12 Calendly Alternatives That Makes Scheduling Painless

Chances are, you no longer use Calendly because:

• It’s expensive (the essential features are only available in its most expensive plan) or
• It’s limited (e.g., want to add a coupon code in your booking page, but Calendly makes it impossible to do so)

Calendly prides itself on its simplicity.

For the nontechnical user who only needs to book appointments, it’s a clear winner. But if you’re looking for a tool that does more, it’s time to look elsewhere.

For this guide, I reached out to small business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs. I asked what they didn’t like about Calendly and what made them switch to their current meeting scheduling tool.

Ready to discover which Calendly alternatives work for your business? Here are the contenders:

12 Best Calendly Alternatives: The Pros And Cons (And What Each Tool Is Best For)

Before we begin the nitty-gritty, let’s look at the features these online appointment scheduling tools have in common, which is what you would expect from these tools:

• Book meetings
• Showcase availability preferences
• Avoid double bookings
• Send email reminders to invitees and prevent no-shows
• Offer calendar integrations, including Google Calendar, Outlook, and Office 365
• Set buffer times between meetings

1. Zoom.ai

Source: Zoom.ai

Pricing: Free plan available along with a $15/month Professional Plan and a $25/month Team Plan. Get the Zoom.ai lifetime deal on AppSumo today for $49.

Mobile App: No (but fully mobile responsive and integrates with Slack, Outlook, Gmail, and more)

Zoom.ai stands out from many of the other tools here with its AI-powered meeting scheduler. The tool syncs with your calendars, requests meetings based on your availability, and sends reminders to attendees, so you can kick back and get on with your day.

Since it’s compatible with Zoom.us, Microsoft Teams, Google, Webex, and more, you can connect Zoom.ai to auto-populate conferencing links in all your remote meetings.

The People Insights feature gives you the rundown on who you’re meeting with by pulling publicly available information associated with your invitees.

Use Zoom.ai’s Meeting Types to customize your meeting experience, so you can avoid last-minute bookings and back-to-back bookings as well as automatically book over internal meetings to prioritize busy clients.

Pros: Thanks to AI machine learning models, Zoom.ai understands your work habits, meeting patterns, and contact relationships, taking the manual stress out of scheduling.

Cons: Small learning curve and you need a Google or Microsoft email to sign up.

Best For: Salespeople, support reps, and marketers who want to book meetings faster and eliminate back-and-forth emails

2. Sidekick Ai

Pricing: Free plan and $10/month plan available. Get the Sidekick Ai lifetime deal on AppSumo today for $59.

Mobile App: Yes (Apple iOS and Android)

Ever go through this?

A prospect emails and requests for a video call. You check your calendar, pick a date and time, and send it for confirmation. She replies with a different date. You realize you can’t make it and suggest another date. The cycle keeps repeating until you two figure out the right time.

That’s a lot of steps for just one call.

With Sidekick Ai, you never have to go through these time-consuming tasks again.

When a prospect contacts you, forward the email to Sidekick, and it automatically emails your prospect with a list of your available times. Once a time slot is picked, Sidekick schedules it in your calendar and notifies you.

Cool, right? This scheduling app is the closest thing you’ll have to a personal assistant.

Pros: Forward an email request to schedule.

Cons: Lack of integrations (e.g. Zoom, Slack), though this is in the works. Sidekick Ai was just launched in May 2020, so it’s expectedly missing a few features.

Best For: Small business owners (without assistants) who schedule many meetings.

3. Vocus.io

Source: Vocus.io

Pricing: 30-day free trial. Paid plans start $5/month.

Mobile App: No

Vocus.io is more than an appointment scheduling software tool.

This full-stack email outreach platform is a Chrome extension for Gmail and GSuite that comes with three products in one place: Inbox, Calendar, and Campaigns.

With Vocus.io, you get the most bang for your buck. It offers features spanning across meeting scheduling, email campaigns set-up, and team collaboration, at only $5-$20 a month.

For Daniel Carter, Founder of Zippy Electrics, the pricing made it a no-brainer:

“Calendly is a fine appointment scheduling tool. I used to pay $10/month to access its Premium Plan features. However, upon learning that most of its essential features are only available on its Pro Plan, I was completely shocked.

With that, I changed my appointment scheduling tool to Vocus.io.

Vocus.io’s a better tool as it offers all of its features for just $5 a month. That includes scheduling using Gmail, custom branding, custom domain, custom form fields, and integrations with CRMs, Zoom, and Native Salesforce.”

Pros: Affordable and easy to use.

