How to Add WhatsApp Reminders to Acuity Scheduling (Without Switching Platforms)

Acuity Scheduling has become one of the most widely used booking tools for independent service businesses — coaches, therapists, personal trainers, photographers, and consultants who need a polished self-serve booking page without enterprise complexity. It's good at what it does.

But Acuity's built-in reminder system has a ceiling. On the free plan, you get email confirmations only. On paid plans, you get email reminders plus limited SMS in the US and Canada. What you don't get, on any plan, is WhatsApp.

For a significant portion of Acuity users — particularly anyone operating outside North America, or serving clients who live on WhatsApp — this is a real gap. WhatsApp open rates run 95%+ compared to email's 21-25%. Clients who use WhatsApp daily engage with it in a way they simply don't engage with email or unknown SMS numbers.

This guide shows you how to add WhatsApp reminders to your existing Acuity setup without changing your booking flow, without asking clients to do anything differently, and without replacing Acuity with a different platform.

What Acuity's Built-In Reminders Can and Can't Do

What Acuity includes:

• Email confirmation sent immediately at booking (all plans)
• Email reminders: configurable timing and message (Emerging plan and above)
• SMS reminders: available on Growing plan and above, US and Canada numbers only
• Follow-up emails after the appointment

The gap:

• No WhatsApp support on any plan
• SMS only works with US and Canadian phone numbers
• No two-way confirmation — clients can't reply to confirm or cancel via Acuity's reminders
• No intelligent escalation — if the email is ignored, nothing else happens

For businesses with clients in Europe, Latin America, Australia, or the Middle East, Acuity's SMS offering is simply not available. For businesses serving clients who happen to use WhatsApp heavily, WhatsApp reminders aren't an option within Acuity itself.

How the Integration Works

You don't need to connect Remindly directly to Acuity via an API key or Zapier automation. Acuity syncs appointments to Google Calendar, and Remindly reads from Google Calendar. The flow is:

1. Client books via your Acuity booking page (your process, unchanged)
2. Acuity writes the appointment to your connected Google Calendar (automatic)
3. Remindly reads your Google Calendar and detects new appointments
4. Remindly sends WhatsApp reminders to the client's phone number according to your configured sequence

The integration point is Google Calendar — which most Acuity users already have connected.

What You Need Before Starting

• An Acuity Scheduling account (any paid plan, or free plan with Google Calendar sync enabled)
• A Google Calendar account connected to Acuity
• A Remindly account (free plan covers 30 reminders/month; Pro for higher volumes)
• Client phone numbers collected in Acuity at booking

That last point matters: Remindly needs phone numbers to send WhatsApp messages. If you're not collecting phone numbers through your Acuity intake form, add that field before the integration produces reminders for new bookings.

Step 1: Connect Acuity to Google Calendar

If you haven't done this already:

1. In Acuity, go to Integrations → Calendars
2. Select Google Calendar and follow the OAuth flow
3. Choose which Google Calendar Acuity should write appointments to
4. Set the sync direction: appointments created in Acuity → appear in Google Calendar

Once enabled, every new booking in Acuity creates an event in your selected Google Calendar automatically.

Step 2: Add a Phone Number Field to Your Acuity Intake Form

1. In Acuity, go to Appointment Types → select the type you want to configure
2. Under Intake Form, click Add a new field
3. Select Phone Number as the field type
4. Set the field as required (strongly recommended — Remindly can't send WhatsApp without it)
5. Label it something like "Mobile Number (for appointment reminders)"
6. Save the form

Clients booking through your Acuity page will see this field. Their number appears in the appointment event details, which sync to Google Calendar and then to Remindly.

Step 3: Connect Google Calendar to Remindly

1. Create a Remindly account at goremindly.com
2. In Remindly's setup, select Connect Calendar → Google Calendar
3. Authorise Remindly to read your calendar
4. Select the specific calendar that Acuity writes to

Remindly will now see all upcoming appointments from that calendar, including those created by Acuity bookings.

Step 4: Configure Your Reminder Sequence

In Remindly's settings, configure when and what to send:

Recommended sequence for Acuity users:

• Reminder 1: 24 hours before — main reminder with full details and confirm/cancel/reschedule buttons
• Reminder 2: 1-2 hours before — brief same-day nudge

If you're on Acuity's paid plan and already sending email reminders, clients will receive both the Acuity email and the Remindly WhatsApp. This is multi-channel coverage, not redundancy. Clients who don't check email get the WhatsApp. If you want WhatsApp only, disable Acuity's email reminders while keeping the booking confirmation email.

Step 5: Test with Your Own Number

Before going live for real clients, test it:

1. Create a test appointment in Acuity using your own phone number
2. Set the appointment time to 2 hours from now
3. Wait for the automated send or trigger a manual test
4. Confirm you receive the WhatsApp message with correct details and buttons

Check that the appointment details from Acuity are displaying correctly in the WhatsApp message and that the confirm/cancel/reschedule buttons work.

How Confirmations and Cancellations Flow Back

When a client taps Confirm on the WhatsApp reminder:

• Remindly logs the confirmation in your dashboard
• The appointment status updates to confirmed
• You receive a notification (configurable)

When a client taps Cancel:

• Remindly logs the cancellation and alerts you
• You handle rebooking through Acuity as normal

When a client taps Reschedule:

• The client receives your Acuity booking link to pick a new time
• The new appointment syncs back through Google Calendar automatically

Common Questions

What if a client books without providing a phone number? Remindly detects the appointment but skips the WhatsApp send if no phone number is present. Make your phone number intake field required in Acuity to prevent this.

Does this work with Acuity's packages and subscriptions? Yes. Package and subscription bookings create appointments in the same way as standard bookings — they sync to Google Calendar and Remindly picks them up. No additional configuration needed.

What if an appointment is rescheduled inside Acuity? When Acuity updates an appointment, the change syncs to Google Calendar. Remindly reads the updated event and adjusts the reminder schedule automatically based on the new appointment time.

Can I use this with multiple Acuity appointment types? Yes. All appointment types in Acuity write to the same Google Calendar. There's no per-appointment-type configuration required on the Remindly side.

What You'll See in Your Dashboard

Once the integration is running, your Remindly dashboard shows:

• Upcoming appointments pulled from Acuity via Google Calendar
• Reminder send status: scheduled, sent, delivered
• Confirmation status per appointment: confirmed, cancelled, no response
• Overall confirmation rate across your client base

Most businesses see their confirmation rate move from 30-40% (email-only Acuity reminders) to 60-70%+ after adding WhatsApp with one-tap confirmation buttons. The no-show rate typically follows: a 15-20% reduction in the first two to four weeks is common.

You Don't Have to Replace Acuity

A common misconception is that adding WhatsApp reminders requires migrating your entire booking system to a platform that natively supports WhatsApp. It doesn't.

Acuity is a good booking tool. It handles scheduling, intake forms, packages, payments, and calendar management well. What it doesn't do is WhatsApp. You can layer Remindly on top of Acuity to handle the one thing Acuity doesn't do, without changing anything else about your booking workflow.

Your clients still book the same way. Your calendar still works the same way. You just stop relying on email as the only reminder channel — and you start getting real confirmation data back.

For more on reminder strategy, see Appointment Reminder Timing and Appointment Reminder Scripts That Don't Sound Like a Robot.