“Are you free on Friday?”
“Does Thursday work instead?”
“5 pm?”
“Maybe noon?”
Do your meeting scheduling calls and emails look like this? Coordinating calls for your team and clients, especially across multiple time zones, can feel like trying to escape a maze blindfolded.
Sure, there’s Google Calendar. But you must trade exchanges or link calendars to find a convenient time for everyone involved. The hunt for this convenience can be a significant inconvenience to actually running your business.
You need smarter online calendars at your service. And it usually boils down to this: TidyCal vs. Calendly. Both promise to simplify your scheduling, but which one truly delivers better value for your needs?
Let’s find out. Psst…if none of the tools feels like a fit, we also have a bonus third to make calendar management simpler: ClickUp!
TidyCal Vs. Calendly: Which Meeting Scheduler is the Best?
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is TidyCal?
TidyCal is an online calendar scheduling tool created by AppSumo to simplify the appointment booking process for individuals and small businesses. It aims to offer a budget-friendly alternative to Calendly.
In 2021, TidyCal burst onto the scene with something that made entrepreneurs’ ears perk up: lifetime access that seemed too good to be true. (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t)
While most scheduling tools try to be everything to everyone, TidyCal took a different approach. The app stripped away the fluff and focused on affordability and simplicity for small businesses and solopreneurs.
The tool handles everything from one-on-one consultations to team meetings, delivering core scheduling features without overwhelming users.
TidyCal features
While exploring various daily planner apps in the market, you will find that TidyCal’s approach to scheduling combines simplicity with smart functionality. Each feature works to solve real-world scheduling challenges without overwhelming users.
Here’s a detailed look at what makes TidyCal stand out:
1. Smart calendar integration
Remember when you got double-booked because your calendars weren’t syncing? TidyCal eliminates that nightmarish scenario with real-time syncing across Google Calendar, Outlook, and other major calendars.
The platform automatically updates your availability across all connected online calendar scheduling tools in real time.
For instance, if you’re a consultant managing both client meetings and personal appointments, TidyCal automatically blocks off times across all your calendars when someone books a session.
2. Customizable booking pages
Your booking page is often clients’ first touchpoint with your business process. TidyCal transforms this interaction into a seamless experience with the following:
- Custom buffer times between meetings to help you prepare or handle overruns
- Flexible availability windows that adapt to your work style
- Multiple booking types for different services (perfect for coaches offering both 30-minute discovery calls and 60-minute deep-dive sessions)
- Branded elements that maintain your professional identity
3. Group meeting management
Have you tried coordinating a meeting with five people across three time zones? It’s a mess most of the time. TidyCal handles this elegantly.
The platform’s group scheduling feature doesn’t just find available times—it intelligently suggests slots that work across different time zones, factors in working hours for each participant, and even accounts for recurring commitments.
This is particularly valuable for global teams managing client presentations or weekly team syncs.
4. Automated event notifications
Once you’ve set up your workflow, TidyCal handles the tedious tasks. It sends instant confirmation emails with calendar attachments so attendees can easily save the event.
You can customize reminder sequences, such as a nudge 24 hours or one hour before the meeting, ensuring no one forgets to show up. Follow-up messages with meeting summaries are also automated, keeping participants in the loop.
Plus, TidyCal manages rescheduling notifications to ensure everyone’s calendar stays accurate and current.
TidyCal pricing
- Free plan
- Tier 1 (Standard): $39 (one-time payment)
- Tier 2 (Team/Agency): $79 (one-time payment)
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is Calendly?
Calendly simplifies meeting scheduling with its user-friendly interface and integrations with Google, Apple, and Outlook calendars.
Over the years, Calendly has grown from a basic scheduling tool into a comprehensive platform for scheduling automation.
Thanks to Calendly’s robust integrations ecosystem, you can connect it with over 100 popular business tools. These have helped it gain significant traction, particularly among enterprises and growing teams.
Calendly integrates deeply with CRMs, marketing tools, and sales platforms, making it ideal for larger organizations that need scheduling capabilities to improve their appointment-booking process.
🧠 Fun Fact: Calendly is one of the top choices for scheduling, holding a solid 21.45% of the market share.
