The 6 Best Calendly Alternatives in 2023 (Free & Paid Options)

Calendly is a simple scheduler that’s easy to use if you need to book meetings here and there. 

However, you might be looking for the best Calendly alternatives if you’ve realized the free version lacks some helpful features and isn’t intuitive to use. Or perhaps you’re willing to pay for better reporting, advanced calendar set-up or booking workflow, and more direct integrations with other software.

Let’s find the product that’s right for you. 

The 6 Best Calendly Alternatives

Here is our list of the best alternatives to Calendly, starting with our own:

• Best overall — Chili Piper 
• Best for service-based businesses — Acuity Scheduling
• Best for small teams — ScheduleOnce
• Best for large group meetings — Doodle 
• Best for sales dialing and texting — Salesloft
• Best for AI assistance — Outreach

Best overall — Chili Piper

Chili Piper allows you to reduce clicks and schedule meetings faster. 

Forget about all that back and forth to grab scheduling links or insert times. It’s all done with one click.

Chili Piper’s Instant Booker extension is the only scheduling tool built for revenue reps — designed to book meetings instantly from any of the tools you currently use.

Whether you’re on a cold call and need to book quickly from Salesforce, or you’re communicating over email and need to coordinate multiple calendars, Chili Piper’s Handoff makes scheduling on behalf of other team members a simple process. 

No spreadsheets. No manual follow-up. No lost meetings. There is no scheduling experience quite like it. 

On top of everything, Chili Piper is an inbound conversion platform that offers additional products for revenue teams. For example, Concierge lets qualified leads instantly connect with a sales rep via any form on your website. Inbound leads are qualified, routed, and booked – all in a matter of seconds. 

In the Calendly vs Chili Piper battle, Calendly works well for the individual, but Chili Piper is designed for teams that need sophisticated features. 

Chili Piper features:

• Book meetings from anywhere, for any team member. The Chili Piper extension can be accessed from your web browser, Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, HubSpot, Salesloft, Outreach, and more
• Automatically route meetings to the right rep with intelligent rules and round-robin distribution
• Eliminate no-shows with automated email and SMS follow-up reminders leading up to your meetings
• Salesforce and HubSpot integrations to eliminate manual data entry and automatically track meetings, calls, and pipeline in your CRM

When to use Chili Piper:

• You want a frictionless booking experience
• You have larger sales teams (more than 5 reps)
• You need all these features for support and customer service teams
• You want full integration with your calendar solution and Salesforce
• You need clean, informative data and reporting
• You need an all-encompassing solution, automating your inbound process from end to end

Chili Piper pricing:

Chili Piper’s Instant Booker product offers an option at $15 per user, per month and a plan at $25 that’s well worth it for the handoff functionality, advanced routing based on custom CRM rules, round-robin routing, lead distribution reporting, and more. 

Ready to see Chili Piper in action? Get a demo!

Best for service-based businesses — Acuity Scheduling

Service-based businesses need more than a scheduling app — they need something like Acuity Scheduling that lets customers book appointments and pay for services at the same time. 

Acuity, a Squarespace company, does a great job of letting you set up a calendar on your site where clients can book, pay, and tip all at once.

Acuity Scheduling features:

• Accept online payments via integrations with Stripe, Square, or PayPal
• Offer more than just appointments like gift certificates, packages, memberships, or group classes
• Manage multiple locations and employees to show your clients the calendar you want them to see
• Customize everything to match your brand experience
• Meet clients anywhere through video conferencing integrations

When to use Acuity Scheduling:

• You are in services — Doctor's offices, salons, spas, etc.
• You need a simple scheduler on your Squarespace website
• You want to display your logo and use your brand colors
• You need to accept online payments
• You want to offer additional services like memberships, gift certificates, etc.

Acuity Scheduling pricing:

Acuity Scheduling doesn’t offer a free plan but it does offer a seven-day free trial. Three plans range from $14 to $45 per month if paid annually. 

The biggest differences between plans include the number of staff or locations that can make use of the scheduler, text message reminders, subscription and membership sales, and branding.

Best for small teams — ScheduleOnce

ScheduleOnce is like a hybrid solution for appointment and meeting booking, making this a great choice for service-based businesses or small sales teams. It does, however, have a limited set of features compared to some of its competitors. 

That being said, it’s a good Calendly alternative because it’s affordable and includes some nifty features. 

