Scheduling and meetings decision
SimplyBook.me
A competent developer can build a useful self-hosted booking system covering the core loop in about a week, but replicating SimplyBook.me's compliance certifications, enterprise features, integrations catalogue, and managed support would require additional investment.
Visit website↗$13.9/mo
$167/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$50one-off30 h to build
$20/mo6 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 2 seats.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All SimplyBook.me alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Expose a web booking page + widget, accept a booking request, store appointment and client, send confirmation/reminder, sync to provider calendar.
What it still won’t have
- Enterprise-grade compliance and certifications (HIPAA, ISO 27001) without additional investment
- Hosted multi-region infrastructure and data residency options
- Built-in wide integrations catalog and prebuilt connectors
- 24/5 live multilingual support and managed onboarding
- Branded mobile apps, white-labeling, and advanced premium features (POS, Payments PRO)
What remains hard
- Compliance and regulation
ISO 27001, SSL, SSO, and daily backups protect your data. HIPAA and GDPR compliant.
- Compliance and regulation
Hosted in EU HIPAA Compliant
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 2 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a self-hosted appointment booking app using Node.js (Express) + React, Postgres for storage, and Redis for background jobs. Implement: (1) admin CRUD for services, providers, schedules; (2) public booking page + embeddable iframe widget showing availability and taking bookings; (3) availability engine enforcing service durations, buffers, maximum concurrent clients; (4) persistent bookings and client records in Postgres with an admin calendar view; (5) email notifications via SendGrid and SMS via Twilio, including automated reminders; (6) Google Calendar sync using OAuth and webhook updates; (7) basic account settings and feature toggles. Out of scope: mobile native apps, white-label multi-tenant billing, HIPAA certification, and large-scale multi-region hosting. Include input validation, error handling, logging, automated tests for core APIs, and a Docker compose dev deployment plus a one-cloud small production deployment guide (DigitalOcean/AWS) with cost estimates.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Build verdict base78
- An open-source build was found+5
- 4 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- Hard moats found in the evidence-3
- Evidence score86
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 4
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productProduct homepage
- official pricingPricing
- official docsFeatures / AI Voice Booking
- open sourcealextselegidis/easyappointments
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