Calendly features
As one of the leading task-scheduling software solutions, Calendly offers features that make it the top choice for scaling teams:
1. Advanced workflow automation
Calendly goes beyond scheduling and helps automate your entire workflow. If you’re using Calendly for your business when someone books a demo, here’s what happens automatically:
- Your best-fit sales rep gets assigned based on region and expertise
- Your CRM updates with prospect information
- Team members receive instant Slack notifications
- A personalized email sequence begins engaging the prospect
All of this happens without any manual effort. Calendly transforms your scheduling and streamlines your pre- and post-meeting tasks into an efficient, automated process.
2. Team scheduling intelligence
Calendly is a favorite for creating an efficient project management calendar system. This is thanks to features like round-robin distribution for balanced workloads and collective scheduling to pinpoint the best time for multiple participants.
Calendly also offers smart team routing considering time zones, skills, or workloads. These tools shine in sales and customer support settings, where fast response times and effective resource allocation are key.
🧠 Fun Fact: The term round-robin is derived from the 17th-century French term Rond Ruban—referring to a method of signing petitions circularly to conceal the identity of the first signer and prevent retribution.
3. Enterprise-grade controls
Calendly offers comprehensive control over the scheduling environment for organizations that demand strong security and oversight.
It includes advanced security features like SAML single sign-on, detailed analytics, and reporting tools to optimize meeting patterns. Calendly also allows for custom branding or white-labeling options, so you can truly make your scheduling page your own.
As an administrator, you can easily manage a large team with centralized controls and compliance features for your regulated industry.
Calendly pricing
- Free plan
- Standard: $12/month per seat
- Teams: $20/month per seat
- Enterprise: $15k/year
Also Read: Best Calendly Alternatives & Competitors
Summarize this article for me pleaseTidyCal Vs. Calendly: Features Compared
Now, let’s dive into a detailed comparison of Calendly vs. TidyCal to see where each tool excels and where they might fall short. We’ll kick things off with a comprehensive table outlining their key features:
| Features | TidyCal | Calendly |
| Calendar integration | Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal | Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal, Exchange |
| Meeting types | One-on-one, Group, Round-robin (basic) | One-on-one, Group, Round-robin (advanced), Collective |
| Customization | Basic branding, Meeting types | Advanced branding, Custom workflows, Meeting polls |
| Team features | Basic team scheduling | Advanced routing, Round-robin, Analytics |
| Integrations | Basic (10+ integrations) | Extensive (100+ integrations) |
| API access | Limited | Full API access |
| Security | Standard security | Enterprise-grade security |
| Pricing model | One-time payment | Subscription-based |
It’s time to take a closer look at each key aspect—and find which one outperforms the other:
1. User interface and experience
Both platforms understand that managing your schedule shouldn’t be a headache, but they approach it a bit differently.
TidyCal keeps things simple, making it perfect for small businesses and solopreneurs. Its clean interface reduces the mental clutter, allowing you to set up your scheduling workflow in minutes instead of hours. It focuses on the essentials and has a logical layout that naturally guides you through the process.
Calendly, on the other hand, takes things up a notch with a more sophisticated dashboard designed for larger teams and enterprises. Sure, the learning curve is a bit steeper, but it’s worth it for the customization options and advanced workflow features.
The interface does a great job of managing multiple team members, complex routing, and integrations—without feeling overwhelming.
🏆 Winner: It’s a tie. TidyCal’s no-nonsense approach should be your pick if you’re a solopreneur. If you’re looking for a more complex and advanced setup, Calendly should be your go-to.
2. Scheduling flexibility and control
Both platforms offer solid scheduling controls but with distinct differences.
TidyCal provides simple, straightforward scheduling features, covering the essentials like buffer time management and basic availability rules.
It’s ideal for professionals with predictable schedules, allowing for standard meeting durations and break times without unnecessary complexity.
Calendly steps it up with its advanced rule engine, offering dynamic buffer times based on meeting types or participant roles. Its custom availability patterns support more complex needs, including seasonal hours, rotating schedules, paid meetings, and custom meeting caps per day.
This level of customization makes Calendly particularly useful for businesses with multiple team members and varying scheduling needs across departments or time zones.
🏆 Winner: Calendly for its advanced scheduling functionality
Also Read: How to Prioritize Tasks at Work
3. Team management
As your business grows, coordinating the team scheduling process becomes more crucial. Both platforms offer team features but with key differences.
