Calendly vs Google Calendar … or both?

Scheduling meetings without email ping pong has gone from a “nice to have” to an essential — especially for professionals who book a lot of external meetings, like those on sales, marketing, recruiting, and customer success teams. Google noticed, and launched an appointment schedule feature in Google Calendar. 

If you’re shopping for appointment scheduling apps to save time and make booking easier for your customers and clients, you might be wondering: Can I use Google Calendar instead of Calendly? 

Both Calendly and Google Calendar offer links where people can look at openings in your calendar and book one-on-one meetings with you. Both let you set limits on how far in advance someone can book, choose your maximum meetings-per-day, and build in meeting buffers so you aren’t stuck in endless back-to-back meetings. 

Aaand … that’s about where the similarities end. Essentially, Google’s offering for one-on-one meetings is pretty bare bones, especially for teams who need to book group meetings across teams and with external customers and vendors. Calendly’s functionality goes way beyond just a scheduling link, with features designed to help teams get more done, earn more revenue, and hit their goals. 

So let’s look more closely at your needs, and which of these apps is the right fit for you and your business. Spoiler alert: If your team already uses Google Workspace, using Google Calendar and Calendly together is your best bet for easier, faster, scheduling (and happier customers). But we’ll go over the differences and let you decide. 

What is Google Calendar?

Google Calendar is part of Google Workspace, making it the go-to calendar app for individuals and teams using Gmail, Google Meet, and Google Drive. Scheduling with Google Calendar is easy — if all invitees work at the same organization.

Who is Google Calendar for? 

Google Calendar works best for booking internal meetings. When you need to meet with people outside of your org, like customers or vendors, finding a time gets a little more tricky.

Google’s basic appointment scheduling features are designed for one-on-one bookings. If you need to add multiple hosts or attendees to an appointment, you’ll need this manual workaround: Once you receive an email notifying you of a new booking, you can edit the event to add additional guests to the calendar event. You still have to email, call, or text additional attendees to ask for their availability, which can make group scheduling a hassle.

What is Calendly?

Calendly is an easy-to-use scheduling platform for teams of all sizes across industries. Users connect their calendar(s) and share their booking page, and invitees can instantly choose from available times. Real-time availability means you never have to worry about double bookings.

For professional teams, Calendly offers much more than just an appointment scheduling link. Team scheduling features make it easy to schedule — whether you’re booking client consultations, sales calls with inbound prospects, internal team brainstorms, product demos, vendor and partner meetings, or all of the above.

Who is Calendly for?

Teams of all sizes use Calendly to bring together … 

• Sales, marketing, and customer success collaborating on a deal

• Recruiting, HR, and hiring panels interviewing candidates to fill roles

• Customer success, IT, and engineering teams resolving customer issues

… just to name a few! (For more Calendly use cases, check out these customer stories.)

Overview: Google Calendar vs Calendly

Google Calendar’s biggest advantage is that it’s big, so you and/or your company are probably already using it. The appointment schedule feature is already built in for 500 million users (although the complete set of features is only available for certain types of paid accounts). 

This makes Google Calendar the easiest and cheapest tool for people who:

a) exclusively use Google Calendar, 

b) have a paid Google Workspace plan, 

c) only schedule internal meetings, and 

d) only need a simple way to schedule appointments with one person at a time.

Google’s size is also its disadvantage. There’s no doubt Google’s search engine and calendar are best-in-class, but Google focuses on so many things at once, its appointment scheduling feature is low on the priority list. That’s why it’s bare bones, doesn’t integrate with anything but other Google products, and doesn’t have dedicated customer support. 

Google’s appointment scheduler doesn't even offer group scheduling (one of Calendly’s specialties). 

Without the team scheduling features and workflows of a mature scheduling tool like Calendly, things can get awkward and unprofessional. For example, Google’s booking pages are created based on individual Google accounts and are branded with the user’s photo, forcing users to present their personal brand to the public while at work. Even Calendly’s free option allows you to brand your booking page, including uploading a logo or avatar, and customize the end of your URL.

With Calendly, you do have to take the time to connect your calendars. But Calendly lets you mix and match if, say, you use an Outlook account at work, a Google Calendar for your volunteer job, and an iPhone calendar for your family. Your scheduling link isn’t helpful if people can avoid your work conflicts, but double book you during your child’s birthday party. 

For a complete view of your availability, Calendly connects with these calendars: Google Calendar, iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, Outlook Desktop, and Office 365.

Calendly also works where you work, with apps for iOS and Android, and web extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and LinkedIn. Right now, Google’s appointment schedules can’t be created or managed using the Google Calendar mobile app — when you’re on your phone, you have to manage appointments using your web browser. 

Even seemingly little things can get appointments on the books faster, like Calendly’s ability for you to select options for meeting days and times, and actually embed them in the email invitation.

This means Calendly’s free plan is already more feature-rich than Google’s paid appointment scheduling product.

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How Google Calendar and Calendly are different

Calendly works with the software your team uses every day

You can be certain Google Calendar is compatible with the other Google tools you use, like Gmail, Google Meet for video conferencing, and Google Workplace for collaboration.

But for companies and teams, Calendly’s app neutrality is a huge boon. Calendly makes all the admin tasks around meetings easier, in harmony with your existing tech stack. Calendly serves multiple departments by offering integrations with the software you’re in all day, including your CRM, ATS, and communication tools. Examples include:

• Sales tools and CRMs (like Salesforce and Gong)

• Marketing automation software (like HubSpot, Marketo, Mailchimp, and ActiveCampaign)

• Job applicant tracking systems (ATS) (like Greenhouse and Lever)

• Communication tools (like Slack and Microsoft Teams)

• Workflow automation (like Zapier and Outfunnel) 

• Video conferencing like Zoom or Webex

Why is this important? Let’s use the Salesforce CRM as an example (an automated journey that would also be similar for, say, a recruiter in Greenhouse or a CS rep in Gong). When sales reps schedule meetings with new prospects using Calendly, Salesforce automatically creates a new lead, contact, or opportunity. If the prospect already exists in Salesforce, the event is simply added to the existing record.

