Calendly has taken the world by storm in recent times and brought the world of smart schedulers into the zeitgeist which means there are a now more than a few Calendly alternatives on the market. In this article, we’ll look at some of the best Calendly alternatives and detail which ones you should select depending on your use case.
Image Source: Debby Hudson
What is Calendly?
Calendly’s mission is to eliminate the back-and-forth emails when confirming a meeting time with someone. Instead of trying to identify mutual open slots through asynchronous communication, the software provides an interactive module that integrates with your calendar and allows the other party to see all the available times and pick the one that works for them – which is then automatically transformed into a meeting invite in both calendars.
It has since expanded from this simple concept to include a whole range of other features including recurring meetings, team-wide calendar synchronization, time zone support, advanced filtering settings, and many more. It’s a one-stop shop for making the tedious activity of scheduling much more efficient and pleasant for everyone involved.
Calendly Overview
Calendly Pricing
Calendly Pricing | Basic $0 per user/Month | Premium $10 per user/Month | Pro $15 per user /Month |
Features | 1 calendar per user Schedule unlimited events 1 event type Personalized Calendly link | 2 calendars per user Unlimited event types Remove Calendly branding Pooled availability Customizable email notifications and reminders | 6 calendars per user SMS Notifications Workflows Invitee Redirect |
Calendar Integrations | Google Calendar, Office 365, Outlook, iCloud | ||
Video Conferencing Integrations | Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting | ||
Other Integrations | Salesforce, Hubspot, Mailchimp, Stripe, PayPal, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel |
UPDATED: Calendly Enterprise Pricing
To view updated Calendly Pricing, including enterprise pricing.
What Makes Calendly and Calendly Competitors So Valuable?
- They save you time by eliminating unnecessary back-and-forth communication.
- They make it much more convenient for people to book meetings with you – because they can select the time that works best for them.
- You can take full control of your schedule, setting rules and filters that allow you to block out your days as you wish.
- Native integrations with existing calendars make them a natural extension of your business productivity.
- They encourage more intentional scheduling and better time management across your teams – leaving you to focus on the tasks that really matter.
Calendly Alternatives
When it comes to the online appointment scheduling software category, there are many alternatives to Calendly. When considering the Calendly competitors, it’s important to consider the features you require, the cost per user, and how the products fits into your current workflow. Calendly alternatives have improved significantly over the years.
Chili Piper – A Top Calendly Alternative
Chili Piper is a full-service meeting automation tool which focuses on helping sales teams manage their pipelines and efficiently communicate with potential buyers. The platform itself is much more than just a meeting scheduler – it includes live chat support, automated workflows, CRM integrations, advanced lead routing, and much more.
As a Calendly alternative, it performs a lot of the same functionality but is more natively tied into a larger ecosystem. So, it makes perfect sense if you are going to use Chili Piper as a one stop shop for all of your revenue generation activities.
Chili Piper Overview
Chili Piper Pricing – A Free Calendly Alternative
Chili Piper Pricing | Free | Spicy |
Monthly Cost Per User | $0 | $15 |
Features | Instant Booker Suggested Times Smart Signatures Personal Pages Booking Links Unlimited Meeting Types with Automated Invites, Reminders and Rescheduling | Integrate seamlessly with Salesforce to automate data capture and create dynamic meeting templates. Shared workspaces for managing team templates, reminders, signatures, and booking linksSend smart booking links and suggested times that book in one click. |
Calendar Integrations | Google Calendar, Office 365, Outlook | |
Video Conferencing Integrations | Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WebEx, GoToMeeting |
Chili Piper Review
Using Chili Piper for your meeting scheduling is a good choice and their free option is a definite Calendly competitor. Especially if you’re also using their other components as part of your revenue operations because of how natively it fits into the ecosystem. That’s where you get the most ROI out of this product but don’t sleep on their Free and Spicy options.
Doodle – A Worthy Calendly Alternative?
Doodle is a powerful meeting scheduling tool that focuses on speed and group scheduling. It’s lightweight and runs separately to your existing processes so that it can get in and out as quickly as possible. Doodle’s biggest strength is when you’re trying to coordinate your calendars with a number of people – because it can combine everyone’s preferences to find the ideal timing for meetings.
As an alternative to Calendly, Doodle definitely shines if you’re having to organize lots of group meetings – especially if they’re across time zones. It does lack some of the more advanced Calendly features – and remains a much lighter solution all around.
