If you're searching for the ideal Calendly alternative for appointment scheduling, you've come to the right place. In this post, we'll explore some of the best options that may be a better fit for your specific needs.
You're not alone if you're tired of going back and forth with emails just to schedule a meeting. It's frustrating and can even cost you valuable business opportunities. That's why you're considering an online meeting booking tool like Calendly. By allowing prospects to manage their bookings, while efficiently communicating your availability, you can streamline the process and focus on more important things.
While Calendly is a popular choice, there are many Calendly alternatives that offer different features, pricing, use cases, integrations, ease of use, and other strengths. But, with so many options available, it's important to choose the right tool for your unique situation. Let's take a closer look at these Calendly alternatives and find the one that's perfect for you.
What is Calendly?
Calendly is a user-friendly tool. It makes booking appointments easy and has many features. You can easily customize your availability and share your booking link with clients or team members via email or embed it on your website. Once they choose a time, the event is automatically added to your calendar. Calendly supports different types of meetings, such as one-on-one, round-robin, and group availability. It also offers useful features, such as calendar integrations with popular platforms like Google, Outlook, Office 365, iCloud, and more. Additionally, it includes SMS and email notifications, buffers, time zone detection, and customization options to enhance your scheduling experience. Moreover, Calendly integrates seamlessly with third-party apps such as Salesforce, Zapier, and GoToMeeting, among others, for a smooth workflow.
Calendly Pricing
Calendly offers a 14-day trial and various billing options, including monthly and annual plans. The monthly plans are as follows:
- BASIC: This plan is free and includes very limited features, such as only one active scheduling page.
- ESSENTIALS: $10 per user per month. Adds some scheduling automation, unlimited event types, and greater support.
- PROFESSIONAL: $15 per user per month. Allows limited customization of your scheduling page, integration of other apps, and scaling of your scheduling.
- TEAMS: $20 per user per month. Adds Team scheduling and Salesforce integration
- ENTERPRISE: Price by quote. Adds SSO.
Key Capabilities of Calendly
Calendly shines when it comes to integrations, customizable appointment scheduling, and automations.
- Seamless Integrations
Calendly connects smoothly with calendar solutions like Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook and iCloud, but also with other popular software like Salesforce, Mailchimp, Zapier and more. This allows you to integrate meeting scheduling into your existing workflows.
- Flexible Booking Options
The service offers extensive options for customizing appointment lengths, buffer times between meetings, inviting attendees, and more. You can configure it to match your scheduling needs.
- Automations and Workflows
Calendly enables creating sequences such as automatically sending reminder emails and follow-ups after meetings. This saves time and makes your scheduling process more efficient.
Limitations of Calendly
While Calendly is feature-rich, there are some notable limitations:
- Lack of Branding and Customization
With the free plan, you cannot customize your emails and pages to match your brand. Paid plans also lack extensive white labeling features that allow you to display our brand, services and products.
- Restrictive Free Tier
The free option only offers one event type and calendar integration. To unlock more features, you need to upgrade to a paid plan, which can quickly become expensive.
- No Direct Technical Support
Calendly relies largely on self-service support documentation. Unless you opt for a premium plan, you don't get access to one-on-one technical assistance.
8 Best Calendly Alternatives
Zeeg
Zeeg is a popular Calendly alternative designed to streamline the scheduling process and improve the efficiency and productivity of individuals, teams, and businesses. With Zeeg, you can easily configure your appointment settings, including the duration, capacity, and pricing of your meetings. You can also sync your existing calendars and set up rules for your availability, customize the days, times, meeting buffers, and blocked dates, and even create custom forms to gather important information from your clients.
Zeeg supports multiple meeting types, such as one-on-one, group, multi-user collective, and round-robin events. It integrates with popular calendar apps like Google, Outlook, and Exchange, as well as with video conferencing tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. Zeeg also offers useful features like custom branding, workflows, digital business card, time zone support, and email notifications.
Where Zeeg beats Calendly
For those looking for an affordable, customizable, and full-featured alternative to Calendly, Zeeg has compelling advantages:
- Superior Customization for Branding: Zeeg offers far greater customization capabilities to tailor booking pages to your brand. You can include images, videos, testimonials, service descriptions, and more to craft a high-converting experience.
- More Scheduling Options Included: Zeeg provides two scheduling page options even in their free plan, enabling you to set up different flows for different needs. With Calendly, you only get one page for free.
- Lower and More Reasonable Pricing: When comparing similar features sets, Zeeg's paid plans cost approximately 40% less than Calendly on average. For budget-conscious solopreneurs and small teams, this makes Zeeg much more accessible.
- Advanced Scheduling for Sales and HR: Zeeg enables creating multi-step scheduling flows tailored for sales and recruiting needs. For example, Recruiters can customize candidate scheduling pages with details on various roles, required skills, and interview steps. The interviewer pool integrates their calendars to easily find times that work across multiple employee schedules. This takes the complexity out of coordinating hiring schedules.
