What is the best scheduling software?
Below is a list of some of the best planning tools, with their main features, pros, cons, and pricing.
1. Calendly.
Calendly offers an intuitive and simple user interface that is suitable for small and medium-sized organizations.
This appointment scheduling software helps businesses improve service quality, increase sales, and encourage savings at the same time.
Additionally, Calendly effectively eliminates the need to manually schedule appointments, calls, interviews, and demonstrations, among others.
If you are looking for other products similar to Calendly, here are a few alternatives to Calendly that you can consult.
Features
- Non-technical users can use Calendly effectively thanks to its easy to navigate user interface.
- Once the customer or colleague chooses a date, it is automatically updated in the calendar.
- It offers a solid integration with Office 365, Google, and Outlook.
- It checks all calendars to avoid conflicts and double bookings.
- Users can send automated invitations with personalized reminders and confirmation features.
- It's compatible with all devices, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones. That means you can use the platform from any location at any time.
- The software allows the user to check if the team is available or not and to automate reminders and follow-up by email.
- Multiple guests can schedule similar slots for webinars, courses, or workshops. Guests can also make an appointment without having to register or register on the platform.
- It also offers solid email support.
Pricing
Calendly's paid pricing plans start at $8 per month per user. You also get a free 14-day trial for paid plans to test all of their features.
Start with Calendly ->
2. EngageBay.
EngageBay goes beyond simple planning and aims to solve a multitude of different marketing challenges. Used by over 12,000 businesses, this software combines sales, marketing, and service efficiency into a single solution.
Features
- It offers great personalization options for sending highly engaging emails to customers.
- Enable faster appointment scheduling by helping customers book appointments.
- Automatically sync appointments from Google or Office 365 to ensure you have the most up-to-date list of today's schedules.
- Enables group appointments that allow the customer to make an appointment with multiple people in your organization through a single reservation.
- View time slots based on your availability. Users can also set availability based on different time zones to avoid confusion.
- Set up form fields to gather valuable customer information that you can then use to generate leads.
- It informs customers of upcoming appointments well in advance through automatic reminders.
- The software is available for free.
Pricing
The tool is available completely free of charge. For more advanced features, pricing plans start at $12.99/user per month.
Discover for free Engagebay ->
3. HubSpot Meetings.
Best free meeting planner with built-in marketing tools.
HubSpot Meetings provides you with a personalized booking link that you can use to invite people to check your availability and book meetings with you. When someone schedules a meeting, their contact information is automatically added to your calendar and pushed to the HubSpot CRM database (the CRM is free for life, for an unlimited number of users).
HubSpot Meetings integrates with both Google Calendar and Office 365 and is part of the HubSpot All-In-One WordPress plugin. When you sign up for HubSpot Meetings, you get access to HubSpot's free CRM, marketing, sales, and support tools, including email marketing automation, live chat, and forms, as well as HubSpot Academy, a free online educational resource.
Features
- Personalized booking link and customizable booking page (portrait, logo, color palette)
- Integration with Google or Office 365
- Link to group meetings to allow prospects to schedule an appointment with more than one person in your organization.
- Customized form questions to provide you with valuable information about your contact prior to the meeting.
- Available as part of the free HubSpot All-In-One WordPress plugin.
- Possibility to integrate your calendar on your website
Pricing
- Free plan - Includes a custom meeting link, unlimited meetings, integration with HubSpot's free CRM, and the option to embed a calendar on your website.
- Starter plan ($50/month) - Includes all other paid HubSpot Sales features, plus 1,000 personal and team meeting links.
Start with HubSpot Meetings ->
4. SimplyBook.
The best for service businesses.
SimplyBook is the best online appointment booking tool available on the market for service companies.
This is a particularly attractive solution for service businesses and you can get a professional website with a comprehensive reservation system. This gives you the option to add “Book Now” button widgets to your website or to Facebook, Instagram, and Google profiles.
SimplyBook also offers the option of accepting online payments through its point of sale system and has numerous other marketing features. Whether offering video meetings, sending marketing emails, or providing coupons and gift cards, their software is a one-stop solution for service businesses.
Features
- It allows the automatic sending of an email and an SMS confirming the reservation. And users can cancel the reservation at any time.
- You have the option of issuing tickets in the form of QR codes.
