Online booking system plugins are playing a vital role in bringing tour and activity businesses back in the game. Whether you are operating a hotel business or managing events, you won’t like to miss any interested customer. Your goal should be selling your services online because that’s how the leading businesses operate in this 21st century. Your competitor will get an edge if you miss some golden opportunities. That’s why a sophisticated online booking system is crucial for your business website.
WordPress is powering millions of websites. These websites include blogs, business websites, and some other creative platforms. This CMS is also used to build websites to book hotels, serviced apartments, rent cars, and schedule various other services online. Those websites use the most cutting-edge plugins to enable online booking. The Pinpoint Booking System is one of those few plugins.
Is Pinpoint Booking System the Best WordPress Booking Plugin available in the market?
Is it a reliable solution for all your Booking needs? A detailed guide about the Plugin with it’s features, pro’s, cons and pricing etc. will be discussed in the Pinpoint Booking System Review below.
Pinpoint Booking System Review.
What is Pinpoint Booking System?
As endorsed on the official website, this plugin is designed to Book Anything, Anytime, and Anywhere. It can be used to create a feature rich booking calendars and accept reservations online.
Suppose you are running a hotel business and rent accommodation, you can use the Pinpoint Booking System to allow your customers to book rooms online. This plugin can also be used for scheduling services, make online reservations, and book appointments online on any WordPress website. Hence, Pinpoint Booking Plugin is an amazing solution for people offering such type of services.
You can try both the free and premium version of the PintPoint Booking System. The free variant comes with certain limitations and the pro version offers everything you need to enable online booking and scheduling online your WordPress website.
Bonus: Want to try out this Booking plugin? Use the coupon code wpvilla and get 30% OFF on all the licenses.
Key features.
This Reservation Plugin is packed with several impressive features which you need to gain more clients. Those features are as follows:
- Calendars
Using the Pinpoint Booking System, you can create unlimited no. of AJAX powered Booking Calendars for your service according to the requirement such as no of rooms, services, extras etc.
All your potential customers will appreciate the calendar you are offering to book the endorsed services. They won’t need to be a technical expert to use the calendar. Your customers can check the status and then book the required services on the required time slot. The booking form is also pretty simple and anyone can use it to book appointments, hotel rooms, rent apartments, or schedule other services online.
- Book Days
Apart from the regular reservations and appointments, If you provide any form of short duration services such as workshops on specific days or group of days, a booking days calendar can be helpful for you. You can easily add a days calendar with every information for a particular day or group of days such as status ( availability), any promo, extras etc.
- Book hour’s/ minutes
Similar to the Booking days calendar, a calendar can also be configured for booking hours and minutes which can be great for people’s running short consultation services. Your client can book any hour or group of hour depending upon the availability and price.
- Offers multilingual support:
The user can conveniently edit all the booking system texts. You can access the plugin backend to switch to a language you want. Its multilingual support makes this plugin much easier to use in any language you understand.
- Fully Responsive:
Millions of customers use their smartphones to access online services. A non-responsive website can easily force many potential customers to switch to another platform for a better experience. The Pinpoint Booking System is a fully responsive plugin. Whether your customer is using his PC, tablet, or mobile phone, this plugin’s responsive nature will allow all the customers to book the required services quickly.
- WooCommerce Compatible:
WooCommerce is the most widely used eCommerce plugin for WordPress websites. The developers have extended Pinpoint with WooCommerce. Therefore, you can use all the features with payment processing methods offered by WooCommerce on your website.
- Email and SMS notifications:
This plugin allows you to send automated SMS and email notifications to your clients on the most recent updates about their reservation. It also sends details on available slots for reservation if they have subscribed to your services.
- Additional tools:
You get support for booking rules, taxes, coupons, and fees. The Pinpoint booking system comes with many essential tools which you can use to run your business smoothly.
- Custom Post support:
This plugin effectively utilizes custom post types offered by WordPress to its users. You can prepare a unique post type to endorse the availabilities on your website. You do not get this feature with Pinpoint Booking System’s free version.
- Multi currency support:
This plugin is designed to support multiple currencies. Suppose you have a hotel in Singapore and your customers are booking hotel rooms from the UK, USA, Australia, India, and other countries, they can pay in their native currencies.
- Create custom booking forms:
Suppose you want to get more information about your customer, you can design and use a custom booking form to get vital details about your potential customers.
- Search:
The Plugin makes it easy for the client to search for calendars within the availability period. They can either search for days or hour’s with filtering option such as price and availability.
The sorted calendars can be displayed in multiple views such as list, grid or by location.
- Search widget:
If you want to integrate search widget on any page of your website, you can do so with the help of a shortcode.
- Shortcodes:
Availability of Shortcodes makes this tool beginner friendly. It provides prebuilt Shortcodes for calendars, search, language and search widget.
- Location:
Any customer sitting at the other end of the city can book your appointment with the help of locations. You can set up the location on Google Maps with multiple calendars attached to it.
The client in turn can search for calendars by searching through location.
- Reservation management:
Managing reservations would be a straightforward task for you if you choose to install the Pinpoint Booking System Plugin. It allows you to manually add, reject, or cancel reservations anytime you want from the plugin dashboard. You can also print the reservation file if you want.
The free version is offered to test and assess the true potential of this plugin. You can install that free version on your website and then check how effective it is for your business. Just like many other users, you will find this Reservation Plugin quite beneficial for your online booking business.
- Coupons and vouchers:
Coupons are one of the most effective ways to attract and retain customers. The Plugin provides you with an option to create multiple coupons to use on single or multiple calendars. You can also set the validity of the coupon with value either fixed or percent.
