Calendly Review (2024): Features, Pricing & More

Calendly is a leading scheduling software for businesses that want to easily accept appointments and reduce administrative scheduling tasks to focus on what matters to them most. The scheduling app makes it easy for customers or clients to set up appointments by displaying your availability and allowing them to choose a time and date that works best for them.

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While Calendly can be useful for many different types of businesses, it is specifically ideal for people-facing professionals such as trainers, coaches, consultants and aestheticians. It makes Forbes Advisor’s list of the best scheduling apps because it offers a unique solution for booking appointments by email.

For the most part, Calendly is meant for professionals who rely on booking appointments with customers online, whether through a booking site or by email. This could be for consulting, booking demos or service-based businesses. If you set up a payment processor integration, you can take payments online for webinars, training or even products.

Where Calendly shines is through its automated processes for notifications and routing. You can create different event types or staff-specific meetings. To ensure customers get to the right person or book the right appointment, you can create forms with specific questions and then use logic-based automations to direct them to a meeting type or URL. These features help make this a hands-off solution for booking appointments for incoming leads any time.

Pros

Calendly works well for setting up appointments for customers or allowing them to book an appointment on their own. Its UX is intuitive for most people, so it’s easy to get started. The built-in forms are also self-explanatory and creating workflows and routing customers is all field-based with simple logic.

Cons

Although Calendly is intuitive on the surface, it isn’t always obvious how to change simple settings. For example, you can’t easily set holidays as unavailable days without going to the calendar view. You can create a separate schedule, though. Also, there is no way to create recurring appointments for customers.

The main purpose of Calendly is to allow businesses and their customers to book appointments easily. It enhances efficiency by including automated workflows and routing so you don’t need to dedicate a large amount of time to booking the right appointments for each client—set it and forget it.

Availability

Each staff member can set their own availability from their profile. Additionally, administrators can create schedules for event types so you can create a limited-time event or block off time for holidays. To block time for your own schedule, you’ll need to edit each date or each day of your working hours and set your custom hours.

You can edit meeting or event types within Calendly to add buffer time between meetings, include questions for customers before they book, customize and personalize email confirmations and collect payment (if you have Stripe or PayPal integrated). All of this happens in the settings section for each event type.

Calendar Sync

Part of the reason Calendly may not include easy ways to block time within its app is because it syncs with the most popular calendars you likely use for personal appointments. When you connect a Google, Microsoft or Apple calendar to Calendly, the app automatically blocks time it reads from your personal calendars so you’re never double-booked.

While Calendly offers two-way sync, you can only set it up for one calendar, even if you use multiple calendars for events. Say you use Google Calendar for personal appointments and Outlook for one business and Calendly for a second business; you can sync Calendly and Outlook events so data flows back and forth (resulting in both sets of calendars with all of your business appointments). Your personal calendar will share data with Calendly, so you don’t have conflicts, but your business appointments won’t show up on your personal calendar.

Booking Page

There are multiple ways through Calendly to offer appointments to your customers. You can create a booking page with a specific event type or for a specific staff member or you can create a meeting poll and send via email. Calendly lets you create a scheduling page that includes all of your event types. While these pages are customizable, it’s limited. You can add an image of yourself on your profile or add a logo. The look and feel of your booking pages remains the same otherwise.

A meeting poll is a better solution for working with customers or colleagues you already have contact with. For example, you could send a follow-up email to a customer who you’ve just finished an appointment with to book your next appointment. The poll can include a handful of future dates and times available. It’s a poll, so it’s a great way to get multiple people to vote for the times and dates that are best for them, so you can easily choose one meeting time that works for everyone.

Reminders and Notifications

Calendly includes automatic notifications for events on all plans. At the very least, customers and staff members will get confirmation emails of a booking and notification if there’s a cancellation. Only paid users can set up reminder and follow-up emails. Calendly allows you to send text messages to staff and customers on the high-tier plans.

Software Integrations

To optimize Calendly for your business, we highly suggest making sure it integrates with software you already use. There are 40 integrations available, including the calendars we already covered above. Some of the most useful integrations include Stripe and PayPal, if you want to take payment before an appointment; Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, for online video meetings; and customer relationship management (CRM) software such as HubSpot and Salesforce.

