How to set custom appointment durations on a WordPress site

First decide whether each service has one fixed length, several predefined lengths, or a flexible length chosen by the customer. These are different booking rules. A 30-minute consultation and a 90-minute consultation can usually be separate services, while a booking that can grow from 30 minutes to 3 hours needs flexible-duration support.

Write down the minimum duration, maximum duration, increment and price rule. For example, a 30-minute unit with a minimum of two units and a maximum of six units gives customers options from 1 to 3 hours.

Open your booking plugin's general scheduling settings and find the setting usually called Time slot length, Booking interval or similar. Set it to the smallest increment you need. In Bookly, the general path is Bookly > Settings > General > Time slot length; the value controls the intervals used when available times are generated.

If you need 25-minute or 45-minute choices, a 5-minute or 15-minute interval may be necessary, depending on the plugin. A common mistake is changing the service duration but leaving the global interval too large, so the required option never appears.

For a fixed appointment, edit the service in your booking plugin and set its duration, price, provider and buffer or padding time. In Bookly, service duration and service-specific time slot length are configured from Bookly > Services by editing the service and opening its Time settings. Bookly supports service durations from minutes through multiple days, subject to the plugin's scheduling rules.

If customers need three choices, create three clearly named services such as “Consultation - 30 minutes”, “Consultation - 60 minutes” and “Consultation - 90 minutes”. This manual route is fine for a small number of options, but it duplicates prices, staff assignments, availability and notification settings. Keep the services consistent or one option can quietly remain bookable when the others are changed.

Make sure the provider's working hours are long enough for the longest appointment, including any padding before or after the booking. A two-hour service cannot appear in a one-hour working window. Padding time is also blocked from other bookings, so include it when checking whether back-to-back appointments are possible.

Test the price for every duration and check the calendar after booking. If the system charges a base price rather than multiplying by duration, use separate services or configure a unit-price rule where your plugin supports one.

If customers must choose the appointment length during booking, the basic service-duration field is not enough. You need a booking plugin or add-on that exposes duration choices on the front end and recalculates availability and price before the booking is submitted.

In Bookly, the Custom Duration add-on requires Bookly PRO. Install and activate it, then edit a service from Bookly > Services. On the Time tab, choose Custom for Duration, set the unit duration, minimum units and maximum units, and set the price of one unit on the General tab. Bookly then calculates the total from the selected number of units.

Make a test booking as a customer, not only from the WordPress dashboard. Confirm that every duration appears, the price changes correctly, the available end time fits within working hours and the calendar blocks the full appointment plus padding.

Check edge cases before launch: a booking near closing time, two customers choosing different lengths for the same resource, cancellation and payment emails, and mobile display. In Bookly, custom duration is not compatible with Packages, Compound Services or Collaborative Services. With group capacity, later customers may need to select the same duration as an existing booking.