This is one of our top picks in the category so we recommend it over others (you're on the right page), read below to learn why we love and recommend it! ⤵
This is one of the better tools in its category, see below if this tool is right for you! ⤵
Cal is truly the most impressive, flexible, and modern scheduling software on the market. They have taken the time to deeply understand scheduling needs and bundle them up into a great user experience. It's our top pick in the scheduling category!
We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what they do well, and what they could do better. ⤵
Open scheduling infrastructure for everyone.
Cal.com is a modern meeting scheduling software that is incredibly flexible. While Calendly was the leader the the meeting scheduling space for the past decade, over the past few years Cal.com has given them a run for their money, and in our opinion, has overtaken them.
We've vetted and used almost every scheduler on the market and can confirm Cal.com is the best on the market.
What you get with Cal.com is an incredibly modern software interface that is easy to use whether you're a small business who has never used a scheduler before or you're a company who wants to customize your meeting scheduling experience end-to-end.
Whats most impressive about Cal.com is that it seems to suit any business, no matter what industry, due to how deeply customizable it is. Let's go through some common examples:
We've been consulting in the SMB space for over a decade and implemented various scheduling tools into businesses, and we have yet to have seen a tool that is so flexible. No really, companies would hire us to build custom integrations between their CRM, and Calendly, and email sending software, just to get a fraction of the functionality that you get out of the box with Cal.com.
Given that Cal.com has only been around since 2021, they are building super fast and we're quite certain they will slowly win over Calendly customers one-by-one because of the infinitely better experience. So if you're in-between the two tools, don't hesitate, Cal.com is better option here.
Cal.com is an open source (meaning the code is publicly accessible and can be fully customized) making it the best scheduling tool for data privacy (e.g. doctors, teachers, and school friendly!). Genuinely cannot even imagine how incredibly it would be to have a teacher use Cal.com — fingers crossed that by the time our future children are in school, that's the standard! 😄
What is Open Source Software?
Think about when you go to a restaurant and they have an open concept kitchen. You immediately feel like they have nothing to hide and there is more transparency around how the food is being cooked. The kitchen is usually kept super clean and you know the cooks are more likely to follow sanitary protocols as they can be seen by anyone at anytime.
You get the same benefits with Open Source software. Anyone can audit the code and see if it was poorly written, or if there are any security vulnerabilities. Because of this transparency you can trust that the software is more secure and reliable, as it is constantly being reviewed and improved by a community of developers. This openness also encourages innovation, as anyone can contribute to the software, suggest improvements, or even tailor it to meet specific needs.
If you are an engineer and want to deeply customize your scheduling experience, then using Cal.com's scheduling infrastructure is your best bet. Cal.com is designed with an API-first approach, so you can easily integrate Cal.com's scheduling features into your own application or website.
Cal.com is the best meeting scheduler for large organizations with more complex scheduling needs. Why? Well first, Cal.com is fully customizable, you can white-label it with your own brand identity and modify the workflows to fit into your operational requirements. Also, Cal.com's modular architecture and API-first design make it easy to scale up as needs become more complex with growth.
Being open source, enterprises can self-host the software and therefore have full control over their data ensuring it meets stringent security standards, not to mention it's one of the most cost effective scheduling solutions on the market.
Cal has all of the meeting scheduler features you'd generally expect like:
The main feature of Cal is being able to easily schedule meetings with others, that said, it's only just scratching the surface into everything it can do. When we say that Cal.com can cover all your scheduling needs, we mean it 😄
Yes! You can take payments with Cal.com. It integrates with payment processors like Stripe so you can collect payment during the booking process.
While you can still use Google Meet or Zoom with Cal, they also have their own baked in video meeting software that is pretty slick, although we still prefer to use Google Meet alongside tl;dv for our calls.
When we ran our integration/automation business, I cannot tell you HOW MANY REQUESTS we got for round robin scheduling. The problem at the time (pre-Cal.com days) was that round robin required a custom integration usually that was quite a kludgy and expensive solution (btw - despite Calendly being around since 2012, their round robin feature only came out in 2023 💀).
Cal.com is solving a HUGE need with round robin scheduling. If you have the need to cycle through calls to different team members and you want it to be done automatically, Cal.com is your best bet.
Friends, this is where it gets nuts. We keep saying, Cal.com is super customizable. Here are just some of the workflows you can set up:
You can white-label Cal.com to be a scheduling feature baked right inside of your own product, or interact with it via their API directly or any of the best automation tools on the market. They even offer their core scheduler infrastructure as a service, unlike any other meeting scheduler tool on the market.
Unlike most of the meeting scheduler options on the market, Cal is open source, meaning it's free to self-host, and you can view all of their code on GitHub.
Cal.com's pricing tiers are incredibly fair.
Cal.com has different pricing options for those who want to white-label/build with Cal.com (head over to their website to see those).
So is Cal.com worth it? If you are looking for a new scheduler that is flexible, then yes absolutely it is.
We personally use Motion for our scheduling needs, however the caveat is that we really don't have many scheduling needs in our business (we have maybe 1-3 calls per week, many of which are just internal meetings aka extremely basic). With that, it doesn't make sense for us to have a stand-alone scheduling software.
BUT we'd recommend Cal.com over Motion for any business who has scheduling needs that are more robust, especially serviced based businesses or any business that does sales + customer support calls.
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We've tracked and verified the above companies are using this software in their team's stack.
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