	Basic	Essentials	Professional	Teams	Enterprise
Starting Monthly Price (Billed Annually)	$0	$8 per user	$12 per user	$16 per user	Custom Quote
Event Types	One	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Group Events	X	✔	✔	✔	✔
Automated	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Event Notifications
Reminders	X	✔	✔	✔	✔
Customized Emails	X	X	✔	✔	✔
Routing	X	X	Calendly only	Calendly, Marketo and HubSpot	Calendly, Marketo, HubSpot and Salesforce
Remove Calendly Branding	X	X	✔	✔	✔
Salesforce Integration	X	X	X	✔	✔

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Basic

Calendly’s free version is limited but may be suitable for specific needs. You can create one event type such as a 15-minute meeting. You can customize your booking link and send automated event notifications. There’s no limit to the number of meeting polls or one-off meetings you can create on the free Calendly plan.

Essentials

The Essentials plan allows for two calendar connections per month and the ability to send your invitee email reminders and follow-ups. You’ll also be able to add personal links to your confirmation page, such as your website or your payment page, as well as to personalize your cancellation policy. All paid plans allow you to create as many event types as you’d like, which is helpful if you need to offer multiple meeting durations (15-minute, 30-minute and one-hour meetings, for example). Pricing for this tier is $8 per user per month (billed annually).

Professional

The next tier up, the Professional plan, is the most popular and costs $12 per user per month (billed annually). This plan comes with a few features that might make the extra cost worth it if you plan to be using Calendly regularly to book meetings. First, receiving text notifications is available on this plan, plus over 700 app integrations, including Mailchimp, HubSpot, Stripe and PayPal payments.

Teams

The Teams plan is best suited for businesses that plan to use Calendly for group meetings or events, such as round-robin event types and locking and syncing managed events across your team. It’s also one of the best options if you need to connect to Salesforce or use HubSpot or Marketo forms for routing. It costs $16 per user per month (billed annually).

Enterprise

Finally, the Enterprise plan, suited for large companies, offers more advanced features for companies that need technological flexibility, security and legal reviews, an activity log, onboarding support and phone support for technical issues as well as faster responses by email. Pricing isn’t publicly available so you need to contact sales for a custom quote for this plan.

To get started with Calendly, you only need to provide your email address or sign up with Google or Microsoft. Calendly walks you through setting up your account, including your booking site, calendar connections and then your dashboard. You can follow the continued walk-through to see what clients experience when booking an appointment through your booking page, or venture off on your own to change settings to your specifications.

It’s easy enough to get a handle on the basics of Calendly, but there are a few spots that may seem tricky. The top navigation menu only sends you to integrations, help and your personal settings. The dashboard menu offers a look at the events you’re offering, events you’ve already scheduled, workflows you can create and the routing options. To create a meeting poll, you have to click on the blue Create button or New Event Type button.

Compared to other scheduling apps available, Calendly is similarly intuitive to learn and use. There are walk-throughs to help you set it up at the start and afterward, and it’s easy to get back to the menus you need to set availability and create events. There are a few organization choices that are puzzling such as not having an easy way to set unavailability for an entire business or breaking up menus the way the app does (two top menus for navigation).

Along with most scheduling apps, Calendly employs standard security features to keep your data safe whether it’s stored or in transit. There are also features to protect against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and malware. Calendly also performs scans, tests and audits regularly to ensure your data and the app are safe. The only area in which Calendly suffers is that it isn’t HIPAA compliant, so it wouldn’t be appropriate for medical professionals to use.

Calendly offers different types of customer support depending on which plan you’re using. Free plan users are only able to get help through the help center or by email. All paid plan users can use the 24/7 live chat support option. Phone support and dedicated account agents are only available for Enterprise customers.

Our experience with a live chat agent was overall positive. The chatbot quickly connected us to an agent who answered our question immediately. They didn’t stop at delivering a definitive answer; they also offered to email a workaround to a feature Calendly doesn’t offer.

Calendly meets all the basic requirements of a scheduling app, so sometimes it’s about the extras that come with software that can change your mind. In addition to integrations with CRM apps and payment processors that Calendly provides, there are also alternatives to booking sites for setting appointments and automated routing.

Meeting Polls

Whether you want to work on customer retention by booking a follow-up appointment or you’re trying to herd multiple people into a single meeting, it’s always easier if you can be proactive, which meeting polls help with. Calendly allows you to create a meeting poll with multiple available time slots on multiple days and then you can email the link to the people you want to book. Calendly records which times each person is available and chooses the one that works best for everyone involved. It can be a big time-saver.

