Running a service business on a WordPress site without a proper booking system means your staff spends a portion of every working day doing something that software should handle automatically. Phone calls to confirm appointments, manual calendar entries, reminder emails typed out one by one, payment collection handled separately from scheduling, and double bookings that damage client trust and waste everyone’s time. Amelia was built to eliminate all of that and replace it with an automated, professional booking experience that runs around the clock without requiring anyone on your team to manage it.
Developed by TMS, Amelia has grown into one of the most complete appointment and event booking solutions available for WordPress. It is used by tens of thousands of service businesses worldwide, from solo practitioners to multi-location enterprises, and its combination of a polished customer-facing booking interface, a comprehensive admin management system, and deep integration with calendars, payment gateways, and communication tools puts it in a category of its own within the WordPress booking plugin market.
What Is Amelia
Amelia is a premium WordPress booking plugin that automates the entire appointment scheduling workflow for service-based businesses. It handles customer-facing booking forms, staff calendar management, service and location configuration, automated SMS and email notifications, online payment collection, and detailed reporting from a single unified interface inside WordPress.
Where many booking plugins offer a basic calendar widget and call it done, Amelia is built around the operational reality of running a service business with multiple staff members, multiple service offerings, multiple locations, and customers who expect to book, reschedule, and pay online without picking up the phone. The enterprise-level label is earned rather than marketed, and the depth of configuration available at every level of the system reflects how seriously the development team has thought about real-world business operations.
Key Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Appointment Booking System | Full front-end booking flow with service selection, staff selection, date and time picker, and confirmation |
| Events Booking System | Sell tickets and manage registrations for one-time and recurring events with capacity limits |
| Multiple Staff Management | Create individual staff profiles with separate services, working hours, days off, and calendar integrations |
| Multiple Locations | Configure separate locations with their own services, staff assignments, and availability settings |
| Online Payment Collection | Accept deposits or full payments at booking through Stripe, PayPal, Mollie, and RazorPay |
| Automated Notifications | Send customizable SMS and email reminders and confirmations to customers and staff automatically |
| Google Calendar Sync | Two-way synchronization between Amelia appointments and staff Google Calendar accounts |
| Outlook Calendar Sync | Two-way synchronization between Amelia appointments and Microsoft Outlook calendar accounts |
| Zoom and Google Meet Integration | Automatically generate meeting links for virtual appointments and include them in notifications |
| Customer Panel | Dedicated front-end portal where customers can view, manage, reschedule, and cancel their own appointments |
Booking Flow Features
| Feature | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Step by Step Booking Wizard | Guides customers through service, staff, location, date, time, and payment in a clean multi-step flow |
| Catalogue Booking View | Displays all available services in a visual catalogue layout for customers to browse and select |
| Classic Booking Form | Single-page booking form for straightforward single-service appointment scheduling |
| Group Booking | Allow multiple people to book the same appointment slot up to a configured maximum capacity |
| Package Booking | Sell bundles of multiple appointments as a single purchasable package |
| Recurring Appointments | Let customers book repeating appointments on daily, weekly, or monthly schedules |
| Custom Fields on Booking Forms | Add extra questions and information fields to the booking form for any service |
| Coupons and Discounts | Create discount codes customers can apply during the booking and payment process |
| Waiting List | Automatically add customers to a waiting list when a time slot is fully booked |
| Cart Booking | Allow customers to book multiple services across multiple staff in a single checkout session |
Notification and Communication Features
| Notification Type | Trigger and Delivery |
|---|---|
| Booking Confirmation Email | Sent to customer and staff immediately after a booking is completed |
| Booking Confirmation SMS | SMS confirmation sent to customer mobile number on booking completion |
| Appointment Reminder Email | Sent to customer a configurable number of hours or days before the appointment |
| Appointment Reminder SMS | SMS reminder sent to the customer’s phone before the scheduled appointment time |
| Rescheduling Notification | Email and SMS sent to customer and staff when an appointment is rescheduled |
| Cancellation Notification | Automated notification sent to both parties when an appointment is cancelled |
| No Show Notification | Alert sent to admin when a customer does not show up for a confirmed appointment |
| Follow Up Email | Automatically sent after an appointment is completed to request feedback or encourage rebooking |
| Staff Appointment Notification | Individual notification sent to the assigned staff member when a new booking is made |
| WhatsApp Notifications | WhatsApp message delivery for all notification types through integrated messaging providers |
Who Should Use Amelia
Health and wellness businesses including medical clinics, dental practices, physiotherapy centers, massage therapists, personal trainers, and yoga studios will find Amelia covers their operational requirements more completely than almost any other WordPress booking solution. The ability to manage multiple practitioners with individual schedules, configure different service durations and pricing for each staff member, collect deposits at booking, and send automated reminders that reduce no-show rates addresses the specific pain points that service businesses in this sector deal with daily.
Beauty and personal care businesses including salons, barbershops, nail studios, and spa facilities will appreciate the multi-service cart booking feature that lets customers book a haircut, color treatment, and blow-dry in a single session with the correct time allocation and staff assignment handled automatically. The package booking system also works well for loyalty programs where clients prepurchase a set number of sessions at a discounted rate.
