# Easy!Appointments alternatives: first, check which Easy Appointments you have > Two products are called Easy Appointments. Which one you run decides the alternative: LibreBooking, Thunderbird Appointment or a hosted engine. URL: https://opencals.com/blog/easy-appointments-alternatives Author: Stanislav Tyshchenko Published: 2026-10-29 Updated: 2026-11-04 Categories: comparison Search for "Easy Appointments alternatives" and the first page is directories. AlternativeTo's list for Easy!Appointments opens with Thunderbird Appointment, Cal.com, Notion Calendar, Lunacal and Calendly (checked 29 October 2026). Those are tools for letting people grab a slot on your calendar. Easy!Appointments is something else: services, providers, working plans, a public booking page for customers. Swap one for the other and you'll find out in the first week. There's a second trap before you even get to alternatives. Two different products answer to the name, and the right replacement depends on which one is running on your server. > **Key takeaway** > > "Easy!Appointments" (with the exclamation mark) is a self-hosted PHP app, GPL-3.0, maintained by Alex Tselegidis; its latest release is 1.6.1 from 12 October 2026. "Easy Appointments" on WordPress.org is a separate plugin with 10,000+ active installs and a paid Pro add-on for online payments. If the PHP app works for you, staying is the cheapest answer, and the 1.6.1 security fixes are a reason to upgrade today. If you're leaving: LibreBooking for rooms and equipment, Thunderbird Appointment or Cal.diy for meeting slots, and a hosted engine such as Opencals if you need customers to pay when they book. Opencals is hosted, not open source; its Next.js templates and SDK are MIT. ## Two products answer to the same name The one most developers mean is **Easy!Appointments**: a PHP and MySQL web app you install on your own server, on GitHub as `alextselegidis/easyappointments`, licensed GPL-3.0. Its current `composer.json` asks for PHP 8.2 or newer. The one most WordPress users mean is **Easy Appointments**, no exclamation mark, a plugin on WordPress.org with more than 10,000 active installs, version 4.0.4 and a 4.3 rating when I checked. As far as I can tell it's a separate project: its listing never mentions the Easy!Appointments maintainer, and its changelog points to its own site, easy-appointments.com. Online payments through Stripe, PayPal or WooCommerce are listed as part of its paid Pro extension. To make it more confusing, there is also an official **Easy!Appointments** plugin on WordPress.org by Alex Tselegidis, around 500 active installs. It isn't the booking engine. It's a bridge: you install the PHP app separately, paste its address into the plugin's settings, and embed the booking form with a block, an Elementor widget or the `[easyappointments]` shortcode. | What you're running | How you can tell | Where to look if you leave | | ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Easy!Appointments (PHP app) | Its own URL or subfolder, its own admin login, a MySQL database you set up | The rest of this article | | Easy!Appointments bridge plugin | WordPress shows a block or \[easyappointments] shortcode, but the data lives in the PHP app | Same as above: the plugin is only the window | | Easy Appointments (WordPress plugin) | Appointments menu inside wp-admin, data in WordPress tables, Pro licence for payments | Other WordPress booking plugins, or a hosted engine embedded in the site | The rest of this piece is about the PHP app, because that's what people searching "easy appointments open source" or "easyappointments docker" are running. ## Easy!Appointments is still alive in 2026 Before you plan a migration, check whether you need one. The release history from the project's own changelog: | Release | Date | What it brought | | ------------- | --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 1.4.3 | 8 March 2022 | Last release before a two-year gap | | 1.5.0 | 7 July 2024 | CalDAV sync, LDAP / Active Directory login, custom webhooks, Matomo analytics | | 1.5.1 / 1.5.2 | January / August 2025 | API and CalDAV fixes, webhook secret header | | 1.6.0 | 27 May 2026 | Jitsi and Google Meet links, GDPR features, CAPTCHA on public forms, multi-date working-plan exceptions | | 1.6.1 | 12 October 2026 | A long list of security fixes plus CalDAV and Google Calendar sync repairs | The two-year silence between 2022 and 2024 is where a lot of the "is it abandoned?" searches come from. It wasn't. Since 1.5.0 it has had a REST API, webhooks, Google Calendar and CalDAV sync, LDAP, and the model service businesses actually have: services, providers, working plans and breaks. Read the 1.6.1 notes if you're on anything older. Among the fixes: the booking-page CAPTCHA could be skipped by leaving the field out of the request, login throttling wasn't blocking repeated wrong passwords, an ID in the body of a REST API update could redirect the update to a different record such as an administrator account, and secretary accounts could read other providers' calendar sync tokens and CalDAV passwords. None of that is a reason to leave. It is a reason to upgrade this week, and to admit that a self-hosted scheduler is a thing someone has to watch. What the open-source download doesn't do, as far as I could find, is take money. Payments aren't in its feature list or anywhere in the changelog I read. The maintainer sells managed hosting, white-labelling, one-hour support sessions, custom development and quoted data migration on easyappointments.org; the premium page links out to a separate pricing page and lists no figures itself. ## Why the directories hand you Calendly clones Directory lists are built from tags, and "appointment scheduler" covers two jobs that barely overlap. A **meeting scheduler** shares your free time: one person, one calendar, a link, a slot. Calendly, Cal.com, Notion