Is Setmore actually free?
Disclosure. Setmore pays us nothing. We looked for an affiliate programme and could not find one we could join, so there is no arrangement, no link, and no revenue attached to this page whichever way you decide. We do have applications pending with two competing products — SimplyBook.me and Square — and neither has been approved. Given that, note what this page concludes: for a lot of readers the correct answer is a free plan that earns us nothing at all.
Yes, and it is more generous than the price suggests. Two hundred appointments a month, four users, deposits, card payments and a branded booking page, all at $0. One feature is missing, and it is the one that decides whether a scheduling tool is useful or dangerous.
The answer
Yes — and the volume cap is not what will make you pay. The missing calendar sync is.
- ✅$0 for up to 4 users and 200 appointments a month. That is roughly 9 a working day — more than most solo practices ever book.
- 💳Deposits and card payments are free here. Acuity has no free plan at all and charges $192 a year for the same machinery.
- ⚠️No 2-way calendar sync on the free plan. A scheduler that cannot read your existing calendar will offer slots you are already busy in.
- 💰Pro is $5 per user a month on annual billing — $60 a year. That is the cheapest paid scheduler we have costed: half of Calendly, under a third of Acuity.
Jump to: What 200 a month means The missing feature What else is free What Pro costs Which one are you?
What “200 appointments a month” actually means
The free plan carries one number that looks like a limit and mostly is not. Setmore’s comparison table states it plainly: 200 appointments monthly limit. Put that in the units you work in:
200 a month is:
6.7 a day if you work every day of the month
9.1 a day across 22 working days
At 45 minutes each, that is 34.6 hours of appointments a week — a full diary before admin, travel or preparation.
If you are a massage therapist, a tutor or a consultant working alone, you will hit your own capacity long before you hit Setmore’s. The cap is real, it is published, and for a one-person practice it is very unlikely to be the thing that makes you upgrade. That matters, because a free plan whose limit you never reach is a different product from one designed to run out.
It is worth reading the cap the other way too. Four users share those 200 between them, so a two-person clinic taking five bookings each per working day — 220 a month — is already over. The cap is generous for one person and tight for a small team.
The one feature that is missing, and why it is the one
Setmore’s feature comparison has a section called Calendar management. It contains three rows. Two — the mobile app and the desktop app — are yes on both plans. The third is 2-way calendar sync, and on the free plan it is No. There is no one-way option listed as a consolation.
This is not a cosmetic omission, and the reason is one we have arrived at before on this site from the opposite direction. A booking tool exists to do one thing that a contact form cannot: read the calendar you already keep, and refuse to offer a slot you are busy in. Take that away and what remains is a very handsome form that will cheerfully sell someone the hour you are already in a meeting.
Who this actually affects. If Setmore holds your only calendar — everything you do goes into it and nothing lives in Google Calendar or Outlook — the free plan is complete and the missing sync costs you nothing.
If your life is already in another calendar, the free plan is a second diary that does not know about the first, and $60 a year is cheap insurance against one double-booked client.
That is the whole upgrade decision, and it has nothing to do with how busy you are.
What else the free plan includes
Rather more than a free tier in this category usually does. Every item below is marked available on the free plan in Setmore’s own comparison table.
| Included at $0 | Usually paid elsewhere? |
|---|---|
| Deposits | Yes — the main reason to pay for Acuity |
| Online payments, in-person payments, Tap to Pay | Often |
| Square and Stripe integrations | Often |
| Branded booking page, custom URL, custom QR code | Sometimes |
| Branded mobile app | Yes |
| Email reminders and confirmations | Sometimes |
| Reserve with Google, Facebook / Instagram book-now buttons | Sometimes |
| Analytics and reports | Sometimes |
| 24/7 human support | Yes — on a free plan this is unusual |
| Up to 4 users | Yes — most free tiers are single-user |
Deposits is the line worth pausing on. In the Acuity and Calendly comparison we concluded that the deposit-and-cancellation machinery was the strongest reason to pay Acuity’s subscription, because it is what stops a no-show costing you an unsellable hour. Acuity has no free plan; its entry tier is $192 a year. Setmore gives you the same capability at zero.
What Pro adds on top is a short and coherent list: 2-way calendar sync, SMS reminders, recurring appointments, removal of Setmore branding, blocked customers, Google review requests, custom notifications and priority support. Every one of those is a reasonable thing to charge for. None of them is capacity.
