Do you want to let clients book appointments directly through your WordPress site? Whether you’re running a salon, coaching business, or rental service, adding a booking form can streamline your scheduling and boost your business.
Now most website owners hire a professional to set this up, but I’m here to show you a way that’s easy, code-free, and can be done in a matter of minutes.
In this step-by-step guide, I’ll guide you through the process of setting up a booking form on your site. I’ve already tried and tested different methods, so this will help you skip the trial and error and get straight to what works.
What You Need to Set Up a Booking Form?
To create a booking form on your WordPress site, you need a reliable form builder. While there are several WordPress form builders available, I consistently recommend WPForms.
After testing dozens of form builders over the years, I’ve found it offers the perfect balance of ease of use and powerful features. Its drag-and-drop builder is incredibly intuitive, and you get pre-built booking form templates that save hours of setup time. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with payment gateways and email marketing, making it a complete booking solution.
While there are free booking plugins available, they often lack essential features like payment processing, calendar integration, or proper email notifications. WPForms Pro might require an initial investment, but it pays for itself quickly through time-saving and professional features that help you manage bookings more effectively.
Here are a few more highlights of WPForms:
- 1800+ form templates
- Instant admin email notifications
- Instant customer email confirmations
- Payment integrations
- Customizable ‘Book Now’ button
- Email marketing integrations
- Dedicated support
Let’s move on to creating your first booking form with WPForms.
Creating a Booking Form in WordPress
Step 1: Install and Activate WPForms
First, you’ll need to install and activate WPForms Pro on your WordPress site.
You can use the free version that’s available inside the WordPress plugin repository but for this tutorial, I’m going to use the Pro version to show you the full potential of this plugin.
For the free plugin, log in to your website’s dashboard, go to the Plugins » Add New page. Search for “WPForms” and install and activate it.
For the pro plugin, you can sign up for a plan on the WPForms website. Once you make your purchase, an account will be created for you. You’ll get a license key that you need to copy.
Then head over to your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins » Add New » Upload Plugin. You can select and install the WPForms plugin file here.
Then go to WPForms » Settings page and paste the license key here.
Once you activate the license, you’re ready to create your WordPress booking form.
Step 2: Choose a Form Template
WPForms comes with pre-built booking form templates. This means you don’t have to start from scratch or guess what fields you need. Simply choose a template that matches your business type (whether you’re a consultant, salon owner, or service provider), and customize it to fit your needs.
Open WPForms and click on Add New to open the template library. You can add a name for your form at the top. Then on the left, you can search for keywords like ‘booking’ to filter out the templates.
When you hover your mouse over a template, you can view a demo. Once you pick your template, click on ‘Use Template’ to open the form builder.
Step 3: Customize Your Booking Form
The WPForms builder is a visual one. This means you’ll see a live preview of your form that you can edit. This is exactly how it will appear on your site once you publish it. So there’s no coding or back-end customizations needed.
The left taskbar has form fields that you can add to your form by dragging and dropping them where you want them to appear. On the right is your form preview.
If you click on any field here, you’ll see editing options appear in the left taskbar. So for instance, if you click on the ‘Number of Guests’ field, you’ll see options to change the label and choices.
Now WPForms lets you collect payments through your form as well. Let me show you how. If you scroll down in the left taskbar, you’ll see a section called ‘Payment Fields’.
From this section, drag and drop the ‘Multiple Items’ field into your form.
When you click on this field in the preview, you’ll see options to add a new label. Below that you can add each item along with a price and an image.
Essentially, this lets you create a catalog that your customers can view and choose from.
Like this, you can add, edit, or delete fields as you need. When your form is ready, let’s move on to the next step.
Step 4: Set Up Form Notifications and Confirmations
When a customer makes a booking, it’s important to send them an email confirmation as well as alert yourself or your team that a booking/reservation was made.
WPForms let you set up these automated emails in a few simple steps. These emails will be sent to you, your team, and the user who submitted the form.
In the WPForms builder, go to the Settings tab. Then choose the General form settings page.
Here, you can change the form name, description, submit form button, and more. Below this, you’ll see a tab called Spam Protection and Security. Forms are a common entry point for hackers and spammers to target your website. WPForms comes with built-in spam protection and is enabled by default.
You can choose to enable/disable spam protection and captcha here. This keeps spammers out so you only get real form submissions.
Switch to the Notifications tab and you’ll see a default admin notification is already set up for you. This sends an email to your admin email address notifying you that a user has submitted a form on your WordPress website.
To set up new notifications, click on the “Add New Notification” button.
A new form will open up where you can add the email address, email subject line, from name, and email message field as you like.
Now WPForms has a cool feature here. It uses smart tags like {admin_email} that will automatically fetch your WordPress admin email.
Let me explain this a bit more. Click on ‘Show Smart Tags’ to see all available tags. If you click on ‘Name’, it should autopopulate {‘field_id=”1″}.
The first field in your form is the ‘Name’ field. So what this tag does is it will automatically fetch the name entered by the user in the form.
Next, WPForms also lets you control what happens on your website as soon as a user submits a form. To customize this , open the Confirmations tab.
You’ll get 3 options here that you can add to your booking form for WordPress:
- Message: Display a custom text message on your website itself.
- Show Page: Take users to a specific page on your website
- Go to URL (Redirect): Send users to any URL including third-party links
Select the one that works best and hit the Save button at the top.
Now let’s set up a payment gateway.
Step 5: Connect to a Payment Gateway
To be able to use a payment gateway for this form, we first need to set it up under WPForms » Settings page. Open the Payments tab where you’ll see options to set your currency, connect to payment gateways, enable test mode, and more.
You can connect to Stripe. If you’re on a Pro plan, you’ll also get options to use PayPal, Authorize.net, and Square. The steps are straightforward, simply follow the onscreen instructions here.
Back to editing your booking form in the WPForms builder, you’ll see a menu on the far-left of the screen. Open the Payments tab here.
Now you can choose to enable your chosen payment gateway for this form.
Step 6: Connect to Email
WPForms has built-in integrations with all your favorite email providers like Constant Contact, AWeber, Drip, and more.
In the Marketing tab, you’ll see a list of email services available. Simply choose your provider and then add your API key or log into your account to make the connection.
Depending on your service provider, you’ll be able to add categories and tags to your email subscribers so that your contact list stays organized.
Now you’re ready to publish the booking form on your site.
Step 7: Publish the Booking Form
You can add your booking form anywhere you like on your website such as a page, post, sidebar, or footer.
First, to add the form to an existing or new page or post, open the block editor. Use the Plus icon to add a new block and search for ‘WPForms’.
The WPForms block will appear in your page along with a dropdown menu.
You can choose the booking form you just created. I recommended previewing your form on the front-end. When you’re ready you can publish your page or post for it to go live on your site.
If you’re still using the Classic editor of WordPress, you’ll see an “Add Form” button at the top menu. This lets you add the form to your page.
Lastly, to add the form to a widget-ready area such as a sidebar, go to the Appearance » Widgets tab. Add the WPForms block to your sidebar or footer, and choose your booking form from the dropdown menu
You’ll find the WPForms block available in all popular page builders like SeedProd, Elementor, and Thrive Architect. So even if you’re using a page builder, it should be simple to add the form to a booking page on your site. It’ll also be easier to integrate the style into any WordPress themes you’re using
WPForms also supports shortcodes so you can use the code to embed your contact form anywhere on your website.
That’s it! You’ve successfully added a booking form to your WordPress site.