Booking & scheduling software
One app serves two audiences with opposed interests, and only one of them pays.
What people complain about
| Complaint | Share |
|---|---|
| Reliability — crashes, freezes, “doesn’t work” | 22.3% |
| Missing capability | 12.9% |
| Complexity & onboarding | 6.1% |
| Ads & upsell pressure | 5.7% |
| Billing & cancellation | 4.8% |
| Customer support | 4.1% |
| Update made it worse | 3.9% |
| Capability removed | 3.8% |
| Integration failures | 3.4% |
Dissatisfaction by app
| App | 1–3★ share | Reviews read |
|---|---|---|
| Mindbody: Fitness & Wellness | 51% | 1,274 |
| Acuity: Appointment Scheduler | 43% | 373 |
| Booksy for Customers | 35% | 1,410 |
| Calendly: Meeting Scheduling | 34% | 314 |
| Setmore Appointment Scheduling | 30% | 621 |
| Vagaro | 29% | 471 |
In their words
“I originally would have given it 5 stars, but after the trial expires it gets glitchy and has stopped syncing with my calendar which defeats the main purpose for me to stay organized. I'd rather sign up for the free/lite version and then be given the option to upgrade. If it's not fixed soon I'll probably delete because again what's the point if it's not synced??”
Calendly: Meeting Scheduling · 3★ · 122 votes
“For such a great and easy to use online service, their app is mediocre at best. It's almost as if they don't really care about their app. There are many features it should have but doesn't. I recommended you use your browser to set up a home button on your smart device instead. The only thing the app is really good for is notifying you when somebody schedules an event. But even then, it doesn't allow you to choose a different notification setting for a different event.”
Calendly: Meeting Scheduling · 3★ · 99 votes
“I find it creepy and irritating that this app stalks my location and uses it to send me location-based advertising even when the app is closed. If it were possible to book appointments at my yoga studio without using this app, I'd uninstall it.”
Mindbody: Fitness & Wellness · 3★ · 40 votes
“I cannot search for classes by location. I'm trying to find fitness classes that are at a specific time and is close to work, but it insists on using 'current location'. When I put the location of my work in, it searches for businesses instead! So I have to go into every business to see what classes they have and whether it matches what I'm looking for. I can't use the filters or anything. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but am finding it not very user friendly when it comes to the 'explore'.”
Mindbody: Fitness & Wellness · 2★ · 36 votes
This niche passed every gate: the pain is measurable, it recurs across vendors, and the people complaining are the people paying. We built Bookkind against it.
What this study cannot tell you
- About 41% of substantive reviews are not matched by the taxonomy, so every percentage here is a floor, not a true rate. The miss rate is roughly uniform across niches, so comparisons between them still hold.
- App-store reviews over-represent the daily user. Buyers complain on G2, Capterra and in churn calls, and those sources are not represented.
- No recency weighting: a complaint from 2021 counts the same as one from last week, so some cited failures may already be fixed.
- Coverage is uneven between stores; where an app is iOS-only in practice its share is computed from Apple data alone.