Calendly Alternatives: Five Tools You Might Want To Try Out

It's important to understand the value of efficient appointment scheduling in driving the sales team's productivity and sales success. In today's fast-paced business landscape, having the right scheduling software can make all the difference. In 2021, 60% of Americans preferred to book their appointments online.

So where do businesses turn? Calendly is arguably the most popular appointment-scheduling software. While it has garnered recognition for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features, it's worth exploring alternative solutions that cater specifically to the needs of your sales team and business.

By finding the best scheduling solution, you can empower your sales team to optimize their time, enhance collaboration, and ultimately drive sales growth. This article will present the best alternative options to Calendly that provide robust scheduling functionalities, empowering sales managers and consultants to optimize workflow and productivity.

Why Is Calendly Such a Popular Appointment Scheduling Software?

Calendly has gained popularity as an appointment-scheduling software for several reasons. Firstly, it offers a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate and understand. Its intuitive design allows users to set up and manage their scheduling preferences quickly, without requiring extensive technical knowledge. The pop-up widget can be a great alternative to a standard booking page, because it doesn't reflect users from the webpage they're currently on.

Secondly, Calendly provides a comprehensive range of features that cater to various scheduling needs. Users can customize their availability, set buffer times between appointments, and even integrate it with their preferred calendar platform. The software also supports team scheduling, allowing multiple users to manage their availability and coordinate meetings efficiently.

READ ALSO: Speed Up Your Scheduling Process: The Best Scheduling Software for Small Business

Where it Has its Shortcomings

While Calendly is a popular scheduling software, it's important to consider its shortcomings when exploring alternatives. One of its limitations is the customization options. While Calendly provides some level of customization, it may not offer the level of flexibility that some businesses require. Customizing the scheduling process beyond basic options may be limited, which can be a drawback for businesses with specific branding requirements or unique scheduling workflows.

Additionally, some users have reported issues with integrations with videoconferencing software and calendars, leading to syncing problems or missed appointments. While Calendly offers integrations with all the popular platforms, compatibility issues can still arise depending on the specific software environment and configuration.

Lastly, Calendly's customer support has received mixed reviews, with some users expressing dissatisfaction with response times and the level of assistance provided and others even reporting there is 'no real tech support'. Reliable customer support is crucial for businesses relying on scheduling software, as any issues or disruptions can impact the overall efficiency and productivity of the sales team.

Considering these limitations, it's worth exploring alternative scheduling software options that address these shortcomings and offer a better fit for your specific business needs.

READ ALSO: Simplify Your Workflow With Online Meeting Scheduling

Criteria for Selecting Your Scheduling Tool

When searching for the ideal scheduling software, several crucial factors should be considered. By evaluating these criteria, you can identify a great Calendly alternative that aligns with your business requirements.

Flexibility and customization

Flexibility and customization options are essential criteria when selecting a scheduling tool. Look for software that allows you to tailor the scheduling process to your specific needs. Consider whether you can customize appointment types, duration, and availability, as well as set up buffer times and define specific rules for scheduling. The ability to brand the scheduling interface with your company's logo and colors is also important for maintaining a consistent brand image.

Integration capabilities

If you're looking for an appointment scheduling tool to automate your operations, you definitely want easy calendar integrations with popular platforms like Google Calendar and Outlook. And you want these integrations to work correctly all of the time. So if a scheduling app has multiple reviews stating problems with integrations, that's a red flag to consider.

Remember the importance of other integrations too. With videoconferencing software, for example. Or customer relationship management (CRM) systems. This will help you organize your work and keep track of operations.

User-friendly interface

Choose alternatives with an intuitive and user-friendly interface that minimizes the learning curve for you and your clients. A clean and straightforward design enhances usability and encourages client engagement!

Advanced features

Seek alternatives that offer advanced features to enhance your scheduling process. These may include automated reminders, group scheduling, reporting and analytics, and the ability to customize email notifications.

Customer support and reliability

Lastly, evaluate the customer support offered by the scheduling tool provider. Check their availability, responsiveness, and the quality of support they provide. Additionally, consider the reliability of the software itself, including uptime, performance, and any reported issues or bugs.

By carefully considering these criteria, you can select a scheduling tool that aligns with your business needs, enhances your efficiency, and provides a positive experience for both you and your clients.

Pricing and scalability

Consider the pricing structure and scalability of the alternative solutions. Look for options that offer competitive pricing plans, accommodating the size and growth of your business without imposing unnecessary costs.