Doodle Overview
Doodle Pricing
Pricing | Starter | Pro | Team | Enterprise |
Price Per Month | $4.49 per user | $5.99 per user | $30.00 (5 users) | On Request |
Features | Bookable Calendar Custom Logo and Branding Personalized Scheduling URL Doodle 1-on-1 meetings | Multiple User Management | Custom billing and legal terms Dedicated success manager Priority Support Guaranteed Response Time Dedicated onboarding and user training | |
Integrations | Zapier, Zoom, Outlook, Slack |
Doodle Review
Doodle’s key strength is complicated group meeting scheduling – so if that’s a common task for your organization, then it’s a good fit. Doodle may be an overlooked as a Calendly competitor.
Acuity – A Squarespace Calendly Alternative
Acuity Scheduling is a company within the Squarespace ecosystem – one of the giants of online website builders – and is a natural extension of their existing products. They describe themselves as an online assistant that works day and night to fill your schedule. The tool allows clients to book meeting times with you without having to have any back-and-forth communication. The client can see all the available times and book a slot that works for them – which is then automatically integrated into your calendar system as a whole.
Acuity’s key user base is small businesses who provide client services that need to be efficiently managed to maximize revenue. It’s especially powerful for companies who have a Squarespace website because it integrates natively into the ecosystem. Where it lags behind Calendly as an alternative is that it tends to focus on client bookings and doesn’t perform as well in other use-cases.
Acuity Overview
Acuity Pricing
Acuity Pricing | Free | Emerging | Growing | Powerhouse |
Cost Per Month | $0 | $14 | $23 | $45 |
No. of Staff / Locations | 1 | 1 | 6 | 36 |
Features | Client self-scheduling Offer unlimited services and appointments | A wide range of advanced features and integrations Confirmation, reminder and follow-up emails | Test message reminders Offer appointment packages Sell subscriptions, membership, and gift certificates | Multiple time zones Sign BAA for HIPAA Compliance Custom API and CSS for Developers |
Acuity Review
If your business relies on clients being able to book meetings through a self-service portal and you’re looking for more automation and a sleeker design – then Acuity is a great fit. If your business needs more focus on internal team meetings or other use cases, then you’d probably be better off going with a tool that is more diversified in terms of what it aims to do.
HubSpot Meetings – A Free Calendly Alternative
HubSpot Meetings is a free appointment and meeting scheduler that offers a simple way to eliminate back-and-forth scheduling and automate these tasks – which then plugs very nicely into the HubSpot CRM solution. It has proven very valuable for sales teams who can be a lot more flexible and agile when booking times with potential prospects. It’s one of the best Calendly alternatives.
HubSpot Meeting Overview
Hubspot Meeting Features:
- Meetings sync to Google Calendar and Office 365 so that your availability is always up to date.
- You can send group meeting links to enable prospects to book times with more than one person at a time.
- Round-robin meeting links allow for the load to be spread across a number of sales reps.
- Scheduled meetings will automatically feed CRM data into the HubSpot platform without any additional administrative work.
- Works very well with email sequences, templates, tracking and other automation tools.
Hubspot Meetings Pricing
Free. They will try to upsell you into some of HubSpot’s other products but as a standalone tool, you can use the scheduler for free.
HubSpot Meetings Review
This is a great option for companies who want a free option. It is a powerful tool and works great if you’re using Hubspot as a CRM. But even if you aren’t, it can stand on its own two feet and probably represents the best free Calendly alternative on the market.
Calendar – A Top Calendly Alternative
Calendar.com is a fresh new take on how the calendar should work in the modern world. It has smart scheduling and various other pieces of automation built right into the calendar itself and it seeks to be an all-in-one tool that simplifies scheduling while also amplifying your productivity through personalized experiences created by the use of artificial intelligence.
Their main differentiator is that they provide advanced calendar analytics which can be extremely interesting and insightful to understand where your time is going. For those who are seeking to optimize their weeks and minimize on sub-optimal choices – these analytics are incredibly valuable. The more you use it, the better it gets. This is what sets apart from Calendly and the rest by going beyond mere scheduling and aiming to improve how you choose to spend your time.
