Add a Booking Widget to Your Static Site — No Third-Party Service Required

If you run a freelance business, consultancy, or any kind of service, you probably need a way for people to book time with you. Until now, that meant either embedding Calendly, linking out to a third-party scheduling tool, or building something custom.

Today we’re launching the booking widget — a scheduling tool built into Static Site Hosting UK that works with your existing calendar and keeps everything on our UK infrastructure.

Why Not Just Use Calendly?

Calendly and similar tools work well enough, but they come with trade-offs:

• Third-party scripts loaded on your site, adding weight and potential privacy concerns
• Visitor data sent to US servers, complicating GDPR compliance
• Another account to manage, often with pricing tiers that gate basic features
• Limited control over how the widget looks and behaves on your site

We wanted something simpler. One script tag, no external dependencies, no visitor data leaving our servers.

How It Works

The booking widget connects to your existing calendar through ICS feeds — the open standard supported by virtually every calendar application. Google Calendar, Outlook, Fastmail, self-hosted Nextcloud, or anything else that publishes an ICS feed. If your calendar supports it, our widget works with it.

When a visitor books a slot, here’s what happens:

1. The widget checks your real-time availability based on your connected calendars, working hours, and buffer times
2. The visitor picks a time and fills in their details
3. We send both parties an email confirmation with a standard calendar invitation (RFC 5545)
4. The booking appears in your calendar automatically

No account creation for your visitors. No redirects to external sites. The entire flow happens on your page.

A Combined Free/Busy Feed

One feature we’re particularly pleased with is the combined free/busy feed. If you connect multiple calendars — say, a work calendar and a personal one — the widget produces a single availability feed that accounts for all of them.

You can subscribe to this combined feed from any calendar application, giving you a unified view of your availability across all your calendars. Your visitors only see open slots, and you never get double-booked.

Privacy by Default

Like everything on our platform, the booking widget is built with privacy in mind:

• No third-party scripts — the widget is served from our UK infrastructure
• No cookies or tracking — visitors aren’t profiled or fingerprinted
• No data leaves our servers — calendar sync, availability checks, and confirmations all happen server-side
• Altcha spam protection — proof-of-work captcha with no external requests, keeping bot submissions out without adding friction

Embedding the Widget

You can embed the booking widget in two ways:

• Inline calendar — renders directly on your page, ideal for a dedicated booking page
• Floating button — a small button that opens a modal, suitable for any page without taking up space

Both options require just a single script tag. The widget supports dark mode out of the box and respects your site’s theme automatically.

Configurable to Your Workflow

The widget adapts to how you work:

• Working hours — define when you’re available for bookings
• Buffer times — set gaps between meetings to avoid back-to-back scheduling
• Meeting topics — let visitors choose the type of meeting (intro call, consultation, support, etc.)
• Additional participants — automatically include team members on specific meeting types

All configured from the dashboard. No code changes needed when you want to adjust your availability or add new meeting types.

Getting Started

The booking widget is available now for all sites on Static Site Hosting UK:

1. Open the dashboard and navigate to your site
2. Go to Booking Settings
3. Connect your calendar by adding an ICS feed URL
4. Configure your working hours and meeting types
5. Copy the embed code and add it to your site

That’s it. Your visitors can start booking time with you immediately.

Learn More

• Features — full list of what’s included with Static Site Hosting UK
• Altcha spam protection — how we handle spam without tracking visitors
• Get started free — deploy your first site in minutes