Why You Need Scheduling Tools in The First Place

While popular platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Google Calendar excel in facilitating virtual meetings and enabling team collaboration, they lack some of the essential features and functionalities required for effective appointment scheduling.

If you're not using scheduling tools yet, here are a few reasons why you probably need a dedicated tool for efficient and automated appointment booking.

Time optimization

Scheduling tools help you optimize your time by automating the appointment booking process. Instead of going back and forth with clients or team members to find a mutually convenient time, the software offer a streamlined process where individuals can view your availability and book appointments accordingly. This saves time for both parties involved.

Eliminate scheduling conflicts

With multiple appointments and meetings to manage, it's easy to double-book or overlook scheduling conflicts. Scheduling tools provide real-time availability updates and prevent overlapping appointments, ensuring that your calendar remains organized and conflicts are avoided.

Enhance customer experience

A dedicated scheduling tool improves the customer experience by providing a user-friendly interface for clients to book appointments at their convenience. It eliminates the need for phone calls or email exchanges, allowing customers to easily find available time slots and make appointments on their own. This self-service capability enhances customer satisfaction and empowers them with more control over their scheduling.

Automated reminders and notifications

Scheduling apps can automatically send reminders and notifications to both you and your clients. This reduces the likelihood of no-shows and ensures that everyone is prepared and informed about upcoming appointments. Automated reminders save you time and effort while improving overall attendance rates.

Integration with other tools

Meeting schedulers can integrate with other essential tools such as calendar platforms, CRM systems, or communication tools. These integrations enable seamless coordination and synchronization of scheduling data across multiple platforms, enhancing workflow efficiency and reducing manual data entry.

Analytics and reporting

Many scheduling tools provide analytics and reporting features that give you insights into your scheduling patterns, appointment history, and client data. These insights can help you make data-driven decisions, identify trends, and optimize your scheduling process for better efficiency and productivity.

Top Five Calendly Alternatives

There are quite a few Calendly alternatives, such as the popular scheduling tools mentioned below. Now let's be honest, these are rather simple tools so they all offer similar meeting scheduling possibilities. So when looking for the right appointment scheduling software for your business, you have to look into the details and customer feedback.

CallPage Meetings

CallPage Meetings, a new addition to CallPage's product lineup, combines the power of online scheduling with our well-known callback tool. By choosing CallPage Meetings, you gain not only a robust meeting scheduling software but also access to an entire ecosystem of tools to enhance your lead capture efforts.

One of the unique advantages of CallPage Meetings is our integrated callback feature. This means that in addition to scheduling appointments, you can offer your customers the option of an instant callback, catering to their preferred method of contact. With this added capability, you can capture leads more effectively and provide immediate assistance to potential customers who may not be ready to schedule an appointment.

At CallPage, we prioritize our customers above all else. Our company values include a strong commitment to "Customer Obsession," and this is reflected in the exceptional support and customer success teams we have in place. We are dedicated to ensuring that your experience with CallPage is not only efficient but also enjoyable, providing you with the assistance and guidance you need to achieve optimal results.

With CallPage Meetings, you can expect all the essential features you would find in Calendly and more. Whether it's seamless appointment scheduling, the convenience of callback options, or our unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction, we strive to exceed your expectations and deliver a top-notch scheduling solution.

Here’s a list of things that you may find especially useful when using CallPage Meetings:

• Advanced targeting: CallPage Meetings offers over 20 different scoring rules that help you target the right website visitor with our pop-up widget. This ensures that you engage with the most qualified leads and increase the chances of converting them into customers.
• Customizable widget: Our widget is fully customizable, allowing you to configure it to match your brand identity. You can customize the colors, fonts, and other design elements to create a seamless and branded experience for your visitors.
• Custom contact form: In addition to basic contact information, CallPage Meetings allows you to add any question you want to your contact form. This helps you gather specific details or requirements from potential customers before the meeting, enabling you to better prepare and personalize your approach.
• Automated lead distribution: With CallPage Meetings, you can automatically distribute leads between your sales representatives or consultants based on the answers provided by customers in the contact form. This ensures that leads are assigned to the most appropriate team member, improving efficiency and maximizing the chances of successful conversions.
• Seamless integration: CallPage Meetings integrates seamlessly with other tools and platforms, including CRM systems and communication tools. This allows you to synchronize scheduling data and streamline your workflow across multiple platforms, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing administrative overhead.
   

By automating the scheduling process and providing seamless integration with other tools, CallPage Meetings offers a robust solution that helps businesses book and manage sales calls effectively, making it a top choice. So, how about you start your 14-day free trial of CallPage Meetings now?

