How to add a waiting list to WordPress bookings

Decide what customers are waiting for: a specific date and time, any opening for a service, or the next available appointment. Also decide whether you will contact everyone at once or offer the slot to one person at a time.

Write down what happens when someone does not respond. A short deadline prevents a cancelled Friday appointment from sitting unused while staff wait for a reply.

If you only receive a few bookings, you can add a simple form beneath the booking calendar. Ask for the customer’s name, email address, service, preferred provider, preferred time and permission to contact them about an opening. Store submissions in a protected admin area or spreadsheet.

When a booking is cancelled, check the list, contact suitable customers and create the booking manually. This costs nothing beyond the form and your time, but it does not automatically match openings, prevent two people taking the same slot or remove customers who have already booked elsewhere.

For regular demand, use a booking plugin or add-on that can show a waitlist option when a slot is full, save the customer against that slot and notify the relevant people when availability changes. WordPress itself does not provide this booking logic.

Check whether the feature is included in your current booking plugin, requires a premium edition or needs a separate extension. Do not assume that a plugin’s general contact form or cancellation email is a real waitlist.

With Bookly, the Waiting List add-on requires Bookly PRO. Install and activate the add-on, then go to Appearance > Step by step form > Time and enable Show waiting list slots. Customers can then see booked slots and join the list from the front-end form.

Set a sensible limit for each service. In Bookly, edit the service, open the Advanced tab and set the waiting-list limit to a custom number, or use zero to disable it for that service.

Prepare separate messages for joining the list, notifying staff, and telling customers that a slot is available. Bookly provides customer and staff notification types for these events, and its notification system includes placeholders such as {appointment_booking_url} and {appointment_waiting_list}.

Include the service, provider, date, time, response deadline and the action the customer must take. Check the success and failure pages used when a customer tries to claim an opening. A notification is not the same as a confirmed booking, so make that clear in the message.

Create a test booking, fill the slot, join the waitlist with a separate email address and cancel the booking. Confirm that the slot appears as available, the correct notifications are sent and the customer can complete the booking or is directed to a failure page if somebody else takes it first.

Also test a cancellation made through the customer-facing cancellation link, not only one made in the dashboard. Notification problems have been reported around cancellation flows, so check spam folders, your mail delivery setup and the plugin’s notification settings before going live.

Fast way: If you already use Bookly, install the Bookly Waiting List Add-on, enable waiting-list slots, set limits per service and customise the four waitlist notifications. It is the quickest route when you need cancellations surfaced to staff and customers without maintaining a separate spreadsheet.