Routing

If you offer multiple types of meetings, services or levels of service, it can be helpful to have automatic routing. Start by creating qualifying questions for your clients and then set the logic to help Calendly route clients to a meeting or event that would work best for each of them. This is a common feature of CRMs but not scheduling apps. High-tier plan users can use routing forms via HubSpot, Marketo or Salesforce.

	Calendly	Square Appointments	Zoho Bookings	SimplyBook.me
Rating
Starting Price (Monthly)*	$8 per user	$29 per location	$6 per user	$8.25 (five users)
Free Plan	✔	✔	✔	✔
Bookings	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	100
Calendars	Google, Outlook and iCal	Google	Google, Outlook and Zoho	Google and Outlook
Reminders and Notifications	Email and text	Email and text	Email and text	Email and text
Routing	✔	X	By integration only	X
Booking Site	✔	✔	✔	✔
Payment Processors	Stripe and PayPal	Square, Afterpay and Cash App	Stripe, Authorize.net, PayPal and Razorpay	Stripe, Authorize.net, PayPal and Forte (plus five others)
Read Reviews	—	Read Square Appointments Review	Read Zoho Bookings Review	Read SimplyBook.me Review

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*Billed annually

Although Calendly is a great pick for booking appointments, there may be a better option for your business. These Calendly alternatives offer something a little different for various industries and you may want to consider something less expensive or better suited for an in-person service-based business.

Calendly vs. Square Appointments

You might experience a bit of virtual sticker shock when you see Square Appointments’ pricing versus Calendly’s, but you have to keep in mind that Square Appointments offers a lot more at that price. For $29 per month, you can have unlimited calendars, bookings, group events and automated reminders and notifications. You also get Square’s payment processor, marketing features and light CRM features.

While Calendly’s scheduling app has similar features as Square Appointments, it costs much less per month and offers routing for different meeting types and meeting polls. However, you have to integrate with a CRM and payment processor for better functionality. Plus, there aren’t any marketing features such as discounts or coupons.

Calendly vs. Zoho Bookings

If you’re looking for a slightly more affordable scheduling app, Zoho Bookings is cheaper than Calendly, but not by much. Although both apps lean on integrations to make them more functional, Calendly’s routing is built in and Zoho Bookings only offers the option if you integrate with a routing app.

Calendly vs. SimplyBook.me

The pricing difference between Calendly and SimplyBook.me is nominal, so it’s better to look at the limitations and features. SimplyBook.me limits how many appointments you can take each month, but Calendly’s are unlimited. You have more payment processing options with SimplyBook.me, so if Stripe and PayPal are not what you want to use, it could be a better option.

Calendly is a very specific software that serves a specific function: making appointment booking easier and more streamlined. If you find yourself struggling with juggling your client appointments, setting up Calendly might be an effective solution. However, Calendly may not be the best for businesses that don’t host online meetings or need to set up recurring appointments. To learn more about the best scheduling software of 2024, read our guide here.

Featured Partners

Advertisement

1

Connecteam

Pricing

Free; $35 per month for up to 30 users, or $29 per month when billed annually

Mobile app

iOS and Android

Drag-and-drop scheduling

Yes

1

Connecteam

Learn More

On Connecteam's Website

2

Acuity

Free Trial

7 days

Pricing

Save 20% on Annual Plans

Seamless client scheduling

Yes

2

Acuity

Learn More

On Acuity's Website

3

Homebase

Take control of everyday work

Yes

Schedule your team on autopilot

Yes

Free for up to 20 employees (no credit card required)

Yes

3

Homebase

Learn More

On Homebase's Website

Calendly’s beauty exists behind the curtain. Its interface is simple and intuitive, but there are no frills and you can’t add more frills to your booking site beyond a logo. The extra features of routing and meeting polls pull their weight to keep you focused on running your business and not fielding questions about availability or which service would be best for a client.

We were impressed with the speed of support and that they worked to find a solution beyond just a “no, we don’t do that.” Although the multiple menus aren’t that big of a deal, we would prefer better organization of features and settings. It would also be nice to have an easier way to block time off for an entire organization. But those are nitpicky complaints. Calendly saved us time and effort when it came to booking appointments and it did so with innovative automation.