Frequently asked questions

Alnora is a WordPress plugin built specifically for private medical clinics — booking, doctor schedules, encrypted patient records, payments, reminders and GDPR tools in one place. It replaces the usual mix of a generic booking plugin, WooCommerce and spreadsheets.

Private practices of any size — dentists, psychologists, physiotherapists, aesthetic and dermatology clinics, and general practitioners — as well as agencies that build sites for clinic clients.

Yes. The free core (alnora-clinic) is free to download and covers online booking, working hours, email confirmations and GDPR consent logging. Pro and Clinic add payments, reminders, records, calendar sync, telehealth and more.

The features are identical. The only difference is how many sites the licence covers: Pro = 1 site, Clinic = up to 3. Choose Clinic if you run multiple sites or are an agency.

Checkout and licensing are handled by Freemius. After purchase you receive a licence key and a download link, activate the plugin on your site, and updates then flow automatically through WordPress. You can manage your sites, invoices and renewals from your Freemius account. See the licence docs.

Yes. Deactivate the licence on the old site first so you don’t use up an activation slot, then activate it on the new one.

Your subscription renews automatically, so as long as payment goes through your licence stays active and everything keeps working — nothing to do. If a renewal isn’t paid, the licence lapses and the Pro features stop working until you renew. Renewing reactivates them immediately.

Yes — 30-day money-back. If within 30 days of buying Pro you hit a defect that makes Alnora unusable and our support team can’t resolve it, we’ll refund you in full. It covers genuine defects rather than a change of mind or a conflict with another theme or plugin — see the refund terms.

Stripe and PayPal for online card/wallet payments, plus cash / pay-on-arrival. You can also take a deposit (percentage or fixed) to secure bookings. Available gateways depend on your currency.

Yes. Add the booking yourself from Alnora → Add appointment — search an existing patient or add a new one — and it behaves exactly like a booking a patient made themselves. To get paid, open the appointment’s Payment popup and email the patient a secure link to pay online by card or PayPal. If you take deposits you can send the deposit, the full amount, or the remaining balance after a deposit, and the appointment is marked paid automatically. See the add-a-booking and payment-link docs.

Yes. Any online (Stripe or PayPal) payment can be refunded straight from the appointment — in full or in part — and the money goes back to the patient’s original card or PayPal. The patient is notified by email (and SMS/WhatsApp if enabled), and refunds you make in the Stripe/PayPal dashboard sync back automatically. Cancelling never refunds automatically, so you stay in control. See the refunds docs.

Patients pick a frequency (weekly, fortnightly or monthly) and how many repeats, then see a live list of every upcoming date before booking. Each repeat keeps the same time when it’s free, or shifts to the nearest free slot instead of skipping a period. If they pay online, a single checkout covers the whole series and every visit is marked paid — with per-visit refunds if one is cancelled. See the recurring appointments docs.

Yes, via Twilio — alongside email reminders. See the reminders docs for setup.

Yes. With Multiple services enabled, a patient can add several services to a single appointment — the durations and prices add up automatically and the whole block is reserved on the doctor’s schedule. See the multiple services docs.

Yes. Open the appointment’s More info panel and pick a new date and time from the doctor’s free slots. The patient is re-notified by email (and SMS/WhatsApp if enabled), and your Google/Outlook calendars, Zapier and reminders update automatically. Payments are left untouched. See the reschedule docs.

Yes. Group your team and your service menu into categories, and the booking form shows a category filter so patients can narrow down before choosing. Empty categories are hidden automatically. See the categories docs.

Yes. Turn on Doctors search and/or Services search and a search box appears above that step, filtering as the patient types (doctors match on name, specialisation and category). It works alongside the category filter — the chips narrow the list first and the search looks within it. Both are off by default, since a search box over a short list adds a step rather than saving one. See the search docs.

Yes. Every email and SMS/WhatsApp template has its own Send this email / Send this message switch, so you can drop the ones you don’t want — for example the clinic’s own “new booking” copy — and keep the rest. Everything is on by default, and the patient’s and the clinic’s copies are separate switches. See the email template docs.

Yes. Confirmed appointments are pushed to Google Calendar and/or Outlook and removed on cancellation. It’s one-way — events you add directly in those calendars are not imported back and won’t block booking slots.

Medical records are encrypted at rest (AES-256) and stored on your own server — never sent to third parties, webhooks or analytics. Roles limit who can open a record.

13 built-in languages for everything patients see (form, portal, emails, PDFs), with localised dates, and many currencies. Any wording can be overridden with a translation plugin like Loco Translate.

Use the [alnora_booking] shortcode or the Alnora Booking Form block. A “Book an Appointment” page is created automatically on activation. You can pre-filter by doctor, service or location — see the embedding docs.

Yes — Alnora runs on any standard WordPress theme. The booking widget’s fonts, colours and corners are customisable to match your brand.

No. Everything is configured from the WordPress admin with plain-language settings. The documentation walks through every step.

Yes. Consent is logged with a timestamp and IP, and Pro adds a full GDPR toolkit — data export, right-to-erasure and an audit log.