Baza Booking Calendar vs Bookly: An Honest Comparison

Bookly is one of the most popular WordPress booking plugins, and if you are looking for an alternative, you have probably run into the same issue. The base version looks solid, then you find out that SMS notifications, card payments, or flexible schedule settings are separate paid add-ons, each with its own price tag.

Baza Booking Calendar takes the opposite approach: one plan, everything included. Here is an honest comparison of both plugins by price, features, and real experience from users who have switched from one to the other.

The main difference: hidden paid add-ons

The most common complaint about Bookly, found across reviews and support forums, is its pricing structure. The base plugin is free or cheap, but every useful feature, SMS reminders, payments, custom form fields, is sold separately. In the end, the total cost of the add-ons you actually need often ends up higher than a plugin that includes everything upfront.

Sabrina, a studio owner and one of our Baza Booking Calendar clients, switched for exactly this reason. She had been adding Bookly add-ons one by one for every feature she needed, until the total cost stopped making sense. With Baza Booking Calendar, everything she needed was already included in a single plan, no extra purchases.

Pricing comparison

Baza Booking Calendar plans: Starter from €9/M a month (or €79/Y a year) for the core feature set, Pro at €179/Y a year (or €19/M a month) with the full set of features above, and Elite at for agencies managing up to 15 sites at once. Every plan includes a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Notifications: where Baza Booking Calendar pulls ahead

Bookly is limited to email and, as a paid extra, SMS. Baza Booking Calendar sends new booking notifications across several channels at once: Telegram, WhatsApp Business, Viber, SMS through Twilio, Lifecell, or TurboSMS, and email. All of it is already included in the Pro plan, nothing extra to buy.

For a small business owner, that means one simple thing: the notification lands somewhere you will actually see it right away, instead of getting lost among dozens of other emails.

Payment methods

Baza Booking Calendar supports a wider range of payment methods than a typical booking plugin: Stripe, Square, PayPal, Paddle, Revolut Business, Mollie, SumUp, Klarna, Przelewy24 P24, iDEAL, Blik, Privat24 (LiqPay), Monobank. If your audience is international, that means a customer in Poland or the Netherlands gets their familiar local payment method instead of hunting for a workaround.

When Bookly might still be the right choice

To be fair, if all you need is a very simple calendar with no notifications, payments, or extra services, and you never plan to expand, Bookly’s free tier might be enough. Baza Booking Calendar shows its advantage once your business grows and you start needing new features one after another, instead of buying each one separately.

Frequently asked questions

Bottom line

Bookly and Baza Booking Calendar solve the same problem, but take a different approach to pricing. Bookly is cheaper to start with, but the cost grows with every add-on you need. Baza Booking Calendar includes the full feature set in one plan from day one, no surprises on your bill a few months in.