Education and coaching businesses offering tutoring sessions, language lessons, fitness coaching, music instruction, or business consulting will benefit from the recurring appointment feature and the Zoom and Google Meet integration. Students and clients can book a recurring weekly session, receive an automatically generated video call link with every confirmation, and manage their own schedule through the customer panel without contacting anyone on the business side.
Legal, financial, and professional service firms that need a clean, trustworthy booking experience for client consultations will value the enterprise-level configuration options that Amelia provides. Multiple office locations with separate staff rosters and service offerings, calendar synchronization that keeps every practitioner’s schedule accurate in real time, and a booking interface that reflects the professional quality of the firm rather than looking like a generic widget dropped onto a contact page.
Multi-location franchise and chain businesses that need a single WordPress installation to handle booking across multiple physical locations with different staff, different services, and different availability at each site will find Amelia’s location and staff architecture handles that complexity cleanly without requiring separate installations or manual workarounds.
Amelia vs Other WordPress Booking Plugins
| Feature | Amelia | Bookly Pro | Simply Schedule Appointments | WP Booking Calendar | LatePoint |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multiple Staff Management | Yes | Yes | Limited | No | Yes |
| Multiple Locations | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Events Booking | Yes | With addon | No | Yes | No |
| Package Booking | Yes | With addon | No | No | No |
| Recurring Appointments | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Google Calendar Sync | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Outlook Calendar Sync | Yes | With addon | Yes | No | No |
| Zoom Integration | Yes | With addon | Yes | No | Yes |
| WhatsApp Notifications | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Customer Front-End Panel | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Payment Gateway Support
| Gateway | Supported Payment Types |
|---|---|
| Stripe | Full payment, deposit, and on-site payment collection |
| PayPal | Full payment and deposit collection via PayPal checkout |
| Mollie | Full payment and deposit with European payment method support |
| RazorPay | Full payment and deposit for Indian market transactions |
| Square | In-person and online payment collection through Square |
| WooCommerce | Payment processing through the full WooCommerce payment gateway ecosystem |
| On-Site Payment | Mark appointments as pay on arrival without collecting payment online |
How to Install Amelia
Download the Amelia zip file from WPDropzone. In your WordPress admin panel navigate to Plugins, click Add New, then Upload Plugin, and select the downloaded zip file. Click Install Now and activate the plugin once installation completes. After activation, Amelia will appear in your WordPress sidebar with its own dedicated menu. Start by navigating to Amelia and then Settings to configure your general options including business hours, time zone, and currency. Then go to Services to create your service categories and individual services with durations and pricing, followed by Staff to create staff profiles and assign them to services with their individual working hours. Finally place the Amelia booking shortcode or Gutenberg block on any page where you want the booking form to appear. A basic single-staff, single-service booking setup can be fully operational within thirty minutes of installation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Amelia work for businesses with multiple staff members and locations? Yes. Amelia was specifically designed to handle multi-staff and multi-location operations. Each staff member has their own profile with individual service assignments, working hours, days off, and calendar integrations. Each location can have its own set of available services and staff roster, and customers can select their preferred location and staff member during the booking process.
Can Amelia send automated reminders to reduce no-shows? Yes. Amelia includes a fully configurable notification system that sends automated email and SMS reminders to customers at defined intervals before their appointment. You can set reminders to go out 24 hours, 2 hours, or any custom time before the booking, and the system handles sending without any manual action from your team. Research consistently shows that automated reminders reduce no-show rates significantly, and for service businesses where an empty appointment slot represents direct lost revenue, this feature alone often justifies the cost of the plugin.
Does Amelia integrate with Google Calendar and Outlook? Yes. Amelia supports two-way synchronization with both Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar. When a customer books an appointment through Amelia, it automatically appears in the assigned staff member’s connected calendar. If the staff member blocks time or marks themselves as unavailable directly in Google Calendar or Outlook, that time becomes unavailable in Amelia’s booking form automatically.
Can customers book and pay online without contacting the business? Yes. The entire Amelia booking flow is designed to be self-service from start to finish. Customers select their service, choose their preferred staff member and location if applicable, pick an available date and time, fill in any required custom fields, and complete payment all without any interaction with the business. The business receives a notification, the customer receives a confirmation, and both parties have the appointment details without a single phone call or email exchange.
Does Amelia support virtual appointments with video call links? Yes. Amelia integrates natively with Zoom and Google Meet to automatically generate unique meeting links for virtual appointments. When a customer books a service that is configured for virtual delivery, Amelia creates the meeting link and includes it in the confirmation email and reminder notifications sent to both the customer and the staff member. No manual link creation or sharing is required.
Can I sell appointment packages or bundles with Amelia? Yes. Amelia includes a package booking system that lets you create bundles of multiple appointments sold as a single purchasable unit. A personal trainer can sell a ten-session package, a language tutor can offer a monthly lesson bundle, and a beauty salon can package a series of treatments at a discounted rate. Customers purchase the package through the standard booking flow and their remaining sessions are tracked automatically in their customer panel.
⚠️ Disclaimer: This plugin/theme is for personal use and practice only. Run a malware scan before use. For commercial use, purchase a license from the official website.