TidyCal provides basic team features that work well for small groups. It offers group event creation for simple team scheduling and permission management, making it ideal for small businesses with basic scheduling needs.
Calendly, however, offers more robust team management tools. Its advanced team routing automatically assigns meetings based on criteria like expertise, availability, or time zone.
The round-robin system ensures fair meeting distribution, while sophisticated access controls allow hierarchical permissions. Team analytics offer valuable insights into meeting patterns and member utilization, helping optimize larger operations.
🏆 Winner: Calendly for its fair distribution feature, which makes team management much more efficient
4. Integration capabilities
Your scheduling tool must integrate smoothly with other online meeting tools in today’s connected business world. Here’s how TidyCal and Calendly compare in this aspect:
TidyCal offers essential calendar integrations, focusing on core business needs. It connects easily with major calendar services and basic video conferencing platforms. While its integration options are more limited than Calendly’s, they meet small businesses’ and independent professionals’ most common needs.
Calendly, on the other hand, boasts an extensive integration ecosystem, linking to over 100 business tools. It offers advanced API access for custom integrations and webhook support for automated workflows.
Its deep CRM integrations allow for detailed lead tracking and customer journey mapping, making it ideal for businesses that rely on multiple software tools and need automated data flow.
🏆 Winner: Calendly, for its multifaceted approach to business processes and workflow designing
5. Value for money
TidyCal offers a one-time payment model, giving users lifetime access to all features without recurring costs. This approach provides exceptional value for budget-conscious businesses and solopreneurs who need reliable scheduling tools without ongoing financial commitment. You also benefit from an all-inclusive feature set, eliminating the need for future upgrades.
Calendly, with its subscription-based pricing and feature tiers, caters to growing organizations with evolving needs. While the per-seat monthly pricing might initially seem higher, the platform’s more advanced features and extensive integrations can deliver significant ROI for larger teams.
The tiered structure allows organizations to scale based on needs, which can lead to higher costs as teams expand.
🏆 Winner: It’s a tie. For solopreneurs or small teams (up to 10 people), TidyCal’s free plan works best. For paid plans, TidyCal covers 90% of your needs at 20% of the cost. For teams of over 10 people or advanced scheduling, Calendly’s extra features are worth the investment.
🧠 Fun Fact: The first known use of a calendar dates back to the Sumerians, who created the first lunar calendar around 2000 BC. While we’ve come a long way since then, life’s still about managing our schedules well!
Summarize this article for me pleaseTidyCal Vs. Calendly on Reddit
We looked at Reddit to see what real-world users say about these calendar apps.
A Redditor in r/podcasting shared their experience with TidyCal’s calendar syncing capabilities:
This highlights TidyCal’s straightforward approach to handling multiple calendars—a crucial feature many users seek in scheduling apps to coordinate with team members or clients across different calendar platforms.
On the other hand, a Redditor on r/smallbusiness offered a compelling testimonial for Calendly:
The Reddit community of scheduling app users seems to align on a few key points:
- TidyCal appeals to users seeking simplicity and value
- Calendly dominates in professional and enterprise settings
- Both tools effectively prevent double-bookings
- Integration with existing calendar systems is crucial
These real-world perspectives reinforce what we’ve seen in our feature comparison but add valuable context about how these tools perform in daily use.
👀 Did You Know? Microsoft urged its employees to limit meetings to 30 minutes, leading to 94% participant satisfaction rates!
Summarize this article for me pleaseMeet ClickUp—The Best Alternative to TidyCal Vs. Calendly
While TidyCal and Calendly excel at basic features, ClickUp, the everything app for work, revolutionizes managing your time by offering a complete workspace solution. Here’s why ClickUp is the only tool you need.
📮ClickUp Insight: Low-performing teams are four times more likely to juggle 15+ tools, while high-performing teams maintain efficiency by limiting their toolkit to nine or fewer platforms. But how about using one platform?
As the everything app for work, ClickUp brings your tasks, projects, docs, wikis, chat, and even calendars under a single platform, complete with AI-powered workflows.
Ready to work smarter? ClickUp works for every team, makes work visible, and allows you to focus on what matters while AI handles the rest.
ClickUp’s One-Up #1: Elevate your calendar management
If you need more than just a scheduler, ClickUp’s Calendar View can serve as your central planning hub. Unlike Calendly or TidyCal, which focus mainly on meeting scheduling, ClickUp combines task management and calendar features, giving you a complete view of everything you’re working on in one place.