ScheduleOnce features:

• Let customers schedule a series of meetings as part of a session package
• Reserve meeting rooms or equipment when customers schedule meetings
• Manage your team’s workload by defining daily or weekly limits for meetings
• Use PayPal to charge for meetings or cancellations 

When to use ScheduleOnce:

• You want custom booking pages
• You need a payment integration to charge for meetings or cancellations and automate invoices and refund policies
• You want customers to schedule a series of meetings, like coaching sessions and training packages

ScheduleOnce pricing:

ScheduleOnce offers a free plan with limited features. To make use of the more helpful features, you’ll have to upgrade to the Teams option for $9 per month, per user, if paid annually. Enterprise-level pricing isn’t listed, so if you need more security or a dedicated account manager, you’ll have to get a custom quote.

Best for large group meetings — Doodle

What’s neat about Doodle is that it’s really simple to use, it works well on mobile, and scheduling is straightforward. 

To be honest, what makes Doodle so great is also one of its greatest drawbacks. It’s so uncomplicated that it lacks a great deal of functionality that more complex programs offer. 

Doodle features:

• Discover who’s available and when regardless of what calendar system they use
• Find the best time for meetings big and small. See who’s free (or who can be) with “if need be” votes
• Automatically check availability across time zones
• Use your company logo or brand colors on the Pro, Team & Enterprise plans

When to use Doodle:

• You need the additional features of group polls and surveys
• You need to constantly wrangle large groups of people
• You want custom logo and branding

Doodle pricing:

There is a free version, but it’s just the polling feature and it includes ads.

If you upgrade to the Pro plan, you’ll pay $6.95 per month, but just for one user. The Team plan starts at $44.75 per month, and that’s for a minimum of five users — it goes up in increments of 10, so it would be $89.50 per month for 10 users.

Best for sales dialing and texting — Salesloft

Salesloft’s Meetings capability is similar to other Calendly alternatives — it brings calendar integration with Gmail and Outlook directly into the platform, letting you include calendar links so prospects can see your availability and schedule a meeting right then and there.

A slick feature that makes Salesloft stand out is its Dialer + Messenger which helps make one-click sales calling and sales texting a seamless part of your process and workflow.

Note: while it may be tempting to use your current sales engagement platforms’ calendar functionality, these are secondary features built on top of the platform and therefore lack the complexity needed for advanced marketing and sales team structures. 

Salesloft features:

• Include yours, or a co-worker’s, personalized schedule link in any email
• Leverage a booked meeting as an important stage in the sales cycle to trigger associated automation rules
• Connect with buyers directly from the Salesloft platform, a cell phone, or a hard-lined phone without missing out on data
• Unlimited talk and text plans to make calls and text contacts in the US, Canada, Caribbean, and Europe 

When to use Salesloft:

• You already use Salesloft as your sales engagement platform
• You need dialing and texting features
• You want to use meetings as automation triggers in Salesloft

Salesloft pricing:

A particularly irritating issue is that Salesloft requires you to request a quote for pricing, for all of their packages.

Best for AI assistance — Outreach

Having Outreach as a meeting scheduler is like having a personal assistant. They were one of the first to invest in AI to bring insights that drive predictability in customer engagement, and it has translated well into their meeting scheduler. 

The rest of its features are fairly standard — calendar integrations, reusable templates with conferencing details, and sharing availability from your inbox. 

Outreach is a very powerful tool, and while that is great, users grumble the UI is painfully complex — to the point that leads are sometimes forgotten or lost. 

Note: much the same as with Salesloft, it can be tempting to use Outreach’s calendar functionality if you’re already on the platform, but bear in mind that as a secondary feature built on top of the platform, it lacks the complexity needed for advanced teams.

Outreach Meetings features:

• AI automated follow-up, reminders, and tasks before and after meetings
• Integrations with Google Calendar, Office 365, and Salesforce
• Insert availability as bookable time blocks so prospects can easily book meetings
• Public calendar links so prospects can find a time that works or reschedule meetings 
• Additional features like note-taking, round-robin scheduling, and analytics are soon to be rolled out

When to use Outreach Meetings:

• You already use Outreach as your sales engagement tool
• You want AI to automate tasks before and after meetings
• You want to book meetings on behalf of colleagues

Outreach Meetings pricing:

Outreach has also decided to be obscure about their pricing. You have to contact them to request a quote for any of their products or solutions. 

What’s the best Calendly alternative for you?

Booking links are a dime a dozen. 

If you just need a simple booking link for yourself, stick with Calendly.

Otherwise, Chili Piper is the only solution that can instantly qualify and convert inbound leads into meetings. 

Instant Booker’s advanced scheduling and routing will streamline even the most complex revenue teams. It’s exactly what you need to make scheduling a one-click process and eliminate unnecessary forms.

Don’t take my word for it. Seriously, book a demo and see for yourself!