YouCanBook.me

YouCanBook.me is the next one of our alternatives. It simplifies the process of booking meetings with features like customized booking pages, unlimited notifications, and rule-based scheduling options. It offers customization of booking form questions, data export, and integration with Zapier for automated reporting. YouCanBook.me claims it puts a strong emphasis on data security.

Customer reviews about this UK-based tool are generally very positive. It does have some drawbacks, although these seem relatively minor issues. For example, here's what one user wrote on TrustRadius:

I find that it's not a great solution when having to book something several weeks out, for example. It needs to load each week as a new page, which can be time-consuming when you are on a call with a client.

Doodle

Doodle is a popular Swiss Calendly alternative that allows users to schedule meetings with ease. However, it may not offer as many advanced features as some other alternatives. It primarily focuses on finding the best meeting time based on participants' availability rather than providing extensive scheduling automation or integrations with other tools.

What we mean by this is that Doodle allows you to create a poll with various time options for your meeting or event. Participants can then indicate their availability by selecting the time slots that work best for them. This helps in finding a common time that suits everyone's schedules.

Overall, Doodle is a good option for scheduling meetings and events, especially when multiple participants are involved. Its intuitive interface and ease of use make it a popular choice among users seeking a straightforward scheduling solution.

As for it's drawbacks, we've looked into some negative comments once again. Although there are plenty of positive ones, some customers complain about how the platform changed after recent updates. One user wrote that Doodle now lacks the simplicity and some features that he found really useful in the past.

SetMore

SetMore is a company based in Portland. Like the other tools, it offers similar features to Calendly, including online booking, calendar synchronization, automated reminders, and client management. It provides businesses with the tools necessary to streamline their scheduling processes and improve their appointment management.

What's interesting is that SetMore does not have a free trial or a free plan, although it does offer various pricing tiers that cater to different business needs. But that can be a problem if you'd like to try the tool out without committing yet.

Positive customer reviews indicate that SetMore is appreciated by users for its features and functionality. However, it's worth noting that some users have reported syncing errors and expressed concerns about the responsiveness of SetMore's support team in addressing these issues.

Acuity Scheduling

Last but not least, we wanted to talk about Acuity Scheduling. It's a New York-based company, that was acquired by Squarespace in 2019. As with all the other tools, its job is to allow your customers to schedule appointments easily.

Acuity Scheduling has a particularly user-friendly interface and clean design. Its intuitive layout makes it easy for both businesses and their customers to navigate and schedule appointments effortlessly. For example, it provides a customizable booking page where your customers can view your availability and select their preferred appointment slot. The booking page is designed to be clean and uncluttered, ensuring a seamless scheduling experience.

It has all the necessary features like calendar integrations, appointment types and availability settings, automated notifications, online payments, time zone detection and a dashboard for client management. It also allows you for group meetings, so it will work for larger events and classes where multiple people come together.

As for the cons, one customer reports the administrator interface to be somewhat complicated. Another reviewer on TrustRadius has a similar opinion. Using Acuity's system seems to be a bit frustrating at times.

Which Tool Should I Choose?

Efficient appointment scheduling is crucial for businesses, and while Calendly is a popular choice, it's important to consider alternative solutions that may better fit your specific needs. When selecting a scheduling tool, consider factors such as flexibility and customization, integration capabilities, user-friendly interface, advanced features, customer support, pricing, and scalability.

Weigh the pros and cons of each option and consider customer reviews to get a better understanding of their performance and suitability for your business. While each tool has its strengths and weaknesses, CallPage Meetings offers a comprehensive lead capture solution with integrated scheduling and callback features, customizable widgets, advanced targeting, and seamless integrations.

Now, you might be thinking: "You've mentioned all those negative comments when describing all the tools except CallPage Meetings. Isn't that a bit biased?". Well, we've just launched our product and are still waiting for the first major reviews to come in. Obviously, nothing is perfect and neither is our product. But we are confident it can deliver results and potentially do it better than our competitors thanks to it being part of a larger lead capture tool.

At CallPage, we believe in continuous improvement, and we are confident in our product's potential to deliver exceptional results. As part of a comprehensive lead capture tool, CallPage Meetings benefits from being part of a proven ecosystem designed to enhance your overall lead capture process.

So, why not give us the benefit of the doubt? We're eager to prove ourselves and ensure you won't be disappointed. Let's join forces and simplify your appointment scheduling while maximizing your business potential. Together, we'll make it happen!