Bonus: Want to try out this Booking plugin? Use the coupon code wpvilla and get 30% OFF on all the licenses.
Important Settings
The first step that comes upon installing the pro version of the Plugin is validating the license key provided. Once you have a copy of the key, locate the settings option under Pinpoint Booking System tab on the left side of the WordPress dashboard.
Enter the license key as shown and click activate.
Under the settings tab of the Plugin, you also find options such as setting the Google API key, user and individual permissions which you can configure as per your need.
Once done, you’re ready yo access the true potential of the Pinpoint Booking Plugin.
Booking Calendars
Apart from creating new calendars, the Plugin also offers you with an option to duplicate an existing one. Each calendar created can be configured for different availability, price, status and other information.
In order to create a new calendar, locate th calendars option under the Pinpoint Booking System on the left side of the WordPress dashboard.
The steps are as follows:
- Add a calendar using the “+” sign > select the calendar
- Set the status of the calendar (available, booked etc), price, promo price and number available.
In the above you set the availability for the entire calendar called default availability, If in any case you want to set the availability only for certain days – you need to select the first day and the last day. Following, you can set the availability, price, promo price etc. called custom availability
Availability for Hours
In order to set custom availability for hours in multiple days
- Select the first and the last day.
- add the information that you want your users to see on the front-end along with information for admin.
- Mark the check box to set the hours (note: the default values for hours are listed, you can edit).
- set the availability, price, promo price etc > click submit
In order to set default availability for hours
- select the calendar
- add the information that you want your users to see on the front-end along with information for admin.
- use the existing hours definition or edit according to your need.
- mark the checkbox to confirm the you want to edit the information.
- Add the availability, price, promo price, information for users and admin.
The Plugin apart from this also provides option to set the availability for separate hours on a particular day.
Calendar settings
The calendar settings provides you with a number of options to edit various parameters such as:
General
Under this you can manage the date type, time zone, stop booking before specific interval etc.
One of the important point is the POST Id – you need to enter the ID of the post where your calendar is to be attached and is important for the search feature.
Currency settings
You can select the currency according to the location of your business.
Days settings
This option allows you to set the starting day of your week along with the option to enable/ disable check-in/ check out.
Apart from the above you can also configure the settings for sidebar, hours, coupons, taxes, extras, synchronization with Google calendar and Airbnb etc.
Calendar notifications
This option allows you to set various notification settings such as the email template, method used to send the email, email on various events along with the SMS notification via clickatell.
Calendar payment gateway
You can enable/ disable various payment options such as payment on arrival, instant booking, billing address etc. Any payment addons that you buy can be found under this option.
Calendar permissions
The permissions option allows you to give rights to use the calendar to various users depending upon the selection.
Bonus: Use the coupon code wpvilla and get 30% OFF on all the licenses.
Pinpoint Booking Plugin with WooCommerce
If you’re using WooCommerce for your online shop, selling a WooCommerce booking product/ service alongside other products can be really profitable.
All you need is the Pinpoint Booking Plugin and WooCommerce installed on your website.
Steps to set up a WooCommerce booking product.
- Create a calendar that you want to integrate with the WooCommerce product ( skip this step if you want to use an existing calendar)
- Add a WooCommerce product to be integrated or you can also use an existing product.
- Locate the tab Pinpoint Booking System at the end > select the calendar > hit publish > done
All set! Your client can now easily buy your service similar to a WooCommerce product.
Email Templates
In order to create a custom email template for notifications, head over to the Email Templates option under which you can select the template to modify. You can change the language, subject line and also the email description with the help of ready made Shortcodes.
Forms
If you want to gather additional information from your clients, you can set up forms by navigating to the forms option. It allows you to capture multiple data through form fields such as Check box, Drop-down, text area etc.
Why Pinpoint Booking System ?
Choosing a Plugin that combines great functionality with simplicity is one of the top most priority for any user. Moreover, choosing the best when their are tons of option available is often a difficult task.
Pinpoint Booking Plugin is one of those plugins that meets the above criteria. It has quickly become one of the WordPress website owner’s favorite online booking plugin due to its comprehensive features. A sophisticated booking system is required to run any online booking business. Your customers won’t be able to access your services unless you install a feature-rich booking system on your website.
The Pinpoint Booking System is easy to install and offers many customization features. It offers a simple interface wherein everything can be accessed from a single dashboard as shown. Thus, It is a perfect solution for every online booking business, regardless of what you are selling.
Pinpoint Booking Plugin pricing:
You would love to try the Pro version after testing the free version of this plugin. The Pro version costs in the following way.
- The Personal Regular costs $70 for 1 website/year.
- The Business Regular costs $140 for 5 websites/year.
- The Developer Regular costs $280 for 25 websites/year.
It comes with constant updates and support for the whole year and the extended license provides lifetime updates and support.
Bonus: Use the coupon code wpvilla and get 30% OFF on all the licenses.
Any add-ons
Every feature offered by the Plugin works exceptionally well with the following add-ons:
- 2Checkout Payment
- Authorize.net
- Braintree Payment
- ICEPAY Payment
All these add-ons are sold separately by Pinpoint.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Offering several cutting-edge features
- Simple installation and user-friendly interface
- Clean dashboard
- Availability of Shortcodes.
- Detailed documentation.
Cons:
Though there are no major drawbacks, the only point to notice is that a new user might take a little more time with it’s configuration.
Final thoughts:
Whether you choose the Pinpoint Booking System’s free version for trial or Pro version for a year, both are beneficial for your business. It is one of the best WordPress booking plugins that you can buy at a very affordable cost.