10to8 Scheduling review

10to8 Scheduling review: to tell it sweet and short  

10to8 is a well-rounded appointment, handy, and nifty scheduling app that can meet most scheduling use cases.The app has many features packed well into its UI. The UI looks aged but why change something if it meets the need.

What differentiates 10to8 is their attention to detail with respect to the features. An ex. You can see a history of emails with clients in which the blue tick marks denote a read message. Another example: For those who are not familiar with editing the html code for embedding the booking page, there is a small configuration window where you can add parameters to the code.

Nothing is set in stone: the product will give you options to manually override an automated algorithm. Ex. Double-booking, conflicts in availability, etc. There are more, which we will cover later.

While the product is good, I found the help documentation and the support team a bit lagging. Help documentation does not always return relevant results. The support team is knowledgeable but they could be more empathetic.  

10to8 Scheduling review: who is it ideal for  

10to8 is a good choice for businesses who perform services at multiple locations including the customer’s location and has to manage their staff well. You can set up multiple locations, addresses, and get booked at any of those.

10to8 is also good if your staff moves around among your locations and their availability across dates varies in each location as well. If you have a specialist visiting all your locations but on different days of a week, this feature is handy. The staff at each location can set a radius in which they can offer ‘at home’ services to the clients.

They are also good if you are operating with a bunch of contractors as your staff or a mix of contractors and regulars. These contractors could be specialist who work with another business or running their own business which may be running on 10to8. Even in such cases, 10to8 will ask those specialists about the org that they want to log in to using 10to8.

Staff can be deactivated, restricted to a location, and can have their private booking URL.

This flexibility can help you to expand your operations quickly without heavy expenditure.

They are HIPPA compliant which makes them a good option for medical scheduling.

Who will find it limiting ?   

They cannot be used at salons and spas where retail sales is involved and need a POS system or an inventory module. The do not have a roster module and a way for customers to buy add-ons (product/services).

10to8 does not have mobile apps, which is a limiting factor compared to the competition. It does not have a direct integration with a CRM or a ATS, which is a requirement if you are planning to schedule sales calls or interview calls.

You can create and download reports from the reporting module when you want them, or set a schedule to run them. However, there is no built-in viewer for the reports. You have to download and view in Excel or Google Sheets. It is not secure or user-friendly.

What is their business model? 

10to8 acquires customers through Google ads, among many other channels. They offer the longest trial period in the market, 30 days, allowing customers to develop a stickiness to the product. The team tries to keep the customer engaged through nurturing emails. They also try to maximize the network effect that the product offers. There is a slight nudge for staff and customers to create an account with 10to8 when they receive an invitation to join an appointment or an organization’s 10to8 account. The company has not invested in PR much.

Viability of the company 

The company is funded by a Cambridge based venture capital firm, Syndicate Room. Publicly available estimates 10to8’s revenue as more than a million USD per year. I could not find any figures acknowledged by the company itself. In a investor pitch, Matthew Cleevely – CEO said that they are growing 9% M-O-M in revenue, and has more than 2000 customers worldwide with 70% outside UK, their home.

10to8 Scheduling review: how do they fare on the basic features of a scheduler? 

• Calendar sync – 10to8 syncs with GCal, O365, Outlook.com, iCal and Exchange. They use Cronofy to sync calendars. Note that this is an additional authentication. Each staff have to log in to their 10to8 account and authenticate their personal calendar(s) to be synced. Once the connection is established, 10to8 gives you multiple options.
  • Sync 10to8 appointments into Google
    • Only sync my appointments
    • Sync everyone’s appointments
  • Sync Google appointments into 10to8
    • Sync busy times only
    • Sync all appointment information
• Availability – In 10to8, you set availability for staff and map that to services. However, you can override that and add a booking from the admin side. You can set availability for each staff for a day, one or more days in a week, and make it repeat every week. There isn’t a way to set a last date to the repeating availability. You can also set your availability on random dates, selecting more than one such dates at once. While setting up multiple availabilities, if you run into a conflict with an availability seat earlier, you can choose to move ahead with the conflict or make the correction.
  • The availability can also be restricted based on locations by marking staff to certain locations. You can set a radius can be set around the location to provide at home services to clients within that radius.
  • Location can be set as a parameter of availability. That means in order to book a staff, the should be available at that time and the location.
  • Rooms are another parameter of availability. If you set up a room as necessary for a service, only those slots when the room and staff are available will be open for bookings.
  • You can turn on the setting on the booking page to allow staff to be double-booked.
• Appointment types – 10to8 has two appointment types: one-to-one and Classes. Classes allow more than one participant. Customer can book one or more slots if the class is a recurring and repeating one. There is no option to book a class series (recurring – continuous). It is a bit surprising that 10to8 does not offer Group booking where the leader of the group can book for their group. However you can book more than one service in one session (in one checkout)
  • You can create rooms and reserve them for services when you need them.
  • You can set the service’s visibility to
    • Bookable by all clients
    • Bookable only via a private URL
    • Not bookable but visible on the booking page
    • Hide from the booking page
• Sharing – You can share the availability via a
  • Booking pages – There are many options to customize the booking page in terms of its layout and grouping of the services. Also, you can create multiple booking pages each having all or only a few of your services. Each page is standalone. You can create booking pages for staff and services. The major plus of 10to8’s booking page is its layout. However you can also customize the looks by uploading images and adding your content. The booking page URL can be customized. You can map the booking page to your domain if you want to do that. By opting to index the page on Google you will come up on search results. You can track lead and campaign activities by adding the related codes in the fields provided.
    • You can set up different intake forms for services using the fields like Name, Email, Phone Number, Text, Yes/No question and checkbox
  • Embed codes – 10to8 provides embed codes for adding a button to your website. The code can be customized for look and feel from the UI itself. You can embed the booking widget directly, after customization, on the website.
  • Plug ins  for website builders and CMSes like WordPress and Weebly and for Facebook.
• Online Meeting – 10to8 has Zoom and MS Teams integration. The staff have to connect their Zoom account with their 10to8 account.