Calendar Overview
Calendar Pricing
Calendar Pricing | Basic | Standard | Pro |
Cost Per Month | Free | $6 | $8 |
Features | Personalized calendar link Connect 1 calendar Up to 2 customizable scheduling time slots | Connect 3 calendars Up to 5 customizable scheduling time slots Calendar analytics Zapier IntegrationLive phone support | Connect 10 calendars Unlimited customizable scheduling time slots White labelling on personal scheduling pages SMS Notifications |
Calendar Review
This is a good Calendly alternative for people who want to take their productivity more seriously and use their calendar as a source of truth for how they’re spending their time – in order to improve things. If you’re not interested in the analytics, then you could go with another tool that offers a similar feature set without missing out on much.
Clockwise
Clockwise is a smart calendar assistant that aims to optimize your meeting schedule to free up blocks of uninterrupted time for deep work. It has a slightly different philosophy to the other Calendly alternatives because it doesn’t optimize for complete flexibility for the person booking the meeting – but rather optimizes for batching meetings together so that your days are not as scattered. This helps for putting long periods of work in without distractions which can be a superpower in today’s world.
The key thing to note here is that it can only integrate into the Google ecosystem at present. They are working on bringing the tool to Microsoft 365 and the like, but for the moment you would need to be using G Suite and Google Calendar in order to leverage this. If you are, then this represents an interesting alternative to Calendly because of its unique design philosophy. If you aren’t using Google, then you’ll have to look at other options for the moment.
Clockwise Overview
Clockwise Pricing
They don’t share any of their pricing information online, but you can try the tool for free and see how it integrates into your workflow before committing to using it more seriously.
Clockwise Review
For those who are in the Google ecosystem of tools and want to batch meetings effectively to maximize free space, this is a great option that will help to build stretches of uninterrupted time into your weeks. But if you value the customer experience of someone being able to book a time at any point that you’re available, then you’ll likely want to go for another option.
Drift – Calendly Alternative Part of a Bigger Suite
Drift’s meeting scheduling features come as one component in the overall Drift Revenue Acceleration Platform. The platform is designed to cover the whole revenue generation cycle from start to finish, focusing on personalized user experiences in real time. This includes chatbots, live-chat, sales dashboards, powerful analytics, sales pipeline management, and number of other components.
Drift Meetings itself allows customers who are interacting via live chat to automatically book meetings with sales reps without their intervention. This means that at any time of the day, a customer can take the process into their own hands and set up a call with someone who can assist with whatever information they are looking for.
Drift Pricing
Drift Pricing | Premium | Enterprise |
Cost | Drift doesn’t share pricing information online – you need to enquire from their sales agents for your unique quote. | |
Features | Custom Chatbots Drift Prospector, Lead Routing, Real-Time Notifications Drift Intel Drift Meetings Custom Salesforce Dashboards Integrations Dedicated Customer Success Manager | Drift Automation Drift Audiences Enterprise Configuration Enterprise Lead Routing Reporting APIs Technical Integration Setup and 24/7 Chat Support Optimization Services |
Drift Meeting Review
Drift works very well for companies whose live chat functionality on their website is the main lead generator and where meetings are being scheduled most frequently – it’s a key focus area for the company. The Drift package should be considered in its entirety when considering Drift as one of the Calendly alternatives.
TimeTap – An overlooked Calendly Alternative
TimeTap is a powerful web-based meeting scheduler that seeks to enable better client management and more efficient communication across the value chain. It’s flexible in what it’s able to achieve and when used correctly, can be a great addition to your productivity workflows. It excels at localization and team-based tasks, which is the key differentiator when considered as one of the Calendly alternatives.
TimeTap Overview
TimeTap Pricing
- There is a free plan which includes basic functionality and is a great way to get started and see if the tool works for you.
- The professional plan builds on this by offering customizable reports, text messaging options, customizable emails, and much more for a cost of $24.95 per month on the solo plan, and $39.95 per month on a team basis up to 5 users.
- The business plan offers all functionality which includes Salesforce integrations, custom booking sites, screening questions, API usage, and much more. This comes in at $44.95 per month on the solo option and $74.95 on the team option up to 5 users.
TimeTap Review
This platform is quite expensive for what it’s offering but it does offer some interesting integrations and applications for niche localization that make it a good fit for some businesses. But the majority will be better served with another tool.
Setmore
Setmore offers scheduling software that does automated online bookings, payments and scheduling really well. It plays well across all platforms and offers a lightweight solution to client bookings. It stands apart from Calendly as an alternative because of its payment integrations which are unique and useful for certain businesses.