Pricing Plans
- Trial: 14 Days of Business plan
- Billing options: monthly billing or annual billing (2 months for free)
- Starter: Free forever. The most generous free plan in the market, providing you with two active scheduling pages, a free digital business card, and advanced smart scheduling features, including Stack Mode scheduling. Considering this plan, Zeeg is one of the best free Calendly alternatives.
- Professional: €5 / month billed annually. Provides 4 active scheduling pages, 2 calendar connections and offers hosting of Group events such as webinars, classes, or workshops.
- Business: €10 / month billed annually. Takes smart scheduling to the next level for businesses. Also allows custom branding, hiding Zeeg branding, and multi-user meeting scheduling with Collective and Round Robin events.
- Enterprise: By quote. Dedicated account manager, customized onboarding, SSO, and SCIM user management, and no limits on any features.
You can learn more about Zeeg's pricing here.
Zeeg Reviews
Pros: Zeeg is a budget-friendly option compared to other scheduling tools. Additionally, it has a wide range of easy-to-use features. The customer support team is responsive and helpful, and the software integrates seamlessly with other tools.
Cons: Zeeg offers SSO and Salesforce integration only in the Enterprise plan.
HubSpot Sales
HubSpot Sales is part of HubSpot's all-in-one sales software. It handles appointment and meeting scheduling and offers features like email tracking, creating email sequences and templates, and scheduling emails. To set up the meetings tool, simply sync your calendars with HubSpot and then create a meeting link that can be shared by embedding it on your website. Additionally, HubSpot supports round-robin meetings, group meetings, and more. It works with Google Calendar and Office 365 Calendar and can integrate with HubSpot CRM, Salesforce, and other platforms.
HubSpot Pricing Plans
- Billing options: Monthly and annual options are available
- Free: Offers limited scheduling features and costs $0 per user per month
- Starter: Costs $45 per user per month
- Professional: Costs $450 for up to 5 users per month
- Enterprise: Costs $1,200 for up to 10 users per month
HubSpot Reviews
Pros: Users like how easy HubSpot Sales is to use and appreciate the many app integrations that make everything run smoothly.
Cons: Some users found the software to be expensive despite the many extra features it offers.
Mixmax
Mixmax has many features to improve your Gmail experience, like email tracking, creating email sequences and templates, and syncing with your CRM. One of its standout features is the one-click scheduling tool. With this feature, you can easily set up your availability, customize your preferred days, times, and duration, and add links to your emails, websites, and social profiles. Your clients can then choose their preferred time slot, and the meeting will be instantly added to all calendars. Mixmax is compatible with Google Calendar and integrates with Salesforce, so it's perfect for businesses looking to streamline their scheduling process.
Mixmax Pricing Plans
- Free: Limited calendaring and email productivity
- SMB: $34 per user per month
- Growth: $65 per user per month
- Growth+Salesforce: $69 per user per month, but billed annually
- Enterprise: By quote
MixMax Reviews
Pros: Users like Mixmax's user-friendly interface and find it easy to use.
Cons: Some users found the plans to be a little expensive, and there is no integration with Zapier.
Meetingbird
Meetingbird is a powerful scheduling platform that makes arranging meetings easy. By using its Chrome extension, you can easily schedule meetings within Gmail, saving you time and streamlining your workflow. With Meetingbird, you can customize settings for different meeting types, such as product demos, sales calls, or onboarding meetings, to ensure that everything is tailored to your needs. You can also benefit from helpful features such as email notifications, reminders, time zone detection, custom branding, and more. Meetingbird integrates seamlessly with Google Calendar, as well as Zapier, Zoom, and other popular apps.
Meetingbird Pricing Plans
- Payment terms: yearly billing
- Free Forever: $0 per user
- Pro Plan: $9 per user per month (billed annually)
Meetingbird Reviews
Pros: Meetingbird provides a fast and easy way to schedule meetings. Users also appreciate the seamless integration with apps like Zoom.
Cons: The platform currently lacks support for round-robin scheduling and iCal accounts.
Acuity Scheduling
Acuity Scheduling is a software solution designed to simplify appointment scheduling for businesses. With Acuity Scheduling, you can create a personalized scheduling site using your own URL and integrate it directly onto your website or social media platforms. Clients can then easily view your calendar and choose from available time slots. The platform also includes customizable email and SMS notifications, reminders, intake forms, group scheduling for workshops, and more. Plus, it seamlessly integrates with Google Calendar, Office 365, iCloud, Zapier, and other tools.