10to8 Scheduling review: what are the differentiating features? 

10to8’s CEO has been calling themselves a communication engine as he believes appointment scheduling involves communication. Maybe due to that philosophy, you will not get lost in 10to8. The UI is structured well with each section in a different color. That gives you visual cue of the section you are in. We will also feel that the product is designed well, that it is not easy to spot loopholes in it. Without overwhelming the users, they offer many features. The following are some of the interesting ones.

• Region specific pricing – There is a slight variation in pricing depending on your country. I was specially intrigued by the pricing for India which was almost half of that in the USA. If that is true, it is a great move to price the product according to the buying capacity of the country.
• Voice reminders – No-shows are disappointing. SMSes and Emails are good but they can be forgotten and missed. A voice reminder is a great differentiator for 10to8
• Multiple organizations – If you have multiple businesses that you manage with 10to8, you can switch among them easily from the UI. You can even generate reports that cover all your organizations. This isa good feature to use even when you have multiple branches each with its own policies and staff. The feature also means that you can be part of multiple orgs running your business as an admin in some and simultaneously be a staff in another org.
• Staff module – You can give staff log in access, set permissions. Staff can sync their calendars, add their profile picture, description and have their own private booking URL. The difference 10to8 brings in the staff module are the options we discussed and how they have placed it neatly on the UI.
• Consent and Opt-in – with 10to8, you can ask for consent and opt-in from your clients.
• Inbox – yes, all the past, ongoing and upcoming (scheduled) messages are displayed here. You can see the messages and also take actions related to that appointment from the inbox preview.
• Simple Mode/Advanced Mode – This is an unheard-of feature. The simple mode hides 4-5 modules from the UI. These modules are not regularly used except by the admin.
• Multiple booking pages with its set of services and design – this feature helps if you have many staff and services and you do not want them to be present on your main page.
• Color coding – You can add colors to label appointments by their status, label staff, and locations.
• Interlinked – In 10to8, related pages are interlinked well. The transition is smooth between pages and there are no pop-ups. Since they follow a tree and branches navigation, you can easily return to the initial page.
• Notes, description and tags – Enter meta information about an appointment a staff or a customer. 10to8 is luxurious with these options.
• Location radius – when your customer requests an at home service, you can display your available slots and staff depending on whether the customer location falls within a radius set by you as the serviceable area from your nearest location.
• 30 day free trial – This is unusual, giving you the extra leisurely time to evaluate 10to8. However, some features like email campaigns are not activated in the trial.
• 30-day money back guarantee –
• Client message history – Under each customer record, there is a history tab which displays past, ongoing and scheduled messages with the customer.
• No slots support message – This is a thoughtful addition. If you have disabled online booking but made the services and slots visible on the booking page, you will want to communicate it in a friendly manner on the booking page.  
• The onboarding of staff via invite emails is one of the smoothest among the appointment scheduling apps.
• Redirect for Successful and Failed bookings – Normally, you will get only one redirect URL after the booking confirmation. In 10to8, you can set up two different URLs, one each for success and failure.
• Google Classroom integration – With our Google Classroom integration you can sync/import your students from all Google Classroom classes you are part of into 10to8. 

10to8 Scheduling review: what are the Niche features? 

• Email domain constraints – when you want to receive bookings only from a particular domain and not anyone else.
• Domain mapping – when you want to whitelabel your booking page URL with your domain name.
• Rooms – Like staff, you can reserve a room for a service.
• GDPR and HIPPA compliance tools  – 10to8 will activate a set of features that will help you to implement compliance.
• Maps integration for addresses – when you add an address, the location is loaded in the Google map embedded on the UI. It is a very convenient feature if you visit customers at home.
• Customer satisfaction emails – you can set these emails to go two days after an appointment which asks for a review. Using the review widget, you can embed the review on your website.
• Global search bar – allows you to search for customers or support articles. The search bar is present at the footer of the product UI.

Mobile app 

10to8 does not have a mobile app.

