Brindle Booking, available as a LTD on AppSumo right now, literally costs $9. So, we bought it, tested it, and wrote this review.

Brindle Booking is a new entry to the crowded Appointment Booking Plugin market, boasting several premium features and a promising roadmap of future additions. We picked it up for the current lifetime deal of nine dollars, tested it out, and wanted to share our thoughts with you. After working with literally dozens of appointment booking Plugins, including WP Amelia and LatePoint, we wanted to see if this new offering could hold up to mature competition.

We were really excited to see the fact that this tool allowed you to collect payment, which instantly pushed it a head of competition like Callendly and other freemium tools. That means that if your business, you can offer a service like a hair salon appointment, your customers can pay in advance on your website, choose the time that works best for them, and then show up at your location at that date and time. This may sound very fundamental, but considering the cost of Brindle Booking, packing all this functionality in to a $9 package is pretty impressive.

Now that we’ve covered the basic features that we really like, let’s take a look at the front end and back end, determine how easy it is to use, and if these features that are advertised really work. Then, we’re going to run through the roadmap for future functionality additions, and figure out if this is a good nine dollar investment.

Brindle Booking Frontend

The frontend offers and intuitive user interface, and your standard appointment Booking software interface. first, you choose your service and date, using a well-designed date picker. Then, you select your timeslot. As customers book timeslots, they close up to any additional entry. you then add your information like an email, name, phone, and payment information. Currently, payments are processed through stripe, via an in-line credit card form. once you submit this information, you are greeted with a confirmation form which allows you to easily add this appointment to your Google calendar, or contact an email for support.

By just trialing the demo, this meets all the basic needs for an appointment booking Plugin, like payment processing, Ajax uploading timeslots, and a simple pop-up interface that can be embedded on any word press website page. Now, let’s take a look at the backend of Brindle Booking, and test out the features as any business owner would use it, to see if this is a good lifetime deal.

Brindle Booking Backend & Features

With any early stage plugin, the most important aspect of the product is the backend usability. You can advertise all of the features you want, and perhaps they work on the front end, but if it’s not easy for your staff to manage on the backend, there’s no point in purchasing the plug-in. Luckily, in the case of Brindle Booking, the back end is very easy to use, and works in every aspect. Let’s take a look at some screenshots, which will give you a good understanding of the functionality, as well as the design:

As you can see, it’s a well designed and usable backend interface, meaning that anybody who knows how to work a mouse should be able to use this pretty well featured appointment booking plugin.

Future Prospects - The Roadmap

The roadmap for Brindle Booking look very promising. The two major features that we are excited for our the addition of PayPal payment processing, as well as an integration to WooCommerce, which opens up any payment processor that works with the e-commerce platform. If you have read or watched any of our other appointment booking Plugin walk-throughs, you’ll know that that is the major extent of the functionality that most have to offer. Multiple payment processors, appointment booking, synchronization to staff calendars, and the ability for multiple agents is really as complex as these tools can get. If the developer can deliver on the roadmap, then you’ll have all of these features for nine dollars.

Additional functionality that will be added during the week of Jan 12th is Multiple Staff Member Support.

On the front end, customers will be able to choose a specific staff member if that feature is enabled, and on the backend, staff members will have their own logins, meaning that they will be able to manage their own calendars and schedules. staff members can easily be managed by the WordPress administrator, and will get email notifications for various events such as an appointment being booked with them.

That’s pretty crazy.

Also, with the features that the plug-in has at this very moment, which include payment processing, multiple agents, easy customization from the backend, and the fact that the tool does everything that is advertised, picking it up for the current lifetime deal of nine dollars for a single license, offering unlimited support, updates, and access, is an absolute no-brainer.

Post LTD Costs

In the future, when this lifetime deal expires, the plug-in will cost $39 per year. In its current state, it’s not worth $39 per year, but again, if the developer can deliver on what they have outlined in the roadmap, this will still be a better value offering then WP Amelia, Bookly, and LatePoint, if you’re looking for a simple appointment booking solution (the other ones, which you can read about in this comparison, will still be more mature and offer enterprise features like multiple locations, agents, payment methods, and more).

Finally, for our Oxygen Builder audience, all of the testing for this plug-in was done on an oxygen website, and there is 100% compatibility here. So, that makes us a great, low budget, high functionality choice if you’re looking to integrate appointment booking capabilities into an Oxygen website.

Conclusion

To wrap this review of Brindle Booking up, it’s an incredibly low cost, high featured appointment booking plugin that offers the core features such as payment processing, schedule synchronization, multiple users, and easy backend customization. For the current lifetime deal, you should definitely pick it up. When and if the developer can deliver on what he has stated in his roadmap, this tool will begin competing for market share, going up against mature competitors, and winning in some regards. At that point, it will cost $39 per year, and may or may not be worth it. We will update this article as additional features are released, because we are proud owners of an unlimited lifetime license to this plug-in.