- You can easily integrate the booking page on your social profiles and website.
- Users can take advantage of its extensive configuration functions to offer several club services and offers in attractive packages.
- It allows businesses to receive online payments from multiple payment methods. These payment methods are Skrill, Bitcoin, Dwolla, PayPal, Mollie, CCAvenue, Zooz, and PayFort.
- Easily synchronize available time and reservation transactions using the Google Calendar Sync plugin.
- Its intuitive dashboard offers all data, including booking transactions and their statuses, through various colors for easy accessibility.
- It offers effective integration with Google Analytics to track visitors and engagement.
- It also offers a rewards system by which businesses can encourage their existing customers to promote their business.
- You can easily create classes and events with the new Class and Membership feature.
- Each plan includes personalized features, including additional modules to extend the functionality of your reservations.
Pricing
It offers a free plan and a free trial of its paid plans that start at $9.90 per month up to $59.90 per month.
- Free plan - includes an appointment booking website with up to 50 reservations and a personalized function.
- Basic plan ($8.25/month) - includes up to 100 reservations, 3 custom features, and adds retail outlets and coupons/gift cards.
- Standard plan ($24.90/month) - gives you up to 500 reservations and 8 custom features, and adds HIPAA regulation.
- Premium Plan ($49.90/month) - provides up to 2,000 bookings, an unlimited number of custom features, and adds link removal, which removes SimplyBook.me text from your widgets.
Start with a free 14-day trial of SimplyBook.
5. Bookafy.
Best global online appointment booking tool for small businesses
Bookafy is a versatile online appointment booking tool that allows you to easily create meetings. You can design the look and feel of your scheduling interface, automate video meetings, collect payments, etc. It's ideal if you're a small business looking for a planner that offers a wide range of meeting options.
Features
- The free plan is feature-rich.
- Includes a beautiful client interface that can be customized to suit your brand image, including colors, fonts, style, and more.
- Simplicity and robustness - one of the most comprehensive feature sets available on the market.
- Appointments for one customer and one staff, one customer and several employees, group events for several customers.
- Occasional appointments for ad hoc programming.
- Two-way and unidirectional sync with iCloud, Outlook.com, Exchange, Google Calendar, and the ICS calendar subscription link.
- Open API, custom development, enterprise functions available.
- Customers speaking 34 languages in over 180 countries use Bookafy to book appointments online.
- GDPR compliant, HIPAA compliant.
Pricing
- The Pro plan costs $7.00 per month billed annually, or $9.00 per month billed monthly.
- The Pro+ plan costs $11.00 per month billed annually, or $13.00 per month billed monthly.
- You also get a 7-day free trial for the Pro plan. No credit card required. No commitment.
Start with Bookafy for free ->
5. Acuity Scheduling.
Best appointment scheduling software.
Acuity Scheduling offers scheduling solutions to users who need to access their availability in real time and to make appointments according to their schedule. The software is renowned for being highly functional and offering a user-friendly interface.
Additionally, it allows customers to easily control their daily schedules and eliminate time-consuming forms of communication.
Features
- It allows the user to track revenue based on the details of paid and unpaid appointments. Users can also report absences and record the completion and times given by appointment.
- It offers easy customization options to meet a variety of requirements.
- Acuity Scheduling allows you to share your calendar on social media, including Facebook and Twitter. It can also be shared via email and integrated into a website so that people can book their own appointments.
- It provides end-to-end protection of customer information, both on the web and on mobile devices.
- It offers secure online transactions through several means, including PayPal and Stripe.
- It integrates easily with Squarespace, iCal, and Zapier.
Pricing
It comes with a free trial. Paid plans start at $14 per month and go up to $50 per month, depending on your programming needs.
Start with Acuity Scheduling ->
6. Setmore.
Setmore offers robust online planning solutions for individual entrepreneurs, small businesses, organizations, and NGOs.
It is capable of streamlining a plethora of processes, including payments, online bookings, scheduling, and customer engagement. Additionally, the software is equipped with easy-to-use administrative functions and improves workflow efficiency.
Features
- It is compatible with all devices, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones, allowing it to be used anywhere and anytime.
- It offers SMS reminders and mobile programming to prevent users from missing an appointment.
- Businesses can give internal employees access to manage appointments made by users.
