Your ads run 24 hours.
Your phone doesn’t.
Cliniko is the best thing in your clinic and the worst-used. Most sites bolt it on with an iframe that throws the patient into a new tab. Built on the API itself, it answers calls at 9pm, books the real diary, and tells you who to ring back. Written from a podiatry build, true for any Cliniko clinic: physio, chiro, osteo, aesthetics.
Cliniko integrates with a website in two ways: an iframe or link that sends the patient to Cliniko’s hosted page in a new tab, or a real integration built on the Cliniko API where booking happens on the clinic’s own site. The API route keeps the patient on the page they landed on, and lets a voice agent check live availability and create appointments in the real diary.
Rather talk to a person first?
Leak 1: the front door you hand away.
You pay for the click, then your “Book online” button opens Cliniko’s hosted page in a new tab. A different address bar, a different design, your own site abandoned. Every hop loses people, and the ones who bounce were the ones you just paid for. Booking should happen where they landed.
Leak 2: the hours nobody answers.
Ads run 168 hours a week. A clinic phone gets answered maybe 45 of them, and not while you’re treating. Every evening and weekend click that turns into a ring-out is ad budget spent on a voicemail. A voice agent on your Cliniko answers in seconds and books the slot while they’re still on the line.
Leak 3: the list you already own.
Cliniko knows exactly who hasn’t been in for nine months. That list cost you nothing to acquire and mostly nobody works it. Pulling it out and putting the right names in front of a human to phone is the cheapest appointment you will ever book.
What your after-hours ad clicks are costing. In your numbers.
Placeholder figures, deliberately. Swap in your own clinic’s; the sum is the point.
Not our numbers and not a promise. Pull your own ad report by hour of day, and ask your call log how many rang out. Then re-run the sum.
Three ways to fix it. Two of them aren’t us.
Cliniko’s own hosted booking page
Link straight to Cliniko’s booking page and let it do the work. Honest verdict: genuinely good, already included in what you pay, and if you are not spending on ads this is very likely all you need. Do it today regardless of us. Falls down when you are buying traffic: you paid to land them on your site, then send them somewhere else, and it still cannot answer a phone.
An off-the-shelf Cliniko add-on
Plenty of products advertise “Cliniko integration ready”: booking widgets, AI answering, recall tools, sold monthly per clinic. Honest verdict: for a standard clinic that wants it working next week, this is often the sensible buy, and cheaper than a build. Falls down on the specifics: your appointment-type triage, your escalation rules, your brand. Ask where your API key is stored and who owns the phone number before you sign.
Built on the Cliniko API for your clinic
Booking inside your own site, a voice agent that reads real availability and creates the appointment mid-call, recalls driven off your patient data. Not a widget on top: the API itself, wired to your triage rules. This one is ours, so weigh it knowing that.
Our recommendation: If you are not spending on ads, take option one today and spend nothing. If you are, the question is only whether the leak is bigger than the fix: run the sum above first. Off-the-shelf wins when your needs are standard and speed matters most. A build wins when the triage is clinical, the brand matters, or you want one system answering phone, site and recalls the same way. If the sum comes back small, we will tell you to keep your money.
Booking
Real Cliniko booking inside your own site. No new tab.
- Live appointment types and real availability from your Cliniko
- Booking created in Cliniko itself, confirmation sent to the patient
- Your API key server-side only, never in the browser
- Announcement banner your staff control from Cliniko settings
Booking and phone
Everything above, plus a voice agent that answers and books.
- Everything in Booking
- Voice agent answers 24/7, checks live availability, books mid-call
- Clinical questions never answered by it: escalated straight to you
- Lapsed-patient list surfaced for a human to phone
- Call recordings, transcripts and a plain-English monthly report
No prices here on purpose. We diagnose your problem first and size it in your numbers. Then you get a one-time setup fee, a monthly fee for optimisation and support, and options to choose between, never a take-it-or-leave-it.
We start with your Cliniko, not our tech: appointment types, availability rules, what a receptionist would triage and what must reach you. Then we build against the API itself, so bookings appear where your notes already live. Everything is tested against your real diary before it takes a real call, and go-live waits on your sign-off, never ours. Pricing follows the problem: a one-time setup fee plus a monthly fee, with options to choose between.
