OneBookPlus vs Acuity Scheduling:
a great scheduler, or the whole business in one book

It depends what you need. If you only need appointment scheduling, a polished booking page, intake forms and reminders, Acuity is an excellent, dedicated tool and OneBookPlus's bookings module covers the same job inside a broader platform. But most Australian service businesses need more than a calendar: they also send quotes, raise GST tax invoices, chase payments, keep customer history and do their BAS. Acuity doesn't do those things; OneBookPlus does them all in one app, so the booking flows straight into the invoice, the CRM record and the accounting without a second system. If scheduling is genuinely all you do, Acuity is hard to beat. If bookings are just the start of the job, OneBookPlus replaces Acuity plus several other tools.

Acuity publishes its pricing in US dollars (taxes excluded): Starter is US$20/month (US$16/month billed annually) with 1 calendar; Standard is US$34/month (US$27/month annually) with up to 6 calendars, SMS reminders and packages; and Premium is US$61/month (US$49/month annually) with up to 36 calendars, custom API and HIPAA. There's a 7-day free trial but no free plan. Because the list price is in USD, your actual AUD cost moves with the exchange rate and any card-conversion fees. OneBookPlus is priced in Australian dollars inclusive of GST, with a $0 free plan and paid plans from $29/month, and that single subscription also covers invoicing, CRM and accounting, which on the Acuity side you'd buy separately. (See acuityscheduling.com/pricing for Acuity's current figures.)

No. Acuity is a scheduling product, it can take a deposit or payment at the time of booking via Stripe, Square or PayPal, but it does not raise GST-compliant tax invoices, track GST collected and paid, or produce quarterly BAS-ready figures. For those you'd add separate accounting software. OneBookPlus calculates 10% GST on every invoice and quote, validates ABNs via the Australian Business Register, and generates ATO-ready BAS summaries, built for Australian tax compliance from the ground up, with bookings and accounting in the same book.

Acuity is a dedicated scheduler and its scheduling depth shows. Its intake forms are more configurable (unlimited questions, different forms per appointment type), its self-booking experience is highly polished and mobile-friendly, and it offers up to 36 separate calendars on the Premium plan along with a custom API and CSS for developers. It also embeds natively into Squarespace websites, which is a genuine advantage if your site is already on Squarespace. If your only requirement is best-in-class appointment scheduling, especially many practitioners or many distinct calendars, Acuity is a credible, focused choice.

Acuity takes payments and deposits at the time of booking through Stripe, Square or PayPal (see acuityscheduling.com). OneBookPlus handles payment a step later: every booking becomes a GST tax invoice with a Stripe Pay Now link, so the customer pays by card and the payment, the booking and the books stay one connected record rather than a charge captured in a scheduling tool that you then re-enter elsewhere.

For businesses that want more than just scheduling, OneBookPlus is a strong Australian alternative: it includes online bookings, GST invoicing, quoting, job management, CRM, email marketing, POS and accounting in one platform built for Australian tax (GST, ABN, BAS) and priced in AUD inclusive of GST, with a $0 free plan. If you genuinely only need a scheduler, and especially if you're already on a Squarespace website, Acuity remains an excellent dedicated tool. The deciding question is whether bookings are your whole workflow or just the first step of it.

You can, and some businesses do exactly that during a changeover. There's no native integration between the two, so a booking taken in Acuity has to be re-entered in OneBookPlus before you can invoice it, which is workable at low volume but tedious as bookings grow. If you run both, treat it as a transition arrangement: let your existing Acuity appointments play out while you invoice from OneBookPlus, then move the booking page across so the booking, the invoice and the customer record are created once, in one place.

Your client list moves easily: export it from Acuity as a CSV and import it during OneBookPlus onboarding, where each contact becomes a CRM record. Appointment history is the honest caveat: past Acuity bookings don't import as bookings, so most businesses let upcoming Acuity appointments run their course and take new bookings in OneBookPlus from the cutover date. Keep an export of your Acuity history for your records, and note your OneBookPlus data is exportable at any time too, so you're never locked in on either side.