- It offers SMS and email alerts for each rescheduled or cancelled appointment.
- Setmore allows customers to book appointments through social media platforms, including Facebook. It allows easy integration with Facebook and the website.
- Businesses can take advantage of their website widgets to facilitate faster delivery.
- Its highly optimized payment processing function makes it possible to speed up card transactions.
- It offers solid customer support that responds almost instantly.
Pricing
It offers a freemium plan with all the necessary functions and no credit card required. Paid plans start at $9 per month.
Start with Setmore ->
7. Findmyshift.
Findmyshift is an employee scheduling solution that is perfect for creating employee schedules, tracking your labor costs, managing assignment requests including timesheets and spreadsheets, and communicating effectively with employees. If you want to manage labor costs, Findmyshift is also a great tool.
The cloud-based planning platform offers a user-friendly interface that can be easily used by non-technical people. The best part is that it provides a stable, reliable, and scalable planning process for organizations of all sizes and types.
Features
- Easily track all staff from one location.
- Use any web browser to create and schedule tasks from anywhere and share them instantly with employees.
- It offers a free 1-month trial with all the premium features.
- Use its clock scheduling app to keep track of employee hours and work schedules. This online appointment booking tool is provided without subscription fees.
- Findmyshift has highly functional Android and iOS apps that allow employees to stay connected on the go.
- Teams of up to 5 people can use free employee scheduling software to easily create employee schedules.
- Send notifications and messages to employees through text messages, emails, and push notifications.
- Send automated job reminders and organize job scheduling in a single dashboard.
- Use its intelligent pay rate calculation to accurately pay hourly employees who have different rates.
- Secure all data in the cloud with automated backups.
Pricing
It offers a free version for up to 5 employees. You also get a free 1-month trial for paid versions that start at $25 per team.
8. Bitrix24.
Bitrix24 offers robust, collaborative features that automate planning systems to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes. It can easily manage your messages, files, emails, contacts, tasks, and projects, among others.
Features
- Businesses can take advantage of its business flow to collaborate effectively under one roof and keep track of all tasks.
- Its premium plan hosted in the cloud is compatible with all devices, including tablets and smartphones.
- Organizations can also use it to access source codes, acquire additional tools, and control data.
- You can easily integrate Bitrix24 to centralize activities, projects, information, and tasks.
- Users can also upload and share files with other users through this software.
- Businesses can use intranet services, including conversations, wiki, files, email notifications, tasks, photo galleries, to effectively manage internal and external communication.
- It also allows users to receive or make virtual phone calls.
- Bitrix24 is equipped with a plethora of tools, including time tracking, work control, scheduling, task reporting, employee directory, and absence chart, among others.
- Users can easily access time planning tools, including the meeting manager, event planner, and calendars by synchronizing Outlook and CalDAV.
- Its document libraries are powered by WebDAV versions and also offer flexible authorization functions.
- It offers telephone and online customer support.
Pricing
- It offers a free plan for a team of up to 12 people. Bitrix24 also offers a free trial for all of its paid plans that range from $12 to $99.50 per month.
9. Appointy.
Appointy offers a powerful all-in-one online scheduling solution. It is particularly suited to helping users drive vertical business growth.
Additionally, it has an intuitive user interface that is functional but simple enough for people who are not familiar with technology. This software is one of the preferred choices for small and medium-sized businesses.
Features
- It comes with a simple integration that can be done in a few minutes.
- It is capable of effectively managing a large number of employees and multiple sites.
- Appointy can help businesses set up customer loyalty programs to easily retain existing customers.
- It allows customers to make an appointment via Facebook and the website.
- Businesses that don't have a website can use the Appointy subdomain to create a unique booking page.
- Appointy allows customers to make recurring appointments and bookings.
- It adapts its business hours to allow customers to make an appointment at the time that suits them best.
- It offers real-time notifications that can be checked from anywhere using mobile devices.
- It offers powerful reporting and analysis tools to monitor staff and appointment performance.
- It sends automatic reminders by email and text message to reduce the number of absences.
Pricing
Paid plans start at $19.99 per month and go up to $79.99 per month. You also get a free 14-day trial and a free plan for your basic needs.
