Squarespace with Acuity, Wix Bookings or Orbit for a service business: what each does with an appointment
Three ways to take appointments on your own website, compared step by step: staff choice, deposits, reminders, packages, calendar sync, the shop alongside, and what a year buys for one person and for a small team. Checked 9 November 2026.
This guide is for a service business of one to five people, a clinic, a salon, a tutor, a personal trainer or a consultant, choosing a website that takes appointments and payment. By the end you will know what Squarespace with Acuity Scheduling, Wix with Wix Bookings and Orbit Commerce each do with a booking, what each includes around the booking, and what a year buys for one person and for a small team. Disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, so weigh the Orbit parts accordingly. Every price and feature was read on the companies’ own pages on 9 November 2026.
In short
- Squarespace’s website plans do not include scheduling; Acuity Scheduling is a separate subscription priced in US dollars, embedded in a Squarespace page with a Scheduling block.
- Wix Bookings comes with the Core, Business and Business Elite plans, which Wix prices by location and sells yearly, paid in full up front.
- On Orbit an appointment is a service product on every plan from £25 a month, paid in full at checkout with no fee per booking, beside products, gift cards and subscriptions.
- Acuity and Wix Bookings include deposits, a choice of staff member, reminders, recurring sessions and packages; on Orbit the customer pays in full when they book, gets a confirmation with a calendar file, and reschedules or cancels from My Bookings.
- One plan covers it on Orbit: Solo at £225 a year billed yearly carries the website, the appointments, the products, gift cards and subscriptions, with no fee per booking.
What are you buying with Squarespace and Acuity, Wix Bookings or Orbit?
Squarespace with Acuity. Squarespace is a website builder with a shop attached. Its UK pricing page shows Basic at £19.20 a month or £14.40 billed yearly and Core at £28.80 or £20.40, including estimated VAT (Squarespace pricing). Basic allows two contributors and takes a 2% transaction fee on anything sold through the Squarespace store; Core and above take 0% (Squarespace fees, updated 29 October 2026). None of the plans includes scheduling. Appointments are Acuity Scheduling, a separate product that a Scheduling block embeds in a Squarespace page: “You don’t need to sign up for anything else to use Acuity”, says Squarespace’s scheduling page.
Acuity prices in US dollars before taxes, with a 7-day free trial and no card: Starter $16 a month billed yearly or $20 monthly for one bookable calendar, Standard $27 or $34 for up to six, Premium $55 or $69 for up to 36 (Acuity pricing). At HMRC’s November 2026 rate of $1.3396 to £1 (HMRC monthly exchange rates), Starter is about £143 a year and Standard about £242.
Wix with Wix Bookings. Wix is a website builder whose Bookings app handles appointments, classes and courses. Adding the app is free, “but you must upgrade your site to accept bookings and online payments” (About Wix Bookings); on the plans page, Core, Business and Business Elite list “Scheduling and services” and “Accept payments”, and Light and the free plan do not.
Wix prices by location, and on 9 November 2026 its plans page listed US dollar prices for reference ($29.77, $39.77 and $159.77 a month), “for yearly subscriptions, paid in full at the time of purchase”, taxes not included (Wix plans). The UK prices recorded for our Wix comparison on 25 September 2026 were Core £16, Business £25 and Business Elite £119 a month: £192, £300 and £1,428 a year, paid on day one. Wix’s paid plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee in place of a free trial; our Wix vs Shopify post covers the shop side.
Orbit. Orbit Commerce is a hosted shop platform, built and run from the UK, where Service is a product type with a duration, places per slot, a notice period, a gap between bookings and an optional cancellation fee. The booking lands on a calendar in your dashboard the moment the customer pays (bookings). Every plan has it: Solo £25 a month or £19 a month billed yearly (£225 a year), Team £85 or £64, Pro £249 or £187, Enterprise £999 or £749, ex VAT, with a 14-day free trial and no card (pricing). A booking carries no fee of its own: it is paid like any order at the plan’s card rate, 2% + 25p for a UK personal card on Solo, nothing on top.