We built Thameside Podiatry’s site and its Cliniko booking flow: real appointment types, live availability, bookings created straight in the clinic diary, live since July 2026. We then put a voice agent on it that answers the phone, reads genuine Cliniko availability and creates the appointment while the caller is still talking. It books into the clinic’s real diary today, in a supervised pilot with the owner, ahead of full go-live.
Everything we have worked out about this.
LATEST
- Google Ads for Podiatrists: How to Tell If the Spend Is Working Before You Renew
- Your Lapsed Patient List Is Worth More Than Your Ad Budget
- The Podiatry Clinic Front Desk, Costed: Receptionist, Answering Service or AI
- Your Ads Run 24 Hours. Your Clinic Phone Runs 45
- Closed Tomorrow? Change Your Website From Cliniko, Not by Emailing Us
- Your Cliniko Booking Button Opens a New Tab. That Is the Leak
- Cliniko Already Knows Who to Ring. Should a Machine Do the Ringing?
- The Cliniko Setting That Hides Your Free Appointments
- "Cliniko Integration Ready": Seven Questions Before You Sign
- Your Cliniko API Key Is Your Patient Database. Guard It Like One
- What Should Your AI Receptionist Actually Ask For?
- Ad Clicks Do Not Become Patients on Their Own: The Clinic Conversion Path
Worth doing whether you call us or not.
- Open Cliniko: Settings, then Online bookings, and check “Max appointments per day segment”. If it is limited, Cliniko is hiding real free slots from patients. Setting it to unlimited is free and takes a minute. We found this on a live clinic.
- Click your own “Book online” button on a phone, as a stranger would. Count the taps and note if the address bar changes. Every hop is people you paid for, leaving.
- Export patients not seen in nine months. Ring the twenty most recent yourself this week. No system needed, and it will book appointments before any of the above.
What is the right way to integrate Cliniko with a clinic website?
Does Cliniko have an API for booking?
Yes. Cliniko’s API exposes appointment types, practitioners, availability and bookings, which is what makes a real integration possible: your site can ask what is genuinely free and create the appointment itself, instead of handing the patient to a hosted page.
What is wrong with the Cliniko iframe or booking link?
Nothing technically: it works, and for a brand-new clinic it is a reasonable start. It costs you conversions: the patient is thrown into a new tab with a different address bar and design mid-decision, and every hop loses a share of the people you paid to get there.
Can a voice agent book real Cliniko appointments?
Yes. It reads live availability the way Cliniko does, offers only slots that are genuinely free, and creates the appointment during the call. Ours does this on a real clinic diary today, in a supervised pilot with the owner ahead of full go-live.
Which clinics does this suit?
Any Cliniko clinic: podiatry, physio, chiro, osteo, aesthetics. The first build was podiatry, but the Cliniko objects are the same everywhere. Only the appointment types and questions change.
Does Cliniko already do reminders and follow-ups?
Yes, and they are good and free on every plan, so switch them on today whether or not you hire anyone. What they cannot do is hold a conversation: the messages are one-way, so a patient replying “yes, Tuesday please” goes nowhere. Cliniko can nudge; it cannot offer two times and make the booking, and it cannot answer a phone.
Where is the Cliniko API key kept?
Server-side, always. An API key in browser code is readable by anyone who opens developer tools, and a Cliniko key is your patient database. It is the most common serious mistake we find in clinic sites built by other people.
Asked before booking. Answered straight.
What about the official Cliniko integrations and plug-ins?
Use them where they fit, and we will say so. The difference is what happens at the edges: your triage rules, your escalation, your brand, and one system answering the phone and the site the same way. If an off-the-shelf tool covers your case, buying it is the cheaper answer and we would rather tell you that.
Is it safe to give someone access to our patient system?
The API key is full read and write access to patient records, which is exactly why it must live server-side only and never in the browser. Anything you plug into Cliniko deserves that question, ours included. Ask any vendor where the key is stored and what their site does when Cliniko is down.
Will patients be unsettled by an AI answering?
Mostly the opposite, when it is honest about what it is. A voice straining to pass as human is the one that unnerves people. Being told plainly that it is an assistant, and that anything clinical goes to the practitioner, reassures far more callers than it loses. How human it should sound is your brand’s call, and you make it, not us.