10. SuperSaaS.
SuperSaaS offers appointment booking services for any type of business. You can take advantage of this highly customizable software for individual appointment scheduling, reservations and rentals, group appointment scheduling, and service appointment scheduling, among others. The best part is that it integrates with numerous third-party tools and offers a user-friendly interface.
Features
- It offers seamless integration with the website and Facebook thanks to a “Book Now” button. You can also use it as a standalone appointment scheduling system for businesses that don't have a website or Facebook account.
- SuperSaaS is able to send automatic SMS and email reminders, reducing the risk of late arrival and no-show.
- The tool can accept payments from customers via Stripe, PayPal, and credit cards.
- It offers growing businesses a highly scalable solution that accommodates an unlimited number of users, employees, and other resources.
- Users can make reservations from anywhere in the world using mobile devices.
- It offers automatic time zone adjustment and support for 34 languages.
- It easily syncs with Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, Zoom, and the phone calendar to avoid conflicts and duplicate bookings.
- Users benefit from an effective integration with iCal for instant calendar appointment updates.
Pricing
It offers a free version for up to 50 upcoming appointments. Paid plans start at $8 per month and go up to $46 per month.
11. Ganttic.
Ganttic is a very powerful online appointment booking tool that offers all the resources you need to plan and manage your workflow and meetings. It allows efficient planning of projects, installations, people, and equipment, among others.
It also offers the possibility of planning everything visually thanks to a simple drag and drop function. In addition to offering a very powerful graphical interface, it also provides diagrams to effectively manage the show.
Features
- It is capable of allowing real-time collaboration with an unlimited number of users.
- Leverage drag-and-drop scheduling to easily create tasks, edit details, and add any amount of custom data.
- Plan work resources according to the length of time required or the level of effort required.
- You can have separate views for different projects and use a general view to keep an eye on all projects.
- Use resource usage charts and calculations to avoid understaffing or overstaffing in any project.
- Generate custom graphs and reports to analyze projects, tasks, resources, and more.
- It allows the same task to be assigned to several resources.
- Offers Facebook page integration.
- Leverage time tracking to calculate efficiency and better plan resources in the future.
- Use iOS and Android mobile apps to stay connected on the go.
- You can sync it with the phone calendar and the Outlook calendar to avoid conflicts and duplicate tasks.
Pricing
Ganttic is free for up to 10 resources. It offers a 14-day free trial for paid plans that start at $25 per month.
12. Square.
Over the years, Square Appointments has become much more than just planning and booking software. It now offers a fully functional point of sale (POS) system that can take payments, create a discount, and accept tips, among other things. Also, it is a perfect choice for health and wellness businesses.
Features
- Businesses can effectively integrate booking buttons and appointment widgets into their website.
- It supports automatic updates of services, schedules, and prices across all channels.
- Businesses that don't have a website can take advantage of Square's free booking site and include a plethora of features, including staff biographies, services, calendars, pricing, and cancellation policies.
- Users can also send personalized messages to customers to increase customer satisfaction.
- Business owners can work across multiple devices because software sync works seamlessly across platforms and devices.
- Appointment confirmations and reminders are sent automatically by email and text message.
- Users can book multiple services at the same time.
- It comes with apps for smartphones and tablets.
- Customers can use Square Assistant to book or reschedule appointments via digital chat.
Pricing
It offers a free trial for individual use. Paid plans start at $50 per month. You also get a 30-day free trial for paid plans.
13. Bookwhen.
Bookwhen meets the planning requirements of businesses of all forms and types. It offers a plethora of robust features and elements, including custom booking forms, the ability to export bookings to Excel, and more. Additionally, the software is easy to use and easy to integrate.
Features
- Businesses can personalize booking forms for each event, validate responses, and sign up for marketing.
- It allows online payment via Paypal, Stripe and WorldPay. You can also offer a “Pay Later” option to accept offline payments or other payment methods.
- Confirmation and reminder emails contain critical information, including a link for customers to manage the reservation, a calendar file, and customizable text sent by the company.
- Use the online register to mark attendance.
- A single user can make multiple appointments or bookings. It also offers recurring bookings.
- Use a simple code to embed the booking widget on any website, including Wix, WordPress, and Squarespace.
- It is perfectly optimized for mobile devices.
- It is available in multiple languages, including English, Italian, Danish, Dutch, German, Swedish, French, Spanish, and Hungarian.
- Its “Franchisors” function makes it possible to automatically deduct commissions from partner points of sale.
