Doodle scheduling program

Company Size: employees. Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management. Time Used: More than 2 years. Review Source: Capterra. Old habits die hard, and Doodle reigns supreme. Time and again, this product makes scheduling large groups of folks simple and carefree. I've used it in grad school, at startups, nonprofits, and it never lets me down. I've been using Doodle forever. It's still the easiest, fastest, and most efficient way to get everyone on the same page. We have an extensive team of contractors from all over the country, so it's been especially critical over the past two years.

We will continue to use Doodle, even if they force us to pay for the software. I can't complain about ads because we don't pay for it -- but if I had to say something, it would be the ads. Reasons for Choosing Doodle. There just isn't any other tool that I feel like searching for that works better. Whit from Kansas City Art Institute. Industry: Higher Education. I use Doodle to schedule meetings with large groups when I do not have access to others' calendars.

It is an incredibly simple tool for both the administrator and the user. It allows you to suggest available times and for others to indicate their availability within those selected times.

It saves so much time and back-and-forth. We have shared calendars within our immediate teams but when we are scheduling across teams or with external vendors, Doodle is the fastest and easiest way to find a consensus time.

I go to Doodle before any other system because of the ease of use and everyone's familiarity with the product. The system is near perfect. It serves its function about as well as it can and I don't think it needs to be overly complicated. If it were possible to add meeting information i. We use Google Calendar for our calendars but it does not have a feature that will help identify shared availability the way that Doodle does.

Doodle also works when you are working across calendar platforms. I've had a wonderful experience with Doodle so far, and hopefully this will continue!

Doodle has made scheduling so much easier for me and my organization, I also use it outside of my work and in my personal life. It has also saved me so much time in having to talk to people and organize stuff which takes forever! I looveee using Doodle when I'm organizing an event be it a meeting, a work event, or even an after work hangout! It is just so convenient to send the link to everybody with some suggested times and they fill it out, then we find the one where all or most people can attend, rather than going around and asking for people's availability which takes so much time and effort and is so inefficient.

It also helps convert the times if the link is sent to someone in a different timezone which is amazing. Doodle is just so simple to use and efficient that gives me an incentive to take the lead in scheduling events!

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As we tested meeting scheduler apps, we narrowed down our recommendations according to some key criteria. Here's a look at what's important:. Ease of use. There are two groups of people that use a meeting scheduler: the event organizer and the people responding to it.

A good meeting scheduler should be easy for both groups to use. Primarily, you'll need to connect a meeting scheduler to your calendar application, so the more calendar services an app supports the better.

We also gave extra weight to apps that integrated well with project management software as well as automation tools like Zapier. Ability to automatically set up video calls. Being able to quickly hop on a video call with people is more important than ever. Many meeting schedulers can not only add events to your calendar, but also generate links for video chats through common services like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.

Appointment reminders and follow-ups. While a meeting scheduler might integrate with your calendar, there's no guarantee that any of your attendees will get a reminder to show up on time. Good meeting schedulers will be able to remind everyone that their meeting is coming up, and some will even allow you to automatically send follow-up emails with summaries of your meeting. Value for money. Usually, the core meeting scheduler features will be free for a certain number of users, but extra features like reminders, video call setup, automation, or even scheduling multiple meetings will be part of a subscription.

We weighed how much value these tools offered versus the cost of their paid plans. Calendly Web. Calendly lets other people schedule meetings with you by showing them your availability and offering them different types of meetings they can book with you. It's an ideal app for anyone who gets a lot of meeting requests and needs a simple but clear reply.

You start by giving Calendly insight into when you're free by connecting it to your calendar Google Calendar, iCal, Microsoft Office , or Outlook. Then you create different meeting options for the types of meetings you offer, such as "minute phone interview" or "initial client intake meeting. Finally, you send a link to people who need to schedule meetings with you so that they can see when you're available and request the meetings they need.

A free plan supports one type of meeting, but starting on the Premium plan, you can make as many types of meetings as you need. Calendly syncs all the confirmed appointments to your calendar and offers to create an event on your invitees' calendars as well.

There are tools for setting up an automatic reminder email to attendees, too. While Calendly works well for scheduling meetings with individuals or team members within an organization, its custom events and outgoing links make it ideal for connecting with external clients, customers, and colleagues.

Calendly has extensive integration options, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Zapier, but you do need to subscribe to a paid plan to get the full benefits here. By connecting Calendly to Zapier , you can do things like create new Zoom meetings whenever a new meeting is scheduled or add new meeting attendees to your email marketing list.

Here are some examples to get started with, but you can customize the workflow to use your favorite apps. To get even more out of Calendly, take a look at these 4 automated workflows to help you be a Calendly pro. Calendar Web, iOS, Android. Calendar is more than a meeting scheduler: it's a full-fledged calendar app. It offers web and mobile versions, and the whole interface feels very reminiscent of Google Calendar. It also offers meeting scheduler features, like creating customizable time slots and shareable booking links.

However, where Google puts some of its best appointment scheduling tools behind a paywall, Calendar gives them away for free. You can create up to two customizable scheduling time slots with the free plan, and connect the app to one of your existing calendar services. Where Calendar stands out from the crowd is its extensive statistics section. It tracks every one of your meetings, spotting where trends develop. Besides obvious stats like how long you've spent in meetings over the past day, week, month, or even year, it also spots attendance records, noting what percentage of people rejected or missed a meeting.

It even highlights who you're most likely to have meetings with. It's the kind of thing that could be immensely useful when trying to work toward better engagement. And it's all bundled up in a neat overview section that's attractive and informative. Using yet another calendar app might feel a little redundant, but if you want to analyze your meetings in depth and get some meeting scheduling without shelling out money, this is the place to go.

When you connect Calendar to Zapier , you can do things like get Slack notifications whenever someone schedules a new meeting with you, or even add every meeting to a new row in Google Sheets. CalendarHero Web. CalendarHero formerly Zoom.

You can integrate it with your calendar so it automatically learns when you're free, or you can manually set availability. The service also comes with a litany of features to customize your event, including adding location details if you're meeting in a physical location or video conferencing details if you're meeting online.

If you use Google or Microsoft single sign-on to log in to your CalendarHero account, then it can automatically create video chat meetings without any extra setup. CalendarHero has a lot of overlap with Calendly, but it comes with more built-in meeting types in the free tier and has a few more tools for customizing your meeting details. If you're looking for a step up to manage all the various kinds of meetings you need to schedule, CalendarHero is a great option.

By connecting CalendarHero to Zapier , you can automatically add people who schedule a meeting with you to your email marketing list, or send yourself a text whenever you get a new meeting request.

Calendly lets you customize your meeting slots by providing details such as a minute meeting or a round-robin, a group, or a one-on-one. It syncs with your calendars such as Google, Outlook, or Yahoo and keeps your timetable up to date.

Your clients can then choose from these options to book a meeting or schedule an appointment. An entirely free web-based scheduling app is an excellent alternative to Doodle. This comprehensive package comes with all features you might want in a scheduling app. It also lets you hold your meetings through any meeting scheduling app you prefer.

Woven offers a basic free plan and a 7 day free trial for their Premium subscription. The best part of this application is that one does not need a separate account for setting a meeting through Meetingbird. All you need is a Google account or an office to schedule appointments here. There is a Meetingbird Chrome extension that is tandem with Gmail if you plan to use mails for scheduling.

The app is also compatible with the video conferencing app Zapier.