The Calendly story can easily be an insane feature film. During a stint in sales at Dell EMC, Tope Awotona toiled evenings and weekends to achieve his dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur. A failed dating site and two uninspiring e-commerce businesses were the education Tope needed to realize he needed more than focusing on the money to excel in business. It took twelve months to discover he was passionate about scheduling meetings and the problem with using email for that purpose.
Turning his lemons into lemonade, Awotona defied social obstacles and multiple barriers to building Calendly using his life savings and a startup loan. With a market cap of $3 billion and 10 million users later, Calendly has truly weathered storms that typically rock early-stage minority-owned businesses.
An incredible product. A fantastic product-led-growth motion. It all looks good. The catch? In this market, when people are cutting cost, it looks harder to retain. We aren’t alone in this sentiment.
Key Points
- Calendly offers a competitive alternative to other meeting schedulers like Google Calendar, HubSpot, and Doodle.
- Calendly offers a Basic plan and four paid licenses: Essentials, Professional, Teams, and Enterprise. The Calendly free version restricts users to one scheduling event. Additionally, Basic plan users can’t access integration platforms, analytic features, and customization.
- To enjoy Calendly’s high-end features, you’ll need to purchase a Calendly premium plan.
- You can optimise Calendly costs by tracking usage, evaluating alternatives and more.
Calendly offers a limited Basic version and four paid subscriptions – Professional, Essentials, Teams, and Enterprise. Before taking the plunge, new users can utilize the 14-day free trial and enjoy Calendly’s Teams features.
Calendly’s free version enables one-on-one meeting scheduling. However, only the paid plans support unlimited event types, customizable emails, and integrations with multiple platforms. Calendly adopts a per-seat (user) pricing structure. Although paid licenses might look cheap, adding more seats increases your subscription.
This guide explains Calendly’s pricing plans and how to save costs regardless of team size.
Calendly Pricing Plans Explained
Calendly offers a free (Basic) plan and four paid subscription levels. While the Basic version is great for one-on-one appointment scheduling, it restricts the number of calendars, events, and platform integrations available to users. The Basic plan might be limiting as your business and scheduling list grows. Therefore, it’ll be best to opt for a paid plan to enjoy premium functionalities.
So, if you’ve been making queries like “how much is Calendly?” or “how much does Calendly cost?”, here’s a summary of the scheduling platform’s pricing plans:
Calendly Basic Plan
The Basic plan is excellent for small businesses and sole entrepreneurs interested in scheduling one-on-one meetings with clients. Users on this plan can only utilize one event type and calendar.
This free Calendly subscription lets you connect to popular conferencing solutions like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Webex, and GoTo Meeting. Besides embedding Calendly as an icon or widget on your website, the Basic plan also automates notifications for new or cancelled meetings. Likewise, this subscription lets users create customized meeting scheduling links. However, it isn’t comprehensive.
Users can’t create group events, facilitate automated workflows, redirect invitees, or access critical integrations on the Basic plan. These drawbacks imply upgrading to a paid subscription, especially if you want to reach more clients and get a personalized experience.
Calendly Essentials Plan
Calendly’s Essentials license costs $8 monthly. Compared to the Basic plan, this comprehensive package lets users track leads and create limitless event types.
Essentials offers two calendars. That way, users can manage separate personal and work calendar setups, allowing them to plan private and official engagements using one account.
Calendly’s Essentials plan syncs with Google Meet, GoTo Meeting, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Intercom, and Slack. These integration alternatives are essentially the same as what’s available on the Basic plan. However, the Essentials license takes things further with live chat functionality to resolve Calendly-related issues speedily.
Essentials should also tickle your interest if you’d like to organize group events and forward email reminders to invitees. You’ll also enjoy customized branding and notifications with this package.
Calendly Professional Plan
Calendly’s Professional plan costs $12 monthly (per seat). Robust automation, integrations, and multiple users make this subscription one of Calendly’s most popular packages. Each user has access to six calendars, and Professional plan subscribers can automate workflows via personalized notifications and reminders. Also, with “Calendly Analytics,” you can view your firm’s Calendly usage metrics in one tap.
The Professional package also earns high praise due to its integrations. Besides offering 700+ Zapier applications integration, users can enjoy connections to MailChimp and HubSpot. This plan also provides access to webhooks, a HTML-based callback feature for lightweight communication.
Unlike the Basic and Essentials plans, you can create Routing Forms on the Professional license. This add-on grants users the leeway to direct screening questions to invitees and redirect them to a unique scheduling page URL based on their replies. Users can also co-host events with external invitees.