Calendar, Thunderbird Appointment and Rallly all live here, and they're good at it. A **service scheduler** sells time on a menu: a 45-minute colour with a senior stylist, a physio's follow-up, a car service bay. It needs services with durations and prices, several providers with their own working plans, a public page where a customer picks all three, and usually a payment. Easy!Appointments lives here, which is why moving its users onto a meeting tool rarely sticks: there's nowhere to put the service menu. So the first question isn't "which project is most popular." It's what you used Easy!Appointments for. ## Pick by the job you hired it for | If you used it for… | Look at | Licence and state (checked Oct 2026) | What you give up | | ----------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------- | | Customer appointments, and it still works | Easy!Appointments 1.6.1 | GPL-3.0, released 12 Oct 2026 | Nothing; upgrade instead | | Customer appointments, but not the server | Easy!Appointments managed hosting, or a PaaS one-click deploy | Same code, someone else patches it | Some control, and a monthly bill | | Rooms, desks or equipment | LibreBooking | GPL-3.0, v7.1.0 (13 Oct 2026) | The customer-facing service menu | | People booking a slot with you | Thunderbird Appointment, or Cal.diy | MPL-2.0 / MIT | Services, providers, working plans | | A WordPress site that books | A WordPress booking plugin (Easy Appointments is one) | Freemium; payments usually paid add-ons | Running booking inside WordPress's database | | Customers paying when they book | A hosted booking engine (Opencals is ours) | Hosted; templates and SDK MIT | Self-hosting and the source of the engine | **LibreBooking** is the one I'd look at if your Easy!Appointments install was really booking things rather than people: meeting rooms, lab equipment, vehicles, desks. It's the GPL fork of Booked Scheduler and it has been moving fast, from v6.0.0 on 1 October to v7.1.0 on 13 October 2026. It thinks in resources, accounts, quotas and approvals, not in a public service menu. I wrote up [where the Booked code went and how LibreBooking compares](https://opencals.com/blog/booked-scheduler-alternatives) separately. **Thunderbird Appointment** is Mozilla's open-source meeting scheduler, MPL-2.0, Docker being the only supported way to build it. Good if what you really had was "people book a call with me." **Cal.diy**, the community fork of Cal.com after Cal.com [closed its source](https://opencals.com/blog/open-source-booking-system), is MIT, but its own site recommends it for personal, non-production use. I'd take that warning at its word. Everything else in the open-source column is narrower: MRBS for meeting rooms, Seatsurfing for desks (German readers: I compared [Seatsurfing and LibreBooking for desk sharing](https://opencals.com/blog/arbeitsplatz-buchungssystem-open-source) in German, works-council settings included), Rallly for group polls. If you run a single clinic, the [patient scheduling options](https://opencals.com/blog/open-source-patient-scheduling) are a different decision again, because there the scheduler usually comes with the records system. ## When the server is the real complaint Most people I talk to who leave Easy!Appointments aren't unhappy with the scheduler. They're unhappy with being its sysadmin: PHP upgrades, a MySQL backup nobody tested, an SMTP relay that started landing in spam, and now a security release with a list of fixes that long. If that's you, the honest answer is not a different self-hosted PHP app. LibreBooking on your own box gives you the same chores with a different interface. Keep the software and hand off the server: the maintainer's managed hosting, or one of the one-click Easy!Appointments deploys that PaaS catalogues such as Railway and Elestio list. You keep your data model, your booking page and your staff's habits, and someone else applies 1.6.2. Moving off it entirely costs more than people expect. I couldn't find a maintained importer from Easy!Appointments into any of the tools above, which is probably why the maintainer sells data migration as a quoted service. Plan on exporting customers from MySQL to CSV, recreating services and providers by hand, and moving only future appointments. ## Charging at the moment of booking is a different category I build Opencals, so weigh this section accordingly. If the reason you're looking is that a customer should pick a service, see a price, add an extra and pay before the slot is theirs, you're no longer shopping for a scheduler. You want commerce with a calendar underneath: services as products, variable pricing, add-ons, discounts, customer accounts, and a checkout. That's the shape we built Opencals around. Every booking is an order. What that means against Easy!Appointments, plainly: - **Opencals is hosted and not open source.** You can't install it on your own server. The open parts are the [MIT-licensed Next.js templates](https://opencals.com/blog/templates/haar), the `@opencals/storefront-sdk` and our Agent Skills; you can fork a template, put it on your own domain and keep the front end entirely yours, but the engine runs on our side. [Here's why we drew the line there](https://opencals.com/blog/open-source-vs-hosted-booking-api). - **It takes card payments** through Stripe once Stripe is connected to your store, which the open-source Easy!Appointments download doesn't do. - **It has no LDAP or Active Directory login and no outgoing webhooks.