About Calendly
Calendly is a poplarly used software for online scheduling, which enables individuals and businesses to effortlessly arrange appointments, meetings, and events. The software offers a range of features, including the ability to sync with multiple calendars, customize event types and availability, and send automatic reminders to participants.
Calendly was founded in 2013 by Tope Awotona, a Nigerian entrepreneur living in Atlanta, Georgia. Awotona was frustrated with the time-consuming and often confusing process of scheduling appointments via email and phone calls, and saw an opportunity to simplify the process with technology.
Awotona began building Calendly as a side project while working full-time at a healthcare technology company. He launched an early version of the software in 2014, which quickly gained popularity among his friends and colleagues.
In 2015, Awotona left his job to focus on Calendly full-time. He raised funding from investors and grew the company's team and user base. Calendly has since become one of the most widely-used scheduling tools in the world, with millions of users across various industries and sectors.
Today, Calendly offers a range of plans and features for individuals, teams, and businesses. The program is designed to seamlessly sync with widely-used calendar systems such as Google Calendar, Outlook, and Apple Calendar. Additionally, it provides a variety of customization alternatives to accommodate diverse scheduling requirements.
Calendly Features
Calendly is an online scheduling software that offers a variety of features to help individuals and businesses schedule appointments, meetings, and events. Here are some of the key features of Calendly:
- Customizable event types: Calendly allows users to create custom event types based on their scheduling needs, such as one-on-one meetings, group events, or phone consultations.
- Availability preferences: Users can set their availability preferences, including specific days and times when they are available to meet, and adjust them as needed.
- Multiple calendar integrations: Calendly integrates with popular calendar platforms like Google Calendar, Outlook, and Apple Calendar, allowing users to sync their schedules and avoid double-bookings.
- Automatic time zone detection: Calendly automatically detects the time zone of the user and their invitees, making it easy to schedule meetings across different time zones.
- Custom branding and messaging: Users can customize the look and feel of their Calendly page to match their brand, and send automatic email and SMS reminders to their invitees.
- Team scheduling: Calendly offers team scheduling features that allow multiple users to share a calendar and schedule events on behalf of each other.
- Payment integration: Calendly integrates with popular payment platforms like Stripe and PayPal, allowing users to collect payments for their services directly through the scheduling process.
- Analytics and reporting: Calendly provides users with detailed analytics and reporting on their scheduling activity, including data on event types, invitee responses, and scheduling trends.
Overall, Calendly is a powerful scheduling tool that offers a wide range of features to help individuals and businesses streamline their scheduling processes and save time.
Calendly Pricing
Calendly offers a variety of pricing plans to fit different needs and budgets. Here are the details of each plan:
- Basic: The Basic plan is free and includes basic scheduling features, such as one calendar integration, one active event type, and unlimited meetings. Users can also customize their booking link and brand their page, send automated notifications, and add Calendly to their website.
- Essentials: The Essentials plan costs $8 per user per month when billed annually, or $10 per user per month when billed monthly. It includes all the features of the Basic plan, plus the ability to connect two calendars, create unlimited event types, and send email reminders and follow-ups. Users also have access to live chat support.
- Professional: The Professional plan costs $12 per user per month when billed annually, or $15 per user per month when billed monthly. It includes all the features of the Essentials plan, plus the ability to create collective event types, route with Calendly routing forms, build custom workflows with notifications and reminders, view analytics and insights, and customize colors, logos, and branding. Users can also connect to a variety of apps and services, such as Gmail, Outlook, Hubspot, and Paypal.
- Teams: The Teams plan costs $16 per user per month when billed annually, or $20 per user per month when billed monthly. It includes all the features of the Professional plan, plus the ability to create round-robin event types, route with Marketo or HubSpot forms, and connect to Salesforce. Users can also lock and sync managed events across their team.
- Enterprise: The Enterprise plan is designed for teams of 30 or more users and includes advanced security, control, and support features. Pricing is available upon request and includes features such as SSO and SCIM user provisioning, route by Salesforce ownership, an activity (audit) log, and Calendly's Data Deletion API. Users also receive expedited support, a dedicated Calendly account partner, and onboarding and implementation support.
Can a virtual assistant use Calendly to assist a business?
Calendly can be an effective tool for outsourcing and working with virtual assistants. Virtual assistants can use Calendly to schedule appointments and manage their clients' calendars, making it easier to stay organized and reduce the time spent on scheduling tasks.
Here are some of the tasks that virtual assistants can perform using Calendly:
- Schedule appointments: Virtual assistants can use Calendly to schedule appointments with clients, partners, and team members. They can customize event types, set availability preferences, and sync multiple calendars to avoid double-bookings.
- Send reminders: Virtual assistants can use Calendly to send automatic email and SMS reminders to participants before scheduled appointments, reducing the likelihood of no-shows and last-minute cancellations.
- Manage availability: Virtual assistants can update their clients' availability preferences in Calendly based on their changing schedules or time zone differences, ensuring that appointments are scheduled at convenient times.
- Collect payments: Virtual assistants can integrate Calendly with payment platforms like Stripe and PayPal to collect payments for their services directly through the scheduling process.
- Analyze scheduling activity: Virtual assistants can use Calendly's analytics and reporting features to track scheduling activity and identify trends, helping them optimize their clients' scheduling processes.
Overall, Calendly can help virtual assistants save time and increase their productivity by streamlining their scheduling tasks and improving communication with clients.
