Calendly

Puntos a favor

TheThe best thing about Calendly is the ability to set schedules for specific event types! You can set blackout dates, available times, control meeting lengths, automatically add buffer time, limit the number of events scheduled for a single day, and more. This is perfect for setting up live events or meetings on an ongoing basis, but giving yourself enough heads up and flexibility to be in control. You basically give prospective customer the freedom to choose a date and time--but ensure that it fits in your schedule, too. Use this to schedule live demos with clients, training events, or even webinars. It's a great tool, especially for small sales teams that need a controlled flow of sales calls/demos.

Puntos en contra

Calendly is restrictive in analytics; for instance, I can't easily see how many people clicked to schedule an event, but didn't follow through. It's also difficult from a user interface standpoint. I find myself looking for settings and menus that are hidden within the slick, clean interface. On the scheduling side, it's pretty easy for clients to schedule events, but you can't customize the date picker--and that's really unfortunate, because I'd like to use it in more places but can't customize the look and feel or functionality.

Puntos a favor

Scheduling meetings is easy, and I don't ever have to rely on coordinating crazy google calendars with people. If you are setting it up for yourself to have people schedule meetings with you, it's easy to block out times that you are available or unavailable. It's also really great if you work with teams across different time zones as it takes your timezone into account when scheduling times with person/or vice versa, overall it's just one less thing to worry about.

Another super handy feature is the ability to request certain information from the person booking time with you. This makes it easy to request an agenda about the meeting or to perhaps ask a series of questions for recurring meetings with people.

Puntos en contra

The only problem I've had is mostly user error. As the one requesting a meeting, I wish there was an easier way to add calendar events to your calendar. I have on a few occasions forgot to add the scheduled time to my calendar (the option is there, I've just missed it a few times) would be awesome if it was automagically added some way to your Google Cal. :)

Puntos a favor

I really love how flexible Calendly has to offer, if you need a one-on-one Schedule, Calendly can give you that.
If you have a Team and you need them to schedule a meeting with your Prospects, Calendly has your Team.
If you need one member of your Team to schedule a separate meeting with your other member, Calendly will help you do that.
The integrations are also great, you can integrate Calendly with other meeting software like Zoom for a discovery call, GoToMeeting for Webinars, or even monetize discovery calls with their integration for PayPal or Stripe. Calendly will have those integrated easily.
I cannot stress enough how Calendly can customize your experience if you love certain Branding to be removed or to add, Calendly can do it for you.
There's so much to say but one thing stood out for me, the Timezone is already integrated with the Timezone of your Prospects, meaning, no more late, no-show meetings.

Puntos en contra

As much as I love Calendly, there are certain features that I don't like, well, every Software isn't perfect and we do have different take and opinion.
The Availability function to your Calendar, this is for me is confusing, you need to highlight first the day you want to be available until the date of your availability. I just wish Calendly can have a feature where you can just input a certain Date up until your Availability, more like a drop-down menu.
But that's just me, I still love how easy to use this software.

Puntos a favor

I can share my calendly link with clients and contractors and they can easily schedule a meeting on my calendar without me having to be involved. It is user friendly for them and seamless for me. It requires no attention or maintenance on my part. You can connect calendly to your current calendar so that your availability automatically syncs as you make changes to your day. And this platform is highly workable for all of my needs without having to use a paid version! There are tons of customizations you can set, such as a buffer time to allow for travel between meetings, automatically blocking off or allowing specific times for each day of the week, disallowing bookings within __ hours, etc.

Puntos en contra

The ability to figure how exactly where and how to adjust all of the setup preferences is a little quirky. Some of the settings are "hidden" as sub-sections under other preference pages. I took a good bit of time setting and navigating through all of the customization options, but now that those are set, I don't have to think about or touch anything to keep Calendly working for me. With the free version, you can only have 1 meeting time for clients to choose from (for example, using my link, clients only have the option to schedule a 45 minute meeting with me). This is actually preferable to me though, as I don't want my clients to have to make more choices or spend more time in Calendly than needed. Using the free version keeps things simple.

Puntos a favor

The design was the first thing that got me attracted to Calendly, actually. I first saw it while booking an online appointment myself, and it actually was a good thing that the "host" was not using the paid version, because it was thanks to the branding that was included that I could research more about it. I was about to knock one star on my review for "value for money" because the free version comes with everything you need, and depending on the use, the branding might not be such a big deal for some people. So, there actually is quite a bit of value provided on the free version, so they should get the star for delivering it free of charge.
I love the fact that events can be edited and that they get their own custom URL, which I can share with prospective clients over the e-mail or text messages and they just book the time that works best for them through there. I also like that the local time is always converted to whatever the user needs to see, getting rid of eventual timing differences or errors in calculation. This is a very helpful tool!

Puntos en contra

There are no real cons for me since even with the free version, you get most (if not all) the functionalities you might need. I tried to come up with something for the sake of this review, but... no "cons" for me.