PracticeOak turns any practice into a bookable link or QR code. Clients pick a slot in the browser — no app, no account — then get confirmations and reminders on WhatsApp and email, so they actually turn up. Built for clinics, salons, and consultants.
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Maker
📌
Hi Product Hunt 👋
I built PracticeOak because of something I kept noticing in Indian
clinics: the entire appointment book lives in a WhatsApp inbox.
A receptionist scrolls forty messages every morning to work out who's
coming in, confirms each one by hand, and the clinic still loses slots
to no-shows. Meanwhile every scheduling tool on the market sends
reminders by email — which, in this market, is the same as sending
nothing. People here read WhatsApp in minutes and email once a week.
So PracticeOak does two things:
📅 Your practice becomes a link or a QR code. Clients scan the card on
your reception desk or tap the link in your bio, see only the slots
you're actually free, and confirm in a few taps. Nothing to install,
no account to create.
💬 Confirmations and reminders go out automatically over the official
WhatsApp Business API alongside email — where they'll actually be read.
Everything else follows from that: services with their own durations,
multi-staff calendars with conflict detection, an embeddable booking
widget, client history.
I'm building it solo alongside a full-time job, and I've been doing the
setup in person at clinics in my own city — which taught me more in two
weeks than three months of building did. Watching a WhatsApp
confirmation land on someone's own phone closes a sale faster than any
landing page I could write.
Free forever plan, no card. There's a live demo you can actually book
on: practiceoak.com/demo
Two things I'd genuinely like your take on:
1. Is the QR-on-the-counter flow the right wedge, or is the embeddable
widget the stronger one? I've been assuming walk-in businesses
(salons, dental clinics) prefer the QR, but I'm not certain.
2. For those of you outside India — does the "messaging app instead of
email" problem exist in your market too? Brazil and Indonesia keep
coming up in my research and I'd love to hear it first-hand.
I'll be here all day. Ask me anything, including about the WhatsApp
Cloud API setup — the docs are rough and I lost a weekend to template
category rules.
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Maker
Since a few people have asked, here's the part that didn't fit in the first comment.
PracticeOak started because almost every booking tool assumes email. The confirmation lands in an inbox, the reminder lands in an inbox, and the appointment quietly doesn't happen. For a clinic in Lucknow or a CA in Indore, that's simply not where the client is. They're on WhatsApp, and they read it there.
So the product is built around that. Reminders go out through the official WhatsApp Business platform, the client installs nothing, and rescheduling is a link instead of a phone call.
The rest is deliberately boring: one dashboard for calendar, clients, staff and services, conflict detection so two people can't hold the same slot, and pricing in rupees rather than dollars converted at checkout.
Free plan, no card needed. If you run an appointment-based practice, I'd much rather you tried it and told me what's missing.
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Maker
Genuinely didn't expect this response — thank you, all of you.
A pattern in the questions so far: almost everyone wants to know how it handles multiple staff and multiple locations. It does both today (staff seats, per-staff availability, separate booking links), and I'll answer specifics in the thread rather than write an essay here.
One thing I'd like input on. The biggest open question for us is how far to go into payments — deposits at booking to reduce no-shows, versus keeping the flow short. If you take appointments for a living, I'd like to hear which side you'd land on and why.
Since a few people have asked, here's the part that didn't fit in the first comment.
PracticeOak started because almost every booking tool assumes email. The confirmation lands in an inbox, the reminder lands in an inbox, and the appointment quietly doesn't happen. For a clinic in Lucknow or a CA in Indore, that's simply not where the client is. They're on WhatsApp, and they read it there.
So the product is built around that. Reminders go out through the official WhatsApp Business platform, the client installs nothing, and rescheduling is a link instead of a phone call.
The rest is deliberately boring: one dashboard for calendar, clients, staff and services, conflict detection so two people can't hold the same slot, and pricing in rupees rather than dollars converted at checkout.
Free plan, no card needed. If you run an appointment-based practice, I'd much rather you tried it and told me what's missing.
Genuinely didn't expect this response — thank you, all of you.
A pattern in the questions so far: almost everyone wants to know how it handles multiple staff and multiple locations. It does both today (staff seats, per-staff availability, separate booking links), and I'll answer specifics in the thread rather than write an essay here.
One thing I'd like input on. The biggest open question for us is how far to go into payments — deposits at booking to reduce no-shows, versus keeping the flow short. If you take appointments for a living, I'd like to hear which side you'd land on and why.
Still around for the rest of the day.