Acuity Scheduling Pricing Plans
- 7-day free trial
- Monthly and annual billing options
- Free plan: $0/month
- Emerging plan: $15/month
- Growing plan: $25/month
- Powerhouse plan: $50/month
Acuity Scheduling Reviews
Pros: Particularly useful for health and fitness businesses due to its support for subscription packages, gift certificates, and group classes.
Cons: Some users reported difficulty finding certain settings, such as changing the calendar name.
10to8
With 10to8, scheduling appointments has never been easier for large teams. This appointment-scheduling software offers various features and integrations to enhance collaboration, including one-on-one and group booking services, customizable booking pages, SMS and email reminders, two-way calendar sync, and note-taking capabilities. Additionally, 10to8 integrates with popular platforms like Google Calendar, Office 365, Salesforce, and Pipedrive.
10to8 Pricing Plans
- Trial: 30-day free trial
- Billing options: Only the annual payment option is available
- Free: Limited to 1 user and up to 10 appointments per month
- Pro: $7.20 per user per month, and limited to 40 appointments per month (billed annually)
- Premium: $19 per month for up to 100 appointments per month (billed annually)
- Bespoke: Custom pricing available upon request
10to8 Reviews
Pros: Great for basic scheduling needs.
Cons: Some users would prefer more customization options for automated emails.
YouCanBook.me
YouCanBook.me is a straightforward platform designed for effortless online scheduling. The tool allows you to sync your existing calendars to check your availability, customize your booking page by selecting the duration of appointments and setting notifications, and share the page link via email, CRM, or website embedding. Once users select an available slot, the event will appear on your connected calendar. YouCanBook.me also offers several practical features, such as Google and Microsoft calendar integrations, customizable branding, time zone detection, SMS and email notifications, and seamless integration with Zapier and Stripe.
YouCanBook.me Pricing Plans
- Free Trial: 14 days
- Billing Options: Monthly and Annual
- Free: $0 with limited features
- Paid: $10 per calendar per month
YouCanBook.me Reviews
Pros: Users appreciate the simplicity of YouCanBook.me, which is easy for administrators and users.
Cons: Some users suggest that YouCanBook.me could benefit from additional integrations.
Chili Piper
Chili Piper is a specialized tool widely employed in the sales domain, with its primary focus on converting leads into customers. Distinguishing itself from other tools like Calendly, Chili Piper not only provides online appointment scheduling but also introduces intriguing possibilities through its "Instant Booker" feature.
With Chili Piper, users have the capability to restrict appointment bookings to qualified leads only. This ensures that only leads meeting specific criteria can schedule appointments with you. Furthermore, its seamless integration with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems allows for the automatic routing of leads to the most qualified sales representatives. For instance, you can designate that leads from a particular industry are directed exclusively to a specific team.
Chili Piper Pricing Plans
- Instant Booker: $15 per user per month.
- Handoff: $25 per user per month.
- Form Concierge: $30 per user per month.
- Distro: $30 per user per month.
Chili Piper Reviews
Pros: Chili Piper boasts an effortless setup, allowing users to configure multiple meeting types within minutes and make intuitive adjustments when needed.
Cons: Integration issues, particularly with Salesforce, have been reported, occasionally causing disruptions in approximately 1 out of 10 cases.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Calendly Alternative for Your Needs
Finding the right scheduling tool can significantly streamline your meeting booking process, saving time and reducing the frustration of back-and-forth emails. Whether you're an individual, a team, or a business, a Calendly alternative can cater to your specific needs. From Zeeg's affordable and feature-packed solution to the simplicity of YouCanBook.me, each platform offers unique strengths that can enhance your scheduling experience.
As you continue to explore tools to optimize your scheduling and productivity, you might also be interested in our other blog post, "The 8 Best Meeting Scheduling Apps You Need to Know in 2023". This article provides a broader look at the landscape of scheduling apps, offering additional options and insights to help you find the perfect tool for your needs. Happy scheduling!
FAQs
What's similar to Calendly and free?
While Calendly is a popular scheduling tool, it has limitations in the free version including only one calendar connection and no team features. Zeeg provides a much more robust free offering with multiple calendar integrations, shared team availability views, and automated conflict checking.
What compares to Calendly?
Zeeg offers similar easy appointment scheduling features as Calendly but also adds calendar management tools lacking in Calendly. That includes consolidating multiple calendars from Google, Office 365 and more - avoiding double bookings in a way Calendly alone can’t provide.
Is Calendly the best scheduling tool?
For simple appointment scheduling, Calendly works well and is easy to use. However, as soon as you attempt connecting it into other calendars, issues emerge due to lacking bi-directional calendar integration which tools like Zeeg excel at. For robust scheduling across integrated calendars choose Zeeg.
Is Calendly free for teams?
While Calendly offers premium tiers for team features, limitations exist even on paid plans connecting into existing calendars that teams often rely on. Zeeg provides calendar integration and shared booking views critical for teams at all plan levels.