What does each do with an appointment?
| Step | Squarespace with Acuity | Wix Bookings | Orbit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Booking | Pick an appointment type, a calendar if you have several, and a time on Acuity’s scheduler, then your intake form. | Pick a service, a staff member or “Any available”, and a time, then a booking form: first name, email and phone by default, plus your fields. | Pick a date and time on the service’s page from live availability, with places left shown, then go straight to checkout. |
| Payment | In full, a deposit or a card on file, through Stripe, Square or PayPal at that processor’s rate; no Squarespace fee on appointments. | Online through Wix Payments (2.1% + 20p on UK cards) or in person, set per service; a deposit online with the balance in person. | The full price at checkout by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or Klarna, with cards at the plan’s card rate and nothing on top; the places are held while they pay. |
| Before the appointment | Confirmation, reminder and follow-up emails on every plan; texts from Standard. | A confirmation email with an optional calendar file, a reminder email, and texts 24 hours before where the plan and SMS quota allow. | A confirmation email with a calendar (.ics) file, so the appointment sits in the customer’s calendar with its own reminder, and a fresh email if the booking changes or is cancelled. |
| After the appointment | Follow-up emails on every plan. | Booking history on the client’s contact card; memberships and packages through Pricing Plans. | Mark complete or no-show; bookings per service in analytics; the drawer links to the order and the customer. |
On Orbit the customer’s side continues in their account: My Bookings has Reschedule, which offers only free slots for the next 30 days, Download ICS, and Cancel, which shows your policy and the refund after your fee before they confirm. The fee applies to every customer cancellation, whatever notice they give, so where the law gives the customer more you refund the difference from the order; the 14-day cancellation right is in our services guide.
What does each include around the appointment?
The table shows what each company’s own pages listed on 9 November 2026, and how the job runs on Orbit.
| Feature | Squarespace with Acuity | Wix Bookings | Orbit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staff or room choice | One calendar on Starter, six on Standard, 36 on Premium; clients book a named calendar. | Staff with their own hours; clients pick a person or “Any available”. | Places belong to the service: list a service per person and the client picks the person by picking the service, with days off blocked service by service. |
| Deposits | Full payment, a deposit or a card on file, every plan. | An amount per service, paid online, balance in person; not yet available to all users. | The full price at booking; a deposit you agree by hand goes out as a draft order with a payment link. |
| Reminders | Email on every plan, text from Standard. | A reminder email; a text 24 hours before, fixed wording and timing, where the plan and SMS quota allow. | The confirmation carries a calendar file, so the appointment sits in the customer’s calendar with its own reminder. |
| Recurring bookings and classes | Recurring sessions; classes, workshops and events; a waitlist from Standard. | Appointments, repeating classes with different instructors, multi-session courses. | A class is a service with places per slot, booked a session at a time, each with its own confirmation. |
| Packages and memberships | Packages, gift certificates and subscriptions from Standard. | Memberships and packages through Pricing Plans, with a fee tiered by site plan. | A subscription product bills weekly to yearly for a retainer or monthly plan; sessions are booked one at a time, and a gift card bought in advance pays for them until it is spent. |
| Calendar sync | Two-way with Google, Outlook, Office 365 and iCloud. | Google (two-way), Microsoft and Apple, per staff member. | A calendar (.ics) file with the confirmation and in My Bookings; you work from the Bookings calendar in the dashboard. |
| Intake forms | Custom intake forms on every plan. | A form per service with custom fields, file uploads and signatures. | A Form Builder form, an add-on, sits on the service’s page or a page of its own and emails you the answers. |
| The shop alongside | The Squarespace store (2% fee on Basic); subscription products on every plan; Acuity gift certificates from Standard. | Wix Stores from Core; product subscriptions; Wix gift cards across Stores and Bookings. | Products, gift cards and subscriptions in one basket on every plan; a gift card pays for a treatment or a product. |
Sources, read 9 November 2026: Acuity’s features and calendar sync pages; Wix’s help on staff, forms, charging, emails, texts, calendar sync, service types, memberships, the Pricing Plans fee, gift cards, subscriptions and Wix Payments fees; Squarespace’s subscription products article.
What does a year buy for one person and for a small team?
Orbit’s prices below are ex VAT and billed yearly; Acuity’s and Wix’s are on their own pricing pages, Acuity in US dollars and Wix by location, so read them on the day.
| Set-up | One person | Three to five people |
|---|---|---|
| Squarespace with Acuity | Two subscriptions: a Squarespace website plan (a store with a 2% fee on sales and two contributors on Basic) plus Acuity Starter for one bookable calendar | The website plan plus Acuity Standard for up to six calendars; Squarespace Core removes the store fee and the two-contributor cap |
| Wix | One yearly plan paid up front: Core carries the website, Bookings, Stores and five collaborators | Core with five collaborators or Business with ten; a staff member who only needs to be bookable has no site access |
| Orbit | Solo at £225 a year (£25 a month billed monthly) for the website, services, products, gift cards and subscriptions, one staff account and no fee per booking | Solo at £225 if you run the calendar and each person is a service; Team at £765 a year (£64 a month billed yearly) for up to 10 logins and a card rate of 1.7% + 25p |
Card fees come on top on every route at the processor’s published rate. On Orbit that is one published rate per plan with nothing added per booking: 2% + 25p on Solo, 1.7% + 25p on Team and 1.5% + 25p on Pro for UK personal Visa and Mastercard. What the Orbit plan buys is one system for the appointments, products, gift cards and monthly plans, on one order list and one customer record.