Sales reps love using the integration because less data entry means they can speed up their sales pipeline to close more deals. Sales managers love that Salesforce data is always accurate so they don’t have to chase down reps for updates. With the Calendly+Salesforce integration, it’s all automated and reps never need to leave Salesforce. 

Compatibility with other apps matters for individuals and small businesses, as well. Say you’re doing consulting or tutoring. You can embed a Calendly link on your website, automatically add Zoom links to new meetings, and configure Stripe or PayPal to require a downpayment online before your meeting. Setting up these automations is easy, shrinks your to-do list, reduces no shows, and ensures you’re compensated for your valuable time. 

Group Calendly appointment scheduling features

Calendly is designed with teams and group scheduling in mind, so your team can collaborate more effectively, get more done, and delight every customer, candidate, or client who books with your business. These plans support users and invitees at every stage — internal and external — from first contact to sales conversations to customer success handoffs. By contrast, Google’s feature only addresses one aspect of the meeting experience: basic, one-on-one scheduling. 

Calendly provides a wealth of features to help you close more deals faster, connect with top job candidates first, and increase customer retention and growth.

Meeting Polls

Find the best time for one-off meetings with up to 40 people. With Meeting Polls, your invitees vote on preferred times, so you can easily accommodate personal preferences and time zones. Once everyone votes, you choose the best time. Calendly schedules the meeting for you, then automatically sends calendar invites and meeting details to everyone who voted.

Routing

Get better results from your “contact sales” forms and beat your competition. With Calendly you can qualify, route, and schedule meetings instantly with real-time website scheduling for high-value leads and customers. Calendly’s Routing lets you screen and qualify new leads directly from Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot, or Calendly forms. Calendly automatically looks up and matches known leads to assigned account owners in Salesforce. And if the form responses fit your ideal customer profile, the prospect is instantly sent to a sales rep’s booking page to set a convenient meeting on the spot. 

Collective scheduling

A collective event pools team members' availability and only shows invitees appointment slots when all hosts are available. This is ideal when, for example, a customer wants to schedule a technical support call with their CS rep and an engineer. Or when you need to schedule a smooth customer handoff from sales to CS. This feature also is helpful for scheduling kickoffs and regular check-ins that involve external people like customers and vendors. 

Group scheduling

If you’re hosting something like a webinar or class, this feature lets multiple people sign up to meet with you at the same time. 

Round Robin scheduling

Say you’ve got a ton of leads coming in and you need to respond quickly with intro calls and demos. Round Robin meeting assignment automatically connects prospects with your next available sales rep. You can even weight each sales rep, so you can route more calls to your staffers who have the most experience or the most room in their portfolios. This is also a great tool for connecting existing customers with your support team faster.

Workflows

Workflows are customizable communications you can automate before and after meetings.  Some tasks you can automate with workflows include: 

• Email reminders with pre-call questionnaires

• Confirmation texts

• Thank-you emails

• Post-call notifications with surveys or next steps

Using workflows, you can apply meeting best practices automatically and uniformly across your team. This increases engagement and makes sure all your prospects, customers, and job candidates are getting consistent, professional communications.

SaaS pricing: Calendly vs. Google Calendar

Chances are, if your organization has “gone Google,” it’s done so for other reasons, and whether Google Calendar’s scheduling tool, Calendly, or a combination of both will work best for you depends on the complexity of your needs. Here are the links to Google Workspace pricing and Calendly pricing.

Google Calendar pricing

You can create a single booking page to let invitees schedule unlimited appointments on your calendar for free. To access all of Google Calendar’s appointment scheduling options, your org needs a Google Workspace subscription. (All plans require a one-year commitment.)

• Business Starter: $6 per user per month

• Business Standard: $12 per user per month

• Business Plus: $18 per user per month

• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Calendly pricing

In addition to Calendly’s free plan (that will stay free forever), Calendly offers paid plans that make group scheduling easier. 

Calendly has four pricing tiers:

• Free: Includes one connected calendar, unlimited event scheduling, Meeting Polls, and automated event notifications

• Standard: $10 per user per month (billed annually)

• Teams: $16 per user per month (billed annually)

• Enterprise: Custom pricing for larger organizations that need advanced security, control, and customer support

Explore Calendly’s Teams features with a 14-day free trial.

"Ease of use" is another somewhat fraught comparison — if you’re already set up with Google Workspace, both its scheduling tool and Calendly’s are similarly straightforward. If you aren’t all-in on Google, though, the likelihood you would choose it for its scheduling functionality alone is low.

Calendly vs. Google Calendar … or combine them to accomplish more faster

Google Calendar’s appointment schedule feature is a simple approach for people who have paid Google accounts and just want to save time scheduling one-on-one meetings. This is the practical choice for people who work exclusively in Google Workspace, and don’t need their scheduling software to connect to tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, LinkedIn, or Salesforce. 

But businesses, teams, and entrepreneurs who need real financial outcomes can’t waste time when prospects express interest, or when customers need answers. Calendly is more than just a scheduling link: It’s a time-saving system that’s proven difficult for others to match.

At Calendly, scheduling automation isn’t an afterthought, but a strategic part of your tech stack, designed to drive more revenue, delight more customers, and hit your goals faster. If you use a Google Calendar for work or your personal life, you can easily connect Google Calendar to your Calendly account and take advantage of both tools’ strengths.

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