What Pro costs, and how it compares
Setmore Pro is $5 per user per month on annual billing with unlimited users and unlimited appointments. For one person that is $60 a year.
On these figures. Setmore’s pricing page displayed annual billing only from where we sit and we could not get a month-to-month figure to render, so no monthly price is quoted here — check the toggle yourself, since month-to-month is normally dearer. The $5 is per user, so a two-person practice is $120 a year and the gap to Calendly closes; Calendly is also per seat, so it moves too. The comparison above is for one person, which is what this site is about.
One more number, for completeness: Setmore offers a Live Receptionist add-on at $99 a month on both plans. That is $1,188 a year, or 19.8 times the Pro subscription. It is a human answering service rather than software, so it is not really comparable — but if you are pricing Setmore against anything, make sure you are pricing the $5 and not accidentally the $99.
Which one are you?
Which one are you?
📅 Setmore would be my only calendar
Stay free, indefinitely. Nothing on the Pro list is capacity, and the missing sync costs you nothing if there is no second calendar to sync with. 200 a month is more than a solo diary holds.
📱 My life is already in Google Calendar or Outlook
Pay the $60. Without 2-way sync Setmore will offer slots you are already booked in, and it only has to happen once to cost you more than a year of Pro. This is the upgrade, and it is the only one that matters.
💳 I need deposits so no-shows stop costing me money
Setmore free does this. Deposits, online and in-person payments, Square and Stripe — all on the $0 plan. Acuity charges $192 a year for the same job and has no free tier. Check Setmore before you pay anyone for deposit handling.
👥 There are two or three of us
Free covers up to 4 users, which is rare — but the 200 is shared. Two people taking 5 bookings each per working day is 220 a month and already over. Price Pro at $5 per user: three people is $180 a year, and at that point compare properly against the six-tool comparison. Per-user pricing is friendly to one and less so to three.
📫 I want SMS reminders, not just email
Pro only, and Setmore notes that SMS availability varies by country under a fair-use policy. Confirm it works where your clients are before you buy it for that reason.
What we could not verify
Month-to-month pricing. The page rendered annual billing only for us. The $5 figure is the annual rate; a monthly rate almost certainly exists and is almost certainly higher.
SMS coverage. Setmore footnotes that SMS reminder availability varies by country under a fair use policy. We did not test which countries, and if SMS is your reason to upgrade this is the thing to confirm first.
What happens at appointment 201. The table says “200 appointments monthly limit” but not what the software does when you reach it — refuse new bookings, prompt an upgrade, or something else. If you expect to run close to the cap, ask before you rely on it.
Questions people actually ask
Is the free plan a trial?
No. It is listed as a plan alongside Pro with its own feature set, its own user allowance and its own support level, not as a countdown. On the evidence of the pricing page it is a product Setmore intends people to stay on.
Does Setmore take a cut of my payments?
Not that we can see. Payments run through Square or Stripe, which are the integrations listed on both plans, so the processing rate you pay is theirs. If you route payments through Square, our Square fee breakdown applies — and the bank-transfer route in it is worth reading before you default to cards.
Why is it so much cheaper than Acuity?
Partly positioning and partly what you get: Acuity is deeper on intake forms, packages and appointment types that vary by service, and that depth is what its price buys. But on the specific thing most solo practitioners actually need — a booking page that takes a deposit — Setmore does it at $0 and Acuity starts at $192. Whether the depth is worth $132 a year is a question about your practice, not about the products.
Can I remove the Setmore branding on the free plan?
No. “Remove Setmore branding” is a Pro row and free is marked No. Your booking page will say who built it — which for many practices is fine, and for some is exactly the $60 they should spend.
The thing that actually decides it
Not the 200. Almost nobody working alone reaches it, and Setmore has priced the free plan so that capacity is not the lever.
What decides it is a question about your existing habits rather than your business: do you already keep a calendar somewhere else? If not, Setmore free is a complete product and one of the most generous free tiers in this category. If you do, then without 2-way sync you are running two diaries that cannot see each other, and the first time they disagree it will be in front of a client.
Sixty dollars a year to avoid that is the cheapest insurance on this page — and it is still less than half what the next tool up charges to do the same job.
Related: Best appointment scheduling software for solo practitioners — the six-tool comparison. Acuity vs Calendly, and Is Square Appointments actually free? — the other $0 scheduler.