Which should a clinic, salon, tutor, trainer or consultant choose?
A salon, barber or clinic where clients choose who they see. Acuity gives each person a calendar and Wix Bookings lets clients pick a person or whoever is available. On Orbit each person is a service of their own, so the client picks the person by picking the service and every booking lands in one order list; our physio clinic guide walks through a clinic’s set-up.
A tutor, trainer or consultant selling one slot at a time. All three work. Acuity and Wix add text reminders and packages of sessions. On Orbit the learner books and pays for each lesson from the service page, a gift card bought in advance pays for lesson after lesson, and a monthly retainer runs as a subscription, all on one Orbit plan billed in pounds. Our guide to selling lessons online covers the detail.
A business that sells things as well as time. On Squarespace the products live in the store and the appointments in Acuity: two systems, two customer lists, two sets of fees. On Wix, Stores and Bookings share a site, with the Pricing Plans fee on memberships. On Orbit the service, the product, the gift card and the subscription sit in one basket and one order list, which is the case for Orbit.
Where Orbit fits
Orbit suits the one-to-five-person service business that wants the website, the appointments, the products, the gift cards and any monthly plan on one platform, paid in pounds to a UK company, Orbit Technologies Limited, registered in England and Wales, with hosting on Amazon Web Services in London. On every plan from Solo at £25 a month (£19 a month billed yearly, ex VAT), you get service products and the Bookings calendar with no fee per booking (bookings). Gift cards are sold in the amounts you set or issued by hand, emailed to the recipient and redeemed at checkout (gift cards).
Subscription products renew by charging the saved card and creating an order, for a retainer or a monthly plan (subscriptions). There is one published card rate per plan with nothing on top, and checkout takes cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Klarna (payments). Booking emails carry calendar files, and VAT invoices are emailed the moment payment is captured if you are registered. The Google Reviews add-on, priced on its listing, shows your Google rating (reviews), and the theme store filters its themes for services businesses. The customer picks a slot from live availability and pays the full price at checkout, the confirmation carries a calendar file, and My Bookings in their account handles rescheduling, cancelling and the calendar download. To talk your set-up through, book a call.
Read next: taking cleaning bookings online, dog grooming and daycare bookings online and a website for plumbers and electricians that takes bookings.
Questions people ask about Squarespace, Wix Bookings and Orbit for appointments
Does Squarespace include Acuity Scheduling in its website plans?
No. Squarespace’s UK pricing page lists no scheduling in Basic, Core, Plus or Advanced (9 November 2026). Acuity Scheduling is a separate subscription priced in US dollars, and a Scheduling block adds it to a Squarespace page. Squarespace takes no transaction fee on Acuity appointment payments; your processor’s fee applies.
Which Wix plan do you need for Wix Bookings?
Adding the app is free, but Wix says you must upgrade your site to accept bookings and online payments. On the plans page read on 9 November 2026, Core, Business and Business Elite list “Scheduling and services” and “Accept payments”; Light and the free plan do not. Prices are yearly, paid in full up front, and vary by location.
How do I take a deposit for an appointment on Orbit?
The customer pays the full price when they book, and the booking is confirmed when the payment goes through. A deposit you agree by hand is a draft order with a custom line, sent as a payment link that works for seven days, with the balance as a second order or an invoice later.
How does a business with several staff take bookings on Orbit?
Places and availability belong to the service, so each person is listed as a service of their own: the client picks the person by picking the service, and days off are blocked service by service on the Bookings calendar.
What does a year on Orbit cost for a one-person service business?
Solo at £225 a year billed yearly (£25 a month billed monthly), ex VAT, carries the website, the appointments, the products, gift cards and subscriptions, with one staff account and no fee per booking. Card payments run at the plan’s published rate of 2% + 25p for UK personal cards, with nothing added per booking. Team at £765 a year has ten logins and a 1.7% + 25p card rate.
Book a treatment yourself to see the whole flow. In the 14-day free trial, no card required, add a service, set its length and price, book it on your shop’s site, open the calendar file in the confirmation email, then cancel it from My Bookings and watch the refund arrive.