You can schedule meetings and track deadlines, milestones, and ongoing projects without switching between multiple apps.
ClickUp also allows you to customize your calendar, set priorities, and integrate with other tools you might already be using. It’s perfect for anyone looking for a deeper level of organization beyond simple scheduling.
You can also easily switch between daily, weekly, and monthly views, use filters to find tasks, and drag-and-drop scheduling. ClickUp offers resource management, letting you monitor team workload and capacity right from the calendar.
Start with a pre-existing template to see the power of ClickUp’s Calendar View in action. We recommend the ClickUp Calendar Planner Template to elevate your team’s planning meetings. Here’s what it offers:
- Keep track of daily, weekly, and monthly tasks with ease
- Stay updated on important deadlines and milestones
- Organize projects into manageable chunks
- Monitor resources and team workload efficiently
- Adjust your schedule as needed with flexibility
- Gain clear visibility into overall workflow and progress
ClickUp’s One-Up #2: Better meeting management
ClickUp Meetings make it simpler to manage meetings with features designed to keep everyone on the same page.
You can easily schedule, track, and manage meetings right alongside your tasks, making it simple to stay organized. Whether setting up agendas, assigning action items, or sharing meeting notes, you can find it all in one place. Here’s all that you can do with ClickUp:
- Detailed meeting notes: Create comprehensive meeting notes with ClickUp’s rich note-taking and editing tools, enabling structured documentation of discussions and decisions
👀Did You Know: With ClickUp’s AI Notetaker, you can automatically capture and transcribe conversations on platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet without writing a word manually.
It also provides clear summaries after meetings, highlighting key points and action items for easy reference. The best part? Your meeting notes are seamlessly linked to related tasks, documents, and chats within ClickUp.
- Agenda management: Build and manage meeting agendas faster to ensure efficient coverage of all discussion topics with ClickUp Brain—ClickUp’s native AI assistant
- Action item tracking: Convert meeting items directly into assignable tasks, strengthening accountability and follow-through
- Assign comments: Delegate tasks that require actions directly to your teammates from within comments
💡 Pro Tip: Prioritize meetings and tag them on your ClickUp tasks based on their urgency or type (e.g., “team meeting,” “client call,” etc.) so you can stay focused on what matters most.
ClickUp’s One-Up #3: Advanced time management
ClickUp’s time management tools take an advanced path toward productivity. With its built-in time-tracking feature, you can easily track your time on each task, ensuring you stay on top of your projects.
Plus, you can set up time estimates and compare them with actual completion times, helping you improve your accuracy for future tasks. Breaking big projects down into manageable ClickUp Tasks and subtasks lets you accomplish more—with less stress. Add reminders and due dates, and you’re set to stay ahead of deadlines.
📮ClickUp Insight: 92% of knowledge workers use personalized time management strategies. But, most workflow management tools don’t yet offer robust built-in time management or prioritization features, which can hinder effective prioritization.
ClickUp’s AI-powered scheduling and time-tracking features can help you transform this guesswork into data-driven decisions. It can even suggest optimal focus windows for tasks. Build a custom time management system that minimizes distractions and adapts to how you actually work!
Unlike standalone scheduling tools, ClickUp unifies your entire workflow together:
- Use the Workload View to prevent scheduling issues within the team
- Try the Gantt View to show how meetings fit into your project timeline
- Rely on Custom Fields to track venues, costs, and other crucial details
But wait, what if you’re already using Calendly? No problem! ClickUp integrates smoothly with your existing Calendly setup, so you don’t have to discard your pre-existing workflow while switching to the platform!
Once connected, meetings booked through Calendly automatically sync with ClickUp, mapping all details relevant to your tasks and projects.
Summarize this article for me pleaseChoose ClickUp for the Perfect Scheduling Solution
While TidyCal and Calendly focus solely on scheduling meetings, ClickUp provides an enhanced online calendar booking system that connects meetings to your broader work strategy.
Each meeting becomes an integral part of your project timeline, with full context and follow-through capabilities.
Whether managing a small team or a large organization, ClickUp’s robust features ensure that your scheduling needs are met while keeping everything connected in one central platform.
Sign up for ClickUp now and take the effort out of meeting scheduling—even as you action meetings better!
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
