With remote work becoming a norm in some industries and more prevalent in the others, it is imperative to use a good appointment and meeting scheduling tool.
Calendly has been the market leader in this space and has been setting the standards for meeting and appointment scheduling.
However, based on some specific use cases, you might need some other alternatives. We will have a look at the best options available to choose from as an alternative to Calendly.
Price - starts from $9 per month.
Free plan - Available.
Bookafy is easily one of the best alternatives for Calendly with a wide array of excellent features.
You can easily set up one-time or recurring booking links, group events where one member can book a meeting with multiple clients or multiple members of your team with a single client, etc.
It is also possible to schedule recurring appointments with a single customer, which is very useful for any sort of online coaching or training.
If you have a big team to schedule the meetings, you can set up a round-robin schedule or also based on the skills of each team member.
If you need some time to prepare for each meeting, you can set up custom buffer times before and after the appointment.
This wide range of flexibility makes Bookafy a fantastic scheduling tool for so many different use cases and scenarios.
With regards to notifications on appointments, you can send customized email reminders, and SMS reminders are supported as well.
You can also set up automated emails with links to major review sites asking for reviews once the meeting is completed.
The native integration with Zoom allows generating an automated Zoom link for all the attendees for a particular meeting.
If you need to collect payments for your services via meetings, Bookafy makes it easy by integrating natively with Stripe and Authorize.net.
For large agencies and enterprises, Bookafy even has a white-label option where you can completely customize it with your own brand, logo, URL, and colors.
Price - $10 per month per user.
Free plan - Available.
Harmonizely is a simple appointment booking tool with an easy to use user interface and dashboard.
The free plan has some excellent features and the pricing plan is simple as well with just a single paid plan of $10 per user per month.
You can connect a custom domain with Harmonizely which makes your appointment booking page stand out.
Another unique aspect of Harmonizely is its strong integrations. Apart from Outlook and Google calendars which most of the scheduling tools support, Harmonizely also connects with FastMail, NextCloud, Zimbra, ZohoMail, etc.
When it comes to video meetings, native integration with Whereby is available additional to Zoom.
Harmonizely supports more than 8 languages including English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, etc.
Other important features like custom email notifications & reminders, buffer time before each booking, re-scheduling of meetings, custom questions before scheduling, etc. are all available.
Although features like payment gateway integration to collect payments and round-robin scheduling are absent, the availability of custom domain linking, multiple languages, and diverse calendar integrations makes Harmonizely a very attractive alternative to Calendly.
Price - starts from $9.9 per month.
Free plan - Available.
Simplybook.me is a fantastic alternative to Calendly if you are running any type of service-based business.
You can either embed the appointment booking widget on your website or you can easily build your own service booking website with Simplybook.me.
For healthcare-related services, both the standard and premium plans are HIPPA compliant to take care of the additional privacy requirements.
Native mobile apps for both iOS and Android makes it possible to manage all the appointments on the go.
With regards to payment gateways, Simplybook.me has perhaps the widest range of integrations among all the appointment booking tools. It supports PayPal, Square, and Stripe.
Price - starts from $11 per month.
Free plan - Available.
Meetfox is an appointment scheduling tool with built-in video calling and payment integration with Stripe.
This makes it a perfect option if you want to avoid using apps like Zoom and prefer both appointments and video calling within the same tool.
The booking page can be completely customized and branded with your colors, logo, custom domain, etc.
With regards to video calling, all the essential and fundamental features like screen sharing, file sharing, live chat, compatibility with all browsers are available. Also, there is no need for any downloads for your prospects or client to join the call.
Meetfox also supports group calls up to 16 participants.
As far as payments for meetings, Meetfox has some really unique features. You can charge either for a meeting as a whole or on the basis of minutes.
It is also possible to set up charges for meeting no-shows which significantly improves the rate of attendance and prevents wasted time on the calendar.
Price - starts from $8.99 per month per host.
Free plan - Available.
Vectera is another excellent meeting scheduling tool that supports video calling as well.
It is excellent for client meetings as all the documents pertaining to a specific meeting can be stored in a virtual meeting room by integrating with Dropbox and Google Drive.