Cons: Only available as a Chrome extension; no support for mobile platforms.

Best For: Gmail users booking meetings.

4. Calendar

Source: Calendar

Pricing: Starts free. Paid plans begin $6/month when billed annually.

Mobile App: Yes (Apple iOS and Android)

Everything about Calendar screams efficiency.

This appointment scheduling and productivity tool shows how you spend your time and helps you focus on important things using machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Yaniv Masjedi, CMO at Nextiva, sums up why Calendar makes an excellent fit for productivity fans:

“Calendar is not for professionals who prefer the simplicity and straightforwardness of Calendly. They might not find the metrics valuable, but for a busy professional who wants to optimize their time management, Calendar is the perfect solution.”

Pros: Built-in transcription tool, meeting analytics, and people analytics.

Cons: Small learning curve, given that it’s different from the standard calendar tool.

Best For: Busy professionals tracking and optimizing their time when running meetings.

5. Acuity Scheduling

Source: Acuity Scheduling

Pricing: Starts free. 7-day free trial available. Paid plans begin $14/month when billed annually.

Mobile App: Yes (Apple iOS and Android)

Ask any consultant using Acuity Scheduling, and they’ll tell you it brings what Calendly lacks to the table.

For starters, you can enable discounts on the booking page. If you sell paid consultations and often run promotions to draw customers in your business, you can’t go wrong with Acuity.

Delilah Orpi, who offers one-on-one coaching sessions at The Holistic Enchilada, switched from Calendly to Acuity because of this specific feature:

“I remember searching ‘How to add coupon code to Calendly?’ and coming across a forum where others were complaining that they needed that option, and the responses overwhelmingly recommended Acuity. 

Once I checked out Acuity, I was sold. I’ve been using it since March and love it. I find it has the same options and a lot more, like upsells, subscriptions, group events, more customization, and integrations.”

Pros: Upsell clients with checkout add-ons, and offer coupons and vouchers for discounts and incentives.

Cons: Small learning curve. Non-techies might need time to get used to the interface.

Best For: Consultants and coaches offering paid consultations, training, and workshops.

6. Drift

Source: Drift

Pricing: Starts free (only live chat). Paid plans are custom quoted.

Mobile App: Yes (Apple iOS and Android)

If you manage a sales team, you’d know how frustrating it is when customers get assigned to the wrong sales reps.

Well, you never have to go through this again with Drift.

This popular conversational marketing platform uses routing to make sure each customer books a meeting with the right person on your team. What’s more, you can even welcome these users with a hyper-personalized message when they land on your website.

Pros: Lead routing and personalized profile pages.

Ian Kelly, Vice President Operations at NuLeaf Naturals, chose Drift over Calendly as he wanted to create a better first impression:

“Drift helps me create a profile page that looks stellar. It made my old Calendly page look like it’s light years behind.”

Cons: Steep pricing plans. Most features (e.g., lead routing) are only available in Drift’s Premium and Enterprise plans.

Best For: Sales teams nurturing prospects from the first point of contact.

7. Appoint.ly

Pricing: Starts free. Paid plans begin $8 per user each month when billed annually.

Mobile App: No

Out of all the tools in this list, Appoint.ly boasts the simplest scheduling process by far.

Right off the bat, you can create different appointment types and schedule meetings in seconds.

It’s incredibly easy to use even if you’re a first-time or tech-challenged user.

If you’re looking for a tool that does all the key things a scheduling system should do (and you don’t want to deal with unnecessarily complicated widgets), give Appoint.ly a shot.

Pros: Ease of use.

Cons: Lack of mobile app and minor glitches.

Best For: Tech beginners looking for a user-friendly, straightforward way to set up meetings.

8. Harmonizely

Source: Harmonizely

Pricing: Starts free. 14-day free trial available. Paid plans begin $10/user per month when billed annually.

Mobile App: No

Ever get frustrated when your appointment scheduler doesn’t work with the calendar you’re using? If so, Harmonizely is for you.

Most online appointment systems only support the most popular calendars (looking at you, Google Calendar and iCloud), but Harmonizely works with pretty much any CalDAV based calendar you can think of (e.g. Zoho, FastMail, Daylite, etc).

It’s definitely a great tool if you want to connect multiple calendars and pull your availability at once.

Pros: Supports a variety of calendars.

Cons: Lack of mobile app and minor lag issues.

Best For: Professionals syncing all appointments across multiple calendars.

9. Book Like A Boss

Source: Pascale Recher

Pricing: 14-day free trial available. Paid plans start $90/year with two months free. Get the Book Like a Boss – Annual Cappuccino deal on AppSumo today for $125.

