Calendly

Calendly is a scheduling platform that lets people book meetings without back-and-forth emails. A user shares a link, the invitee picks a time from the available slots based on the user's calendar, and the meeting is confirmed with calendar invites and video conferencing details automatically. It popularised the scheduling link and became a standard tool for salespeople, recruiters, consultants, customer success teams, coaches and anyone who books many meetings with people outside their organisation. By connecting to Google, Microsoft Outlook or iCloud calendars, Calendly only shows times when the user is genuinely free, respects working hours and buffers between meetings, and handles time zones automatically. Beyond one-to-one booking, Calendly supports team scheduling. Round-robin event types distribute meetings among a team, collective events find times when several people are all available, and routing forms qualify invitees and send them to the right person or meeting type based on their answers, which is valuable for sales and inbound lead handling. Integrations with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe for paid bookings, and embedding on websites connect scheduling to the rest of the business. Workflows send reminders and follow-ups, and analytics report on meeting activity. Calendly offers a free plan with core booking for one event type and paid plans per seat that add multiple event types, team features, integrations and administration. The trade-offs are that advanced routing and enterprise features sit in higher tiers, and some find the cost per seat significant for large teams compared with free or bundled options. Alternatives include Cal.com, an open-source scheduling platform that can be self-hosted; Microsoft Bookings for Microsoft 365 organisations; Google Calendar appointment schedules; Chili Piper for sophisticated inbound sales routing; SavvyCal for a more personal booking experience; Acuity Scheduling for service businesses; and HubSpot Meetings for HubSpot users. Choose Calendly when you want reliable, widely recognised scheduling links and team routing for meetings with external people.