All the documents and conversations are saved in this virtual room and anytime it can be picked up where it was left either by the client or the host.
This is a fantastic feature for ongoing and recurring online classes and training sessions where both students and trainers can have a continuous and seamless experience.
There is no need to download anything for the clients to join the video calls as calls are accessed through the browser. Meeting rooms can also be filled with pre-filled content based on earlier meetings and information submitted on the scheduling form.
The scheduling page can be embedded on your main website or even can be a standalone page with a custom domain linked to it and a custom waiting screen for the clients.
The meetings can be very interactive with features like whiteboard, screen sharing, and document annotation.
Available native integrations include ActiveCampaign, Salesflare, Teamleader, etc. for CRM and Stripe for payment gateway.
Price - $50 per month for the Sales Hub - Starter plan.
Free plan - Available.
HubSpot Meetings is a part of the HubSpot's Sales Hub.
The starter plan costs $50 per month and in addition to the Meetings, you get a lot of email marketing, calling and team management features.
This in addition to the free CRM and conversation live chat makes it a superb value for money.
It is possible to set up group meetings where your prospects can schedule a meeting with more than one of your team members. HubSpot Meetings also support round-robin scheduling.
There is also a free plan that gives one personal meeting link, 1 email inbox, 15 minutes of calling per month, 5 canned snippets along with the free CRM.
Having your appointment scheduling within the same tool as your CRM and email marketing saves a ton of time by not bothering about integrations. HubSpot is a fantastic option if you are looking for an all-in-one alternative to Calendly.
Price - starts from $49 per month.
Free plan - Not Available.
SuiteDash is another all-in-one Business tool designed for agencies and freelancers managing multiple clients.
It has tons of features including project management, time tracking, a white-labeled client portal, a CRM with unlimited contacts, file transfer with clients, etc.
Appointment scheduling is available with its Booking toolkit feature where clients can easily schedule a meeting with you through their own portal. It is possible to set multiple appointment types depending on each team member and can appointments be easily canceled as well.
SuiteDash's other strong aspect is its excellent array of payment integrations. It natively integrates with Authorize.net, Braintree, PayPal, and Stripe.
Price - starts from $9 per month.
Free plan - Not available, but a 45-day free trial is available.
One of the highlighting features of Cogsworth is the availability of HIPPA compliance, which is massive for healthcare professionals and medical practitioners looking for a scheduling tool to offer their services online.
It also has all the basics covered like email & SMS reminders, custom branding, Google Meet & Zoom integration for video calls, payment collection with PayPal, custom questions with a form builder, etc.
Also, it offers one of the most generous free trials lasting for up to 45 days.
Price - starts from $59 per year for 1 domain.
Free plan - Not available.
Amelia is a very flexible and feature-rich booking and appointment plugin for WordPress. If your website is based on WordPress, Amelia is an excellent and affordable Calendly alternative to manage your bookings and appointments.
You can either get the plugin on an annual license or even on a lifetime license. So, for a one-time fee of $589, you can use Amelia on an unlimited number of websites for lifetime. This will be of amazing use for agencies as you pay once to manage all your clients.
Price - Completely free.
It is always nice to have a free tool as an alternative to a paid one.
Although missing most of the advanced features like round-robin scheduling, payment gateway integrations, etc. Meetingbird covers all the essential and fundamental features of a scheduling tool.
It integrates natively with Gmail, Office 365, Zoom, Google Meet, and also has a Zapier integration to connect with other third-party tools.
You can build multiple meeting types, customize the meetings page with your brand colors and logo, do group scheduling with multiple team members, add buffer timing and custom questions before the meeting is scheduled, and send reminders & meeting confirmation emails.
Another impressive feature in Meetingbird is the ability to easily build polls with multiple time options which can be easily shared with a unique link. You get email updates on how the poll proceeds along with the results to conclude on the correct time slot.
There is a handy chrome extension to schedule the meetings right within Gmail.
Conclusion
Although there are so many other appointment scheduling tools, the above-listed tools are easily some of the best and can easily cover every use case.
If any other good tools come up, I will update the post accordingly.