Mobile App: No

Not everyone needs a full-on website to run a business. Sometimes all it takes is a powerful booking page that helps you manage the operations.

Enter: Book Like A Boss, an appointment scheduler that also helps you sell your products and services. 

With this all-in-one appointment booking hub, you can also promote your social media links to boost your social following, share prospects’ FAQs to address objections, and include testimonials to drive conversions.

Time to cancel your web hosting platform subscription and switch to Book Like A Boss.

Pros: All-in-one customizable booking page with unlimited bookings and product and service listings.

Cons: Lack of mobile app and limited integrations (easily solvable with Zapier).

Best For: Small business owners (e.g., entrepreneurs, consultants, freelancers) selling products and services and scheduling appointments in one place.

10. Hubspot Sales Hub

Source: Hubspot

Pricing: Starts free. Paid plans begin $40/month when billed annually.

Mobile App: Yes (Apple iOS and Android)

Do you use multiple tools to run your marketing and sales operations? If so, there’s a better way.

Streamline all sales activity with Hubspot Sales Hub. You can connect with prospects — chat in real-time, schedule appointments, follow up, you name it — organize your sales process, and track your goals all in a single place.

Pros: Intuitive user interface and all-in-one sales platform.

Cons: Steep pricing plans.

Best For: Sales teams scheduling appointments with leads and growing their database in an all-in-one sales platform.

11. MeetingBird

Source: MeetingBird

Pricing: Free.

Mobile App: No

It’s easy to get started on MeetingBird. All you have to do is sign up via Google or Office 365, and you can start scheduling meetings right away.

What’s great about this Google Chrome extension tool is that you can insert your available time slots as clickable buttons within the email. Once clicked, the scheduled appointment enters your calendar, and you receive an email notification.

Sam Cohen, CEO of Goldtreeway, prefers MeetingBird because of its straightforward interface:

“MeetingBird offers a much more efficient way of scheduling appointments than a Calendly link.”

With MeetingBird, you can create an excellent client experience right from the get-go.

Pros: Clickable buttons within email and completely free.

Cons: Lack of mobile app.

Best For: Professionals scheduling unlimited meetings for free.

12. Doodle

Source: Doodle

Pricing: 14-day free trial. Paid plans begin $4.49/month when billed annually.

Mobile App: Yes (Apple iOS and Android)

Coordinate group meetings across different schedules and time zones? No thank you, this sounds like a task only Amy Santiago would undertake.

Fortunately, Doodle makes it a tad easier.

With Doodle’s clear visual snapshot, you can see which participants are available and pick the best date to host your meeting.

There’s even an option to limit the number of votes per option — a handy feature if you’re a consultant who does exclusive coaching calls and wants to limit the number of participants!

Pros: Group meeting poll. You can easily create a poll and send it to attendees and let them choose the best time to meet.

Cons: Small learning curve. Users report it takes some time to get used to the platform.

Best For: Remote workers scheduling meetings with team members across different time zones.

Which Of These Calendly Alternatives Will You Use Today?

No single tool works for all businesses.

An online booking system that works like a dream for small businesses may turn into an overkill hassle for solo freelancers.

So, I hope this guide helps you narrow down a suitable scheduling solution for your business!

For easier reference, here’s a quick recap:

• Zoom.ai: AI-powered meeting scheduling for faster bookings, with automatic reminders and requests based on availability. Get the Zoom.ai lifetime deal on AppSumo today for $49.
• Sidekick Ai: Small business owners (without personal or virtual assistants) who hold frequent meetings. Get the Sidekick Ai lifetime deal on AppSumo today for $59.
• Vocus.io: Gmail users booking meetings.
• Calendar: Busy professionals tracking and optimizing their time when running meetings.
• Acuity Scheduling: Consultants and coaches offering paid consultations, trainings, and workshops.
• Drift: Sales teams nurturing prospects from the first point of contact.
• Appoint.ly: Tech beginners looking for a user-friendly, straightforward way to set up meetings.
• Harmonizely: Professionals syncing all appointments across multiple calendars.
• Book Like A Boss: Small business owners (e.g. entrepreneurs, consultants, freelancers) selling products and services and scheduling appointments in one place. Get the Book Like a Boos – Annual Cappuccino deal on AppSumo today for $125.
• Hubspot: Sales teams scheduling appointments with leads and growing databases in an all-in-one sales platform.
• Meetingbird: Professionals scheduling unlimited meetings for free.
• Doodle: Remote workers scheduling meetings with team members across different time zones.