Google Calendar Review Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons

Google Calendar, while is just the official google calendar app that comes with your Google account (Google Workspace and Gmail) is also the foundation of some of the best calendar apps and best daily planner apps on the market.

So view Google Calendar more as a foundation to be built atop of, versus it being the end-all be-all calendar app for your business. It is a direct competitor to Outlook calendar in Microsoft Outlook and Apple calendar.

Google Calendar Limitations

Scheduling

When comparing Calendly vs Google Calendar and Motion vs Google Calendar, you see first-hand how basic scheduling is when it comes to Google Calendar. In-fact, we wrote an entire post comparing these three scheduling apps when Google recently released their Appointment Scheduling functionality.

That said, the funny thing is both Motion and Calendly are both better, with Google Calendar at the core.

Calendar

White Google calendar is a great foundation, it's not the nicest looking calendar app out there. Google Calendar has looked the same for the past 6+ years, but it's because they are building the web app, android app, and iOS app for billions of users. With that, they can't be that innovative without upsetting many users.

So that's where we recommend checking out the daily planner apps space, and opting for a tool like Motion or Routine.

Task Management

Google Calendar does have Google Tasks which is used for basic time blocking.

Free Calendar Alternatives

We understand that many people using Google Calendar might just be using it for personal use and not for work, so pricing might be more of a concern in that case. If so, and you're looking for a free alternative to Google Calendar for improving your calendar view experience (e.g. weekly view, day view, and creating a new event, viewing multiple calendars, basic time management), then your best bet would be to check out Cron or Routine.

Integrations (API)

Google Calendar integrates deeply with other Google Workspace features like Google Meet. For example, when creating a new event, you can have it automatically create a Google Meet and attach it to the event for all guests to be able to access. This is a feature that you can disable in settings if you primarily do in-person events or use a different meeting recorder software like Zoom or Dialpad Meetings.

Pricing

Google Calendar is free.