Setmore Overview
Setmore Pricing
Setmore Pricing | Free | Premium | Pro |
Cost per user per month | $0 (up to 4 users) | $9 (1-2 users) | $5 (3+ users) |
Features | Unlimited Appointments Email Reminders Payments with Square | SMS Reminders 2-way Calendar Sync Payments with Square and Stripe | Unlimited users Priority 24/7 in-app support. |
Setmore Review
If you’re collecting payments for the bookings at time of booking, then this is a great solution because if it’s native integrations with Square and Stripe as payment gateways. If that’s not a big focus, then you’ll probably want to look elsewhere for other options that have richer feature sets than this.
Nylas
Nylas touts themselves as a powerful piece of productivity infrastructure for modern software. Their platform allows users to build sophisticated workflows without any code – leveraging the existing processes within their organisation. One of the use cases that the platform can do well is intelligent scheduling – in a similar way to what Calendly does.
The Nylas scheduling tool uses calendar APIs and flexible UX components to deliver full featured scheduling capabilities directly to the application you’re working on. It’s not so much a stand-alone solution, but rather a component that you can build seamlessly into your existing technology stack. For this reason, Nylas is best suited for those companies who don’t want to rely on 3rd party scheduling software – but rather want to bake it into the essence of the existing structures. This offers much more flexibility, but it also requires more technical know-how to set things up effectively and maintain it efficiently.
Nylas Overview
Nylas Features:
- Instant Scheduler
- Schedule Editor
- Round-Robin Scheduler
- AutoSchedule
- Customizable Themes
- Time Zone Support
- Localization (French, English, German, and Spanish)
Nylas Pricing:
- The scheduling capabilities come as part of the whole Nylas platform. You can gain access to the platform on three different levels – a ‘Basic’ tier, an ‘Essentials’ tier and an ‘Enterprise’ tier.
- Pricing starts at $0.99 per connected account with a monthly platform fee and then it scales with usage.
- Pricing packages can be configured across a range of factors depending on what other components you use.
Nylas Review
This is a good solution for developers who want a white-label solution to build into their apps or websites. But for the vast majority of companies, it’s probably easier to go with a 3rd party solution that is just plug and play. This isn’t something that would be considered a top alternative to Calendly.
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Best Free Calendly Alternatives
After taking into account all of the above, we believe that the best free alternative to Calendly is currently HubSpot Meetings because it provides a lightweight tool that can plug into almost any technology stack. It also can be a powerful starting point to get those details into a CRM system for teams working with HubSpot as their CRM.
Honorable mentions go to the free plans of Doodle and Chili Piper which offer fantastic functionality for those looking to get into this world of smart scheduling.
Best Paid Calendly Alternatives
The best paid Calendly alternative is the offering from Calendar.com. They have a fresh take on scheduling and their tool is robust and effective where it needs to be. For the money, you get a sophisticated set of tools that should make you more effective and efficient – getting better and better as you use it over time.
Honorable mentions go to Acuity Scheduling if your business relies on customers booking directly from your website and to Nylas if you’ve got the technology team to build something really sophisticated into your app or website.
Calendly Competitors Ranked – The Top 5
- HubSpot Meetings
- Chili Piper
- Calendar.com
- Doodle
- Acuity Scheduling
Alternatives To Calendly – Closing Thoughts
Calendly is a great tool and has really transformed how people think about the space, but there are a range of quality Calendly alternatives that will suit different types of businesses depending on what the unique use cases are. Think carefully about what matters to you and pick a tool that is going to help you leverage that to get better results in less time. And if you’re still struggling to decide, take advantage of the free plans and trials available to test drive a few and see how they play out in your organization.
List Of Other Calendly Alternatives
Calendly competitors are numerous. The scheduling space is crowded given the frequent need to book meetings. Below is a list in alphabetical order of other Calendly Alternatives.
10to8
24sessions
Appointy
Appoint.ly
Appointlet
AppointmentPlus
Bookafy
Bookeo
Book Like A Boss
BookSteam
canUmeet
Cogsworth
FreeBusy
Harmonizely
Hupport
HoneyBook
Meetingbird
Microsoft Bookings
Picktime
Set a Time
Setmore
ScheduFlow
Schedulista
Schedulicity
Square Appointments
ScheduleOnce
Sidekick Ai
SimplyBook.me
SUMO Scheduler
SuperSaaS Appointment Scheduling
Taskeo Appointment Scheduling
TimeTrade
YouCanBook.me
Wix Bookings
Vyte
x.ai
Zoom.ai
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