Pricing
It offers a free version that allows up to 50 bookings per month. Paid plans start at $15 per month and go up to $59 per month. There is also a higher plan for business solutions.
14. SkedPal.
SkedPal is a very user-friendly scheduling application. The software does wonders for people who are always busy and want to streamline their workflow to increase efficiency. In addition, it is ideal for all professionals, whether entrepreneurs or freelancers.
Features
- It offers applications for all platforms, including Windows, Mac, and Linux. iOS and Android smartphone apps help users stay connected and productive from anywhere.
- SkedPal allows users to create habits that are repeated on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis. It helps users free up time to achieve these goals and habits.
- It integrates seamlessly with Outlook, Google, Office 365, and iCloud calendars to avoid duplicates and conflicts.
- All you need to do is tell SkedPal what you want to do, and its AI engine will automatically gather all of your priorities that need special attention.
- Take advantage of its Time Map feature to effectively plan your week by setting aside time for different things, including work, play, and meetings. All of this is done with a single click.
Pricing
SkedPal costs $9.95 per month per user and is billed annually. You also get a free 14-day trial to check if the tool fits your needs or not.
15. Setster.
Setster is an online appointment booking tool for businesses. It helps you simplify your complex planning problems with a user-friendly interface and actionable logic.
Additionally, Setster offers an omnichannel experience to promote efficiency and encourage greater customer engagement.
Features
- It allows you to define specific parameters and rules for each appointment you make, depending on the customers you meet.
- It allows team members to be connected from any location, including virtual or geographic.
- Users can avoid multiple appointments thanks to capitalization. It allows you to add a buffer time to be ready quickly for the next appointment.
- Businesses can send advance notice of appointments to avoid defections and late arrivals.
- Control employee availability by blocking holidays and adding holidays.
- You can accept payments directly into your account through PayPal, Stripe, and FreshBooks. It also allows the customer to make payment in person after the appointment has been completed.
- It offers an API for highly customized application integration.
- Enjoy seamless integration with third-party applications, including Salesforce and Zapier.
- Efficient sync with Office 365, Outlook.com, and the Google calendar to ensure that all planned workflow stays on one screen.
- Send notifications to customers at personalized moments for better engagement.
- Customers can also request the appointment time before receiving final confirmation.
Pricing
Paid plans start at $16 per month and go up to $1206 per month (for one license). You can also take advantage of a 20% discount on annual subscriptions.
17. InviteOnce.
InviteOnce aims to take care of all your business bookings. It makes it possible to effectively schedule several appointments in the blink of an eye. It is capable of meeting the needs of a variety of industries, including B2B SaaS, financial services, consulting, healthcare, lifestyle, and education sectors.
Features
- You can personalize each meeting with individual settings, including location and time.
- Its “Round Robin” function ensures an equal distribution of work between team members.
- It maximizes the availability of resources by combining professionals from different teams. This helps to minimize cancellations and bounce rates.
- Its scheduling engine automatically selects the most appropriate time slot based on the needs of the meeting.
- You can integrate a proposed appointment time into the email so that the customer can instantly confirm the appointment with a simple click.
- Instantly create meeting templates to effectively meet the needs of your organization. Users can easily create a new model with a single click.
Pricing
Paid plans start at $10 per month. The good news is that you get a free 14-day trial to see if this service is a perfect fit for you or not.
18. Nowsta.
Nowsta is a powerful employee planning tool that is suitable for businesses of all sizes.
The software is ideal for various industries to streamline workflow by optimizing the payroll process, team management, field service management, and time tracking. It is the answer to the usual questions that employee scheduling software leaves unanswered and can make the team scheduling process easy.
Features
- Businesses can use filters and tags to find resources that are best suited to the task and send them work requests.
- There is a conflict notification to avoid double booking.
- Overtime warnings allow you to schedule employees, track time, manage shift exchanges, and deal with schedule changes.
- Employees can access and respond to work requests through mobile applications to minimize work time.
- Its punching function with GPS makes it possible to locate employees and ensure that they are actually at work.
- If employees want to change teams, it becomes an easy process.
- It automatically reports shortcomings by comparing the hours tracked with an employee's calendar.
- It uses photo verification instead of punching for more robust and secure access to the system.
