCore is for Infusionsoft customers who have an ongoing need to schedule appointments (virtual or in-person). It’s not for people who do not use Infusionsoft as their primary CRM. It is also not for people who are easily frustrated with slow software.”
Moshe: “AppointmentCore is for Infusionsoft users who want to leverage automation and simplicity in driving bookings for any type of meeting.”
What are your favorite Appointmentcore features?
Francis: “I love that it syncs to Infusionsoft and let’s me apply tags to run actions. It will also let me populate custom fields. I love the “Make me look busy” feature. I also love the buffers before and after an appointment. I love that I can create as many calendars as I need. I know other tools do some of those things as well, but those are the things I like about Appointmentcore.”
Mike: “No limits to number of appointment links you can make. Easy to fire automation via tags for each appointment type. They have built in email and SMS reminders. You can make booking links for multiple team members where only one team member needs to be available or you can require that all team members listed attend. Perfect for round-robins as well as client transition meetings and interviews. It check all users calendars and only serves up the times where everyone is available.”
Moshe: “- The appointment link knows who is booking, so you don’t end up with duplicate contacts.
– Flexibility for any scheduling need
– Merge fields into Infusionsoft
– Trigger API calls or apply tags for appointments that need it, or create a link with no integration to infusionsoft at all – no matter your need there is an easy quick solution.”
For a complete list of the AppointmentCore features, check out this page on their site.
What are Appointmentcore’s drawbacks?
Francis: “I sometime have a hard time linking it to a calendar. It can be a pain sometimes. The user interface is a little dated, although that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as other people I talk with.”
Mike: “It is soul-crushingly slow when you are setting anything up or just navigating between pages as a logged in user. So slow that it can easily discourage new users who are on their free trial to bail and use another software. You can ask custom questions on the booking form but cannot map them to Infusionsoft custom fields. No expiring/single-use scheduling links.”
Moshe: “There are a lot of features, and setting things up for the first time might take some exploration and trial and error. That being said, they have a great support team, and you can get all the help and advice you need in the Monkeypod private group. The community is powerful!”
How does Appointmentcore Pricing work?
Francis: “The pricing is competitive. To be honest, the real reason is I recommend it over the others is that the others make you pay to add integrations with Infusionsoft. Yes, Calendly is $8 a month, but to add the Infusionsoft integration is $20 (or whatever). I hate. I loathe ala cart pricing.”
Mike: “It’s tiered by a range of users (1-2, 3-5, 6-10). A lot of competitors will charge per user instead of a range. However, a lot of competitors offer a lower rate per user but you often will need a connector (like Zapier) to send the information to Infusionsoft. If you’re already paying for Zapier (or PlusThis), it might be wise to use a more inexpensive (but great) tool like Calendly.”
Moshe: “AppointmentCore scales with you. Starting at $27 for two users, $47 for 5 users, and $87 for 10 users.”
Here’s a look at the pricing from the AppointmentCore website:
How does the connection to Infusionsoft work?
Francis: “I thought it was really easy to set up and it has worked quite well for me. To be fair, I haven’t used it for anything gangster. Whatever I need it to do, it has done without any issues.”
Mike: “It works great for the transferring of basic contact info as well as the appointment information. All the automation is caused by tags when someone schedules, reschedules, or cancels. You can add multiple tags to each of these actions to trigger multiple automations. As mentioned earlier, even though AppointmentCore allows you to capture custom fields on the booking form, those fields cannot be mapped to Infusionsoft custom fields. They only appear in the confirmation email that AppointmentCore sends. Sometimes when you add tags in Infusionsoft they don’t appear right away in AppointmentCore. I’ve fixed this a couple different ways; from logging out then back in up to disconnecting Infusionsoft and reconnecting (not recommended).”
Moshe: “It natively connects with Infusionsoft so there is no need for something like Zapier to make things work. I like to leverage the custom merge fields and api calls instead of using the tags and default merge fields.
There are some cool things you can do if you introduce Zapier to the mix. I replace the appointment description with custom fields and person notes from the contact record. I also update the appointment with “Confirmed” in the title if they confirm their attendance.”
Thanks Greg! Being new to Infusionsoft, I’d love to see a comparison table between the different calendaring tools that integrate- like a table with ApptCore, Acuity, Calendly, and even Keap Appts across the top, and the rows could be:
– price
– natively integrates with Infusionsoft? (yes, no, or yes but not recommended in the case of Calendly)
– triggers automations
– prevents duplicate contact records
– works with Google Calendar
– works with Outlook Calendar
– sends email reminders
– sends SMS reminders
– favorite features
– drawbacks to be aware of
– etc
That’s a good idea! I haven’t seen anything like that, but I’ll ask around and see if something already exists.