Take full control over your appointment scheduling by allowing your customers to define the length of their sessions. The Bookly Custom Duration (Add-on) transforms your booking form into a flexible tool that empowers users to choose exactly how much time they need, rather than being restricted to predefined service lengths. Whether you offer consulting, tutoring, or technical services, this add-on provides the precision required to manage your calendar efficiently while offering a personalized experience for your clients.
Key Features
- Flexible Duration Selection: Allow customers to manually input or select a specific duration for their appointment directly within the booking process.
- Dynamic Price Calculation: Automatically adjust the total cost of the booking based on the duration selected, ensuring accurate billing without manual intervention.
- Seamless Bookly Integration: Designed to work natively with the core Bookly plugin, ensuring that custom durations are reflected accurately in your staff calendar and appointment lists.
- Configurable Limits: Set minimum and maximum duration constraints to ensure that custom bookings still align with your business hours and operational requirements.
- Improved User Experience: Reduce friction by letting clients tailor their appointments to their specific needs, leading to higher satisfaction and fewer back-and-forth emails.
- Staff-Specific Settings: Apply custom duration rules to specific staff members, allowing for unique service offerings across your team.
Use Cases / Who It’s For
The Bookly Custom Duration add-on is an essential upgrade for any business where “one size fits all” scheduling does not apply. If your service offerings are variable by nature, this tool ensures your booking system remains as agile as your business.
Consultants and Coaches: If you offer sessions that can range from a quick 15-minute check-in to a deep-dive 3-hour strategy session, this add-on allows clients to book the exact amount of time they require, with the price scaling automatically.
Educational Services and Tutors: Students often need different amounts of time depending on the subject matter or their current progress. By enabling custom durations, you allow them to book longer sessions for complex topics and shorter sessions for quick reviews.
Technical Support and Repair Shops: For businesses that provide labor-based services, the time required can vary wildly based on the complexity of the issue. This add-on allows your customers to estimate their needs while ensuring your staff is booked for the appropriate time block.
Rental Services: If you rent out equipment or studio space, this add-on is perfect for allowing customers to book for the exact number of hours or days they need, rather than being forced into fixed-length packages.
Setup / How It Works
Getting started with the Bookly Custom Duration add-on is straightforward and designed to integrate smoothly into your existing Bookly workflow:
- Installation: Ensure you have the core Bookly plugin installed and activated, then upload and activate the Bookly Custom Duration add-on from your WordPress dashboard.
- Configuration: Navigate to the Bookly settings menu where you will find new options specifically for the Custom Duration add-on.
- Define Rules: Assign the custom duration functionality to specific services. You can set the increment of time (e.g., 15-minute intervals) and define the minimum and maximum duration allowed for those specific services.
- Pricing Setup: Configure the pricing logic so that the system knows how to calculate the final cost based on the duration chosen by the customer.
- Frontend Display: Once configured, the booking form will automatically update to include a duration selector, allowing your customers to customize their appointment length during the booking process.
Similar Plugins
While various scheduling plugins exist within the WordPress ecosystem, the Bookly Custom Duration add-on is specifically engineered for the Bookly ecosystem. Alternatives such as Amelia or LatePoint offer their own scheduling features; however, they are separate platforms. If you are already committed to the Bookly infrastructure, this add-on is the most reliable way to achieve custom duration functionality without migrating to a different booking system.