- It automatically prepares salaries based on the hours recorded.
- It offers robust and seamless integration with third-party payroll applications.
Pricing
Nowsta is one of the most cost-effective employee scheduling apps. Its paid plans start at $3 per month per user.
19. UpKeep.
UpKeep is an advanced maintenance and asset management tool that is best suited to large teams. Users can easily access all of UpKeep's features from desktops, tablets, and smartphones no matter where they are in the world.
It allows professionals to communicate effectively with workers on the go. Among its main features are automatic workflow maintenance, preventive maintenance, downtime tracking, checklist maintenance, and more.
Features
- Take advantage of its real-time notifications and alerts to create work orders from anywhere, receive alerts and updated task notifications on your smartphone.
- Prevent recurring trends by regularly reviewing reports to maximize uptime.
- It offers secure data storage in the cloud and performs regular backups.
- You can access work orders and requests from anywhere using apps for tablets and smartphones.
- Monitor inventory, assets, and locations from a single point.
- It offers a user-friendly interface that can be operated by users with different technological skills.
- It can be implemented quickly and requires a low learning curve.
- benefits from regular updates to incorporate improvements and new features.
Pricing
UpKeep offers a free version. Paid plans start at $45 per month, billed annually.
What is an online appointment booking software?
Online appointment scheduling software is a perfect SaaS tool to help businesses manage appointments, bookings, employee scheduling, or project management tasks.
Now these types of software are able to automate the appointment booking process, as well as many other features, including cancelling reservations, online payments, helping to connect with various stakeholders, etc.
It also allows businesses to eliminate errors, poor communications, and duplicate bookings.
If you want your business to become friendlier and more agile, you can also try one of the planning platforms mentioned in this article.
What should you look for in planning software?
When you start looking for the right software solutions, you may end up being overwhelmed by all of the options out there. It is becoming difficult to determine the main differentiators and to make the right decision.
Here are a few key things to consider when looking for the right scheduling software:
1. Simplicity.
Most online planning software platforms come with numerous attractive features and elements.
But you should choose the one whose characteristics meet all your requirements. Look for a planning software tool that offers features that can make your business process smooth and efficient.
Don't let yourself be swayed by extraordinary characteristics, but put your priorities first.
2. Integrations.
Ensure that the planning platform you choose offers robust and seamless integration with the website, social media applications, and other third-party applications. It would help you maintain an omnichannel connection with resources and customers.
Take InviteOnce, for example:
It allows integration with essential third-party tools like Office 365 Calendar, Google Calendar, Exchange/Outlook Calendar, and iCloud Calendar. These integrations allow InviteOnce to retrieve availability in real time and make things more streamlined.
3. Compatibility.
Be sure to look for a planning platform that offers effective compatibility across platforms and devices. You can also look for an option that offers a mobile application to ensure smooth and transparent access to your entire business schedule.
4. Scalability.
If you are a small business but have a high growth rate, it would be a good idea to opt for planning software that is highly scalable. Ensuring that the platform is able to meet your growing needs in the future is critical. So check the number of users it takes care of and the number of customers it can manage at one time.
5. Support
Look for a scheduling platform that offers omnichannel customer support to help resolve issues. Also, be sure to check whether the platform assists you with the configuration or not.
Consider these points to judge each option more critically and easily distinguish appropriate options.
Summary.
So you have before your eyes some of the best online appointment scheduling software available online today. However, to make the right choice, you must first analyze the needs of your organization.
Here are a few things you should keep in mind before choosing the right scheduling software:
- Number of employees : If you're a freelancer or running a business with a small team, choose the free version that offers decent features. On the other hand, if you have a business with a larger team, opt for a business plan that offers the best value for money.
- Activity type : Choose a platform that meets your specific appointment scheduling needs instead of opting for a tool that offers lots of useless features.
- Budget : Make sure the platform you choose is under your budget and offers the best value for money. Compare prices to features of other options to get the best deal. Look for free versions if you have a small team or simple requirements.
Think about these points and analyze each tool critically.
When it comes to scheduling meetings and other critical business tasks, there's no easy way to manage everything. The best thing you can do is take the help of a scheduling platform that streamlines your business meetings for you.
Other recommended reading: To further streamline your business processes, check out my reviews of best project management software, of best billing software And some best CRM software to try this year.