Professional subscribers can utilize Calendly’s Stripe and PayPal integrations to process payments. So, the next time someone seeks a consultation, you can redirect them to a Calendly link showing your charges. How convenient!
Calendly Teams Plan
Calendly’s Teams package is for teams seeking more features than the Basic, Essentials, and Professional packages.
The Teams plan enables access to a unique Salesforce integration. This revolutionary connection allows you to create Salesforce records of new clients. The event automatically embeds itself into a previously-created catalogue for existing prospects, so you don’t have to chase other team members for client updates.
Calendly’s Teams plan also lets you create round-robin event types. This add-on lets team members rotate bookings. Afterwards, invitees can select a timeline convenient for a team member. Besides granting top-level admin controls, the Teams license also has an onboarding feature for new team members and facilitates consistent communication with your group. Little wonder it’s the go-to plan for a reputable SaaS procurement service like Quolum. To get the ball rolling with us and talk to a savings expert, use our dedicated Calendly link.
The Teams plan costs $16 monthly (per seat). Given its embedded features, this package offers invaluable advantages to company teams, ensuring streamlined operations.
Calendly Enterprise Plan
The summit of Calendly’s pricing hierarchy is the Enterprise plan. However, you’ll need at least 30 users on your team to activate this license.
So, what can enterprises achieve from this package? Quite a lot! Besides containing features in the lower plans, the Enterprise plan supports Single Sign-On (SSO). This function lets multiple users execute Calendly login actions from numerous systems.
Furthermore, this package offers advanced user provisioning with SCIM (System for Cross-Domain Identity Management), so companies can add or remove Calendly seats seamlessly.
Large organizations across numerous verticals (finance, tech, e-commerce, and consumer products) use Calendly’s Enterprise package. Popular brands like Dropbox, eBay, Lyft, and L’Oreal rely on this license to connect with prospects and strengthen relationships.
With the plan’s fast, straightforward, user-friendly, and powerful features, your growing enterprise can “take the hassle out of scheduling,” to borrow the words of the Calendly team.
Unlike other Calendly packages, you’ll need to contact the company’s sales team for a personalized Enterprise quote.
Other Scheduling Products to Consider
With Calendly offering scheduling features loved by millions, discovering suitable alternatives might seem daunting. However, we found a few options worth comparing to Calendly — Chilli Piper, Cal.com and HubSpot.
Cal.com is an open-source SaaS promising “scheduling infrastructure for everyone.” It’s currently free for individuals, and because it’s open-source, you can play with the code and make it do scheduling your way. It offers a custom link, app integration, and workflow automation. For small businesses, and individuals, this seems like a no-brainer.
HubSpot also offers a free meeting scheduling platform. You can sync meeting details to CRM contacts, but as with other HubSpot products, there are Starter, Professional, and Enterprise options for advanced premium features.
A lot of sales teams prefer Chilli Piper as well. While the features are similar, a lot of it often boils down to what teams are comfortable with, when you hit a certain size!
Save Money on Calendly with Quolum
Calendly’s revolutionary attributes makes it a popular scheduling tool for individuals and companies alike. Although its Basic plan is excellent for individuals, it has limited functionalities. As we mentioned, there are definitely open-source alternatives worth considering.
A paid plan is mandatory to enjoy Calendly’s premium features. However, the software’s per-seat pricing structure might prompt subscription increments you’ll find hard to sustain in the long run. If you’d like to keep your firm’s Calendly costs low, consider monitoring this carefully with Quolum.
Quolum monitors user activity and contact engagements on your Calendly. Based on the results, we’ll detect inactive seats and remove them, lessening your company’s Calendly spend. Similarly, if some users have barely any meetings booked on their links, this could be an opportunity for reduction.
What’s more?
We can forecast your Calendly account’s future performance and expenditure using extensive analytical tools you’ll find on your dedicated Quolum dashboard. Quolum’s savings experts are also proficient in negotiations. We negotiate with SaaS vendors, Calendly inclusive, for discounts and personalized payment plans based on your usage once you reach a certain size.
Our SaaS procurement platform helps save costs seamlessly, so you can inject extra funds into business areas that’ll yield more returns. Speak with a Quolum savings expert here to get started (and yes, if you hit schedule now, you will be redirected to a Calendly link :D)
FAQs
How do I get a Calendly discount?
Calendly users can get a 20% discount if they choose annual billing. However, note that Calendly offers promo codes and other discounted deals at different intervals.
Does Calendly refund?
No. All Calendly-related payments are non-refundable.
How do I save money on Calendly?
You can save money on Calendly by using the Basic plan, leveraging discounts, or deploying an intuitive all-in-one SaaS management solution such as Quolum to manage your spending. You can also consider open-source alternatives.