Book Like a Boss* (BLAB) may not be as well known as some other online appointment booking services, but it's the only one I’ve ever used long-term for my business. Below I’m going to give you the reasons why (and to be fair, I’ll also mention a couple of things that I wish could be better).

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But before I get into the details I just want to clarify the plans, because there are 5 levels*:

• Espresso and Mocha plans are for those who need a basic appointment scheduler (lower cost, but paid bookings not available)
• Cappuccino and Latte plans are for those who also need to sell paid appointment slots
• There is a company plan (so all users have accounts under a company umbrella) but I won’t be discussing it in this article
• At the time of writing, Appsumo has a special 1-year offer of BLAB* for the Cappuccino and Latte plans (30-45% off depending on which plan you choose) 

Favourite Features

Here are the things I love most - and best of all these features are available on all plans!

Google Meet Integration

Available on: all plans

BLAB has had Zoom integration almost from the start, but it only worked if you were on a paid Zoom plan. The Google Meet integration works with all G Suite plans - even the free one.

The last year I’ve only been using a free Zoom account occasionally and with the new security settings it makes it difficult to automate the Zoom link part of my appointment booking - as many of you will know! No more worries with Google Meet.

You can select which meeting platform you want to use for each appointment type.

Events

Available on: all plans (note: accepting payments is only available on Cappuccino and Latte)

Now you can use BLAB to accept registrations for events that are happening on specific days and times. You can create both 1 time and recurring events. These events will automatically sync to your calendar when you create them, so no need to worry about blocking off the time.

You can use embed codes to add an event registration to an existing page on your website or you can use the landing page functionality right in BLAB (customizations limited).

For me, this replaces services like Eventbrite for accepting registrations and collecting ticket payments. I can also use it for things like webinar or summit registrations. And if I was running a group coaching or training program, I could use recurring events to set up ongoing meetings.

Max Bookings Per Day

Available on: all plans

When you’re creating an appointment type you can specify how many times a day a certain appointment can be booked.

For example you may have a public discovery call and even though you have 3 open hours every day you don’t actually want to do 3 hours of discovery calls every day. You can specify the number (for example 1 per day) and once someone has booked for the day BLAB closes off the rest of the times for that day no matter how much other time is open.

Time Off

Available on: all plans

Going on holidays or busy with projects or just need a break? You can easily add a time off event to your global calendar and all of your appointments will be blocked off for those days and times.

Zapier Integration

Available on: all plans

When it comes to email services, BLAB only integrates directly with MailChimp, but the Zapier integration means that you can easily integrate with most other services.

You can have bookings added to your email service to add them to a reminder sequence for your events, to add them to your leads for discovery call bookings, or to send them welcome packages when they sign up for paid appointments.

If you are comfortable with Zapier, you can add a filter to your zap to make sure different appointment types trigger different actions.

Embed Code Customizations

Available on: all plans

The thing about BLAB’s embed codes is that you can create code for just 1 appointment - or for all of them - or for just a specific few that you specify. In addition you can customize the font and colours to more closely match the branding on the page where you’re embedding them.

File Uploads Allowed for Book-ees

Available on: all plans

When someone books with you, you can set up a form they can to complete as part of the booking process. Now this also includes file uploads!

This could be a draft document of something that you need to review before or during your call, headshots if you’re booking a podcast or summit guest, and more.

Things That Could Be Improved

Email Templates 

There are some limited font/colour customizations available for the automated emails, but the layout is the same for everything. I prefer the automated reminders to come from BLAB for convenience, but I do with that there were some template variations to choose from.

Customize Email Notifications Per Appointment 

Update Nov 2020: just a few weeks after this post was published, I logged in to BLAB to find that custom emails at the appointment level was available as a feature!

The content for all automated emails (confirmation, reminder, cancellation, rescheduling, etc.) is set at a global level. This means that whatever content you add here has to be general enough to cover all of your appointment types. I’d love to be able to create customized email content on an appointment level.

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