APIs 

10to8 has APIs that allow you to work with these modules

• Appointment booking
• Booking slot querying
• Organization details
• Staff collection
• Location collection
• Services collection
• Custom bookings question

Ease of use 

10to8 is easy to use. I do not remember a moment when I was wondering where a feature that I need is. It was always right at the place where I expected it. Even the new staff onboarding flow, which is usually a difficult process with some other apps, was so simple and straightforward. The UI looks dated, of the Windows 95 era, but that is just the skin. Everything other than that is great.

10to8 Scheduling review: booking experience for customer 

• Appearance – the default booking page is not attractive when compared to the booking pages offered by other apps. The look and feel is at least a decade old. You can’t do much to change that. 10to8 does not offer a html-css editor or easy-to-use booking page templates.
• Customer experience – 10to8 allows you to group services and sort them into an order that you like. Customers will have to select the service first, then choose their preferences in location and staff. Then they can select the time which is comfortable for them. Depending on the settings you have, customers can select more than one service or book more than one slot in the same flow. Customers can change the time zone they want to see the time slots in and the language they want to read the booking page in. 10to8 gives you many options to customize the content on the page like adding a cancellation policy text, privacy notice, business description, etc. Customers will be redirected to a URL of your setting and they will get the appointment confirmation email.

Help and support 

This is a weak link for 10to8 in my opinion. The help documentation is hard to read, the search does not always return proper results. To add to it, the support team is not very responsive and there is no live chat. I am not saying that any of these is bad that you should not use 10to8. Just that I felt that for a product I liked very much, its support and help doc could have been better. When I sent them a couple of questions, I didn’t get an answer that helped me solve my problem immediately. I asked another question and did not get a reply.

Bugs spotted 

I didn’t spot many errors during my evaluation of the product. A notable mistake was the label used for staff. 10to8 tries to labels for staff based on your industry. It could be coach, practitioner or another label. However, this label is not getting applied consistently.  

Privacy policy 

Read 10to8’s privacy policy here.

10to8 Scheduling review: pricing model 

• 10to8 follows usage based pricing instead of the per staff/calendar pricing. Since they follow usage based pricing, they have a fairly generous free plan and paid plans when it comes to features.
• 10to8 places limits on both the number of appointments per month and the staff.
• Their pricing philosophy is to give all features in the lowest plans and charge for the personalization, customization, control, professionalism, growth, and compliance that you want to adapt as you grow or depending on your size. That is a fair deal.
• 10to8 has region-specific pricing. Depending on the country you are from you will have a different pricing. The biggest surprise was when I found that in India, they are priced just half of what they are charging in US. It is a smart move to price the product according to the buying capacity of the market. Such thinking will help you gain a foothold in new markets faster.

Total cost of ownership 

This will be your subscription cost plus subscription cost for any app that you want to integrate with including Zapier. If you have more than 6 staff or gets more than 600 appointments per month, you have to move to Bespoke plan. Then the pricing is custom.

10to8 Scheduling review: what will you get for FREE, for $10, for $50? 

Features	Small Business	Basic	Bigger Business
	Free	$9.6	$40
Included bookings	100 per month	100 per month	600 per month
Services	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Staff	2	2	6
Customizable branding	No	Yes	Yes
Customizable SMS	No	No	Yes
Number of locations	1	1	Multiple
Online payment	Stripe	Stripe, PayPal or SagePay UK
2-way calendar sync with Google, iCal, Office 365, Outlook, and Exchange	Yes	Yes	Yes
Native Zoom integration	Yes	Yes	Yes
Reminders per appointment	1	1	multiple time-specific reminders
Remove ‘free’ from your booking page URL	No	Yes	Yes
Edit the URL of your online booking page	No	Yes	Yes
Host the online booking page on your own domain	No	Yes	Yes
Edit the styling of your email templates	No	Yes	Yes
Take appointments at your client’s address	No	No	Yes
Take appointments based on location radius	No	No	Yes
Create multiple online booking pages to showcase a different set of services	No	No	Yes
Ask custom questions at the point of online booking	No	No	Yes
Manage resources such as rooms	No	No	Yes

When pitted against the segment leader – comparison page and table 

10to8 Scheduling’s closest competitor is Acuity Scheduling. Here is a comparison of 10to8 vs Acuity Scheduling.

Summary of other 10to8 Scheduling reviews 

People are appreciative of the value 10to8 provides in the Free plan. That they have provided so much features, customization without sacrificing the UX is another point people feel god about. There are concerns about the lack of a mobile app and the UX on mobile. Generally, people are happy with 10to8.

Rating  

10to8 Scheduling is a great scheduling app especially useful for businesses with distributed staff and doing at home services for clients. Their staff module, onboarding, managing, and setting their availability are highly flexible and useful.

10to8 Scheduling review: One-year review  

Often, you will find that the product that you started using with full conviction is not the one you need now, after a few years. The reasons could be that it is not able to scale, or the total cost of ownership goes enormous, the support is bad, there are no updates.

Our long term review is a way to observe how a product and the company behind it behaved in the last one year. This is an important read if you are buying the product for a longer term. Read our long term review about 10to8 Scheduling.