** Easy!Appointments has both since 1.5.0. Booking events in Opencals go out through Zapier. If your setup depends on staff logging in with company accounts or on a webhook into your own system, that's a real gap on our side. - **Price (checked 29 October 2026):** $0.99 per appointment with no monthly fee, or $14.98 a month including 300 appointments and $0.20 each after that. The [pricing page](https://opencals.com/pricing) says the fixed plan is cheaper past about 16 bookings a month. - **The free development store** has every feature in test mode, no card needed, but it can't take real payments until you're on a plan. If you're a developer who picked Easy!Appointments because you wanted to own the booking page, the [booking API](https://opencals.com/blog/booking-api) is the part to look at: you write the front end, we run availability, carts and checkout. ## My pick, and what would change it If Easy!Appointments does the job, upgrade to 1.6.1 and stay. It's maintained, it's free, and nothing on the alternatives list does customer appointments better on your own server. If the server is the problem, pay someone to run the same software rather than migrating to a different app with the same chores. If you were booking rooms or kit, move to LibreBooking. If you were booking calls, move to Thunderbird Appointment. And if what you need is money at the moment of booking, stop comparing schedulers and look at hosted engines, ours included. The one thing that would change that last answer is a hard requirement that the whole system run on your hardware. Then you're back to Easy!Appointments plus your own payment integration, and you should budget for that integration honestly. - [Open-source booking systems in 2026](https://opencals.com/blog/open-source-booking-system): What's still open after Cal.com closed its source, and what self-hosting costs. - [Booked Scheduler alternatives](https://opencals.com/blog/booked-scheduler-alternatives): Booked is a paid product now. LibreBooking (upgrade to 7.1.0) carries the code forward. - [Open-source patient scheduling](https://opencals.com/blog/open-source-patient-scheduling): EHR-native schedulers vs a booking layer in front of your records. - [Open-source vs hosted booking API](https://opencals.com/blog/open-source-vs-hosted-booking-api): Where we drew the open-source line, and how to choose. - [Booking API for developers](https://opencals.com/blog/booking-api): Own the front end; let the engine handle availability, carts and checkout. - [Open-source salon software](https://opencals.com/blog/open-source-salon-software): Easy!Appointments next to OpenSalon and the free Salon Booking System plugin, for salons that want deposits. - [Haar: a free salon booking template](https://opencals.com/blog/templates/haar): MIT Next.js template where the Reserve button actually books. - [Open-source meeting room booking](https://opencals.com/blog/open-source-room-booking-system): MRBS, LibreBooking and what to check before you self-host. - [Open-source hotel booking systems](https://opencals.com/blog/open-source-hotel-booking-system): QloApps, HotelDruid, Odoo's OCA PMS and MotoPress Lite: what's free and what's a paid add-on. - [Opencals pricing](https://opencals.com/pricing): $0.99 per appointment, or $14.98 a month with 300 included. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Easy!Appointments still maintained? Yes. After a gap between 1.4.3 (March 2022) and 1.5.0 (July 2024), it has released steadily: 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 in 2025, 1.6.0 on 27 May 2026 and 1.6.1 on 12 October 2026. The 1.6.1 release fixes several security issues, including a CAPTCHA bypass on the booking page and login throttling that wasn't blocking repeated wrong passwords, so upgrade if you run an older version. ### Is Easy Appointments the WordPress plugin the same as Easy!Appointments? No. Easy!Appointments is a self-hosted PHP app by Alex Tselegidis under GPL-3.0. Easy Appointments on WordPress.org is a separate plugin with more than 10,000 active installs and a paid Pro extension for online payments. There is also an official Easy!Appointments plugin for WordPress, but it only embeds a separately installed Easy!Appointments app into your pages. ### Does Easy!Appointments take payments? Not in the open-source download, as far as I could find. Payments aren't in its feature list or in the changelog. You can build a payment step yourself or pay the maintainer for custom development. If customers must pay when they book, a hosted booking engine with a checkout is usually less work than adding payments to a self-hosted scheduler. ### What's the best open-source alternative to Easy!Appointments? It depends on what you used it for. For customer appointments with services and providers, nothing open source does it clearly better, so upgrading and staying is usually right. LibreBooking (GPL-3.0, v7.1.0 in October 2026) fits rooms, desks and equipment. Thunderbird Appointment (MPL-2.0) fits people booking a slot with you. Cal.diy (MIT) exists but recommends itself for personal use only. ### Can I run Easy!Appointments without managing a server? Yes. The maintainer sells managed hosting on easyappointments.org, and PaaS catalogues such as Railway and Elestio list one-click Easy!Appointments deploys. You keep the same software and data model while someone else handles PHP upgrades, backups and security releases like 1.6.1. ### How do I migrate away from Easy!Appointments? Expect manual work. I couldn't find a maintained importer from Easy!Appointments into LibreBooking, Thunderbird Appointment, Cal.diy or hosted tools. Export customers from MySQL to CSV, recreate services, providers and working plans by hand, and move only future appointments. The maintainer also offers data migration as a quoted paid service. ### Is Opencals an open-source alternative to Easy!Appointments? No. Opencals is a hosted booking engine and is not open source; only its Next.js templates, the storefront SDK and Agent Skills are MIT-licensed. It fits when customers should pay at the moment of booking: services with prices, add-ons, discounts, customer accounts and Stripe checkout. It has no LDAP login and no outgoing webhooks, both of which Easy!Appointments has.