4 Reasons Why YouCanBookMe Is Better Than Calendly

Your online booking page is your digital storefront. You care what that looks like, and about the experience your customer has while using it. Find out what makes YouCanBookMe better than Calendly for small businesses around the world.

“No one ever got fired for buying Blue.”

That phrase from the 80’s, when IBM (aka Big Blue) dominated the computer industry, meant choosing IBM was super low-risk. Your boss was never going to question that decision - even if the results were a bit meh. 

In the world of online scheduling, we’ve got our own Big Blue. Calendly’s blue logo is so widely used, it has become a noun: “I’ll send you my calendly”. Lots of people use Calendly. It’s absolutely fine. 

But who’s looking for just fine? 

YouCanBookMe is a brilliant, top Calendly alternative for small businesses

YouCanBookMe is the OG scheduling tool. We invented the booking page with the calendar-like availability grid back in 2012, and the team has been solving all kinds of scheduling problems since 2007. Our users take a million bookings a month. This year, we marked 100 million total bookings (yes, that’s 8 zeros!).

But we’re not resting on our laurels. We know small businesses have a lot of choices when it comes to appointment schedulers. We also know every business is unique. And that is at the heart of why YouCanBookMe is better than Calendly.  

Made for (and by) small businesses

The sole purpose of any appointment scheduling software is to make work easier. It does the heavy lifting of helping your clients make easy online bookings. It sends automated reminders so you don’t have to. And it lets you focus on the parts of your business that no one but you can do. 

To be honest, those are things you can find in most of the meeting schedulers on the market today. So what makes YouCanBookMe different?

1. Focused on small business 🔎

2. Customization and branding 🎨

3. Your client is King (and Queen) 👑

4. Top-rated by business owners just like you 🙌
   

1. Focused on small business 🔎

At YouCanBookMe, we know that bookings are your business. If you don’t meet with clients, you can’t do your work, and you don’t get paid. That’s why we’re hyper-focused on being the best scheduling tool for small business owners.

Let’s face it, Calendly and many others are happy to have smaller customers. But they’re really focused on the big corporations. Calendly has declared its intention to become a “Meeting Engagement Platform” and is developing lots of great enterprise-focused features. 

But, really, you just want an affordable, powerful appointment scheduler that understands your business needs, and works every time. That’s why YouCanBookMe delivers features that small businesses want, like

• 🌟 Promotion codes & support for packages
• 🌟 Google & Apple pay to take payment for bookings
• 🌟 Blocks on spam bookers
• 🌟 Adding notes to bookings that can be exported and synced with 3rd party tools
• 🌟 Request-only bookings that you can accept or reject
• 🌟 Multiple services on the same link for easy access & combining services
• 🌟 No-show tracking and notifications

• 🌟 Availability displays that match the way your clients schedule with you

• 🌟 Seamless integrations with Google, MS & Apple calendar, as well as social media, analytics and customer database tools

Small businesses are an integral part of YouCanBookMe’s DNA. It wasn’t the first appointment scheduling software our team developed, but it was born directly from the needs and suggestions of our earliest adopters - some of whom are still customers today.

Over the last 12 years, YouCanBookMe has been honed by coaches, consultants, financial advisors, therapists, and instructors of all kinds. We are proud of, and committed to, that heritage.

"I've been a customer of YCBM for several years. Fantastic core product that really fits with my needs as an independent coach. It saves lots of time and effort for me and my clients when scheduling coaching and training sessions."

- Gareth Marlow, Trustpilot review

Our integrations are focused on the needs of small businesses as well.  YouCanBookMe has the most comprehensive and customizable Zapier integration available. 

With Zapier, you can send your booking data based on 12 different triggers, including when a new booking happens, if it’s cancelled or rescheduled, if a request is accepted or rejected, and if the booking is marked as a no-show. 

You can also set up your zaps for multiple triggers, and multiple booking links at the same time. 

Our new Hubspot integration is also best-in-class. It gives you huge amounts of flexibility around what is entered into your meeting events, and what details from your booking form can be added as additional contact properties.

Meetings will be updated in Hubspot whenever a booking is updated in YCBM. And we've added handy links so you can easily move between the booking page and the Hubspot contact, and even join your video call directly from the Hubspot Contact page.

2. Customization and branding 🎨

YouCanBookMe is, hands down, the most customizable scheduling tool available—even on the Free plan. Here are a few ways you can customize your booking page.

First, you can add your own logo or photo:

You can also change the text and appearance of your emails to match your natural tone of voice, and add dynamic content to personalize every client interaction.

And you can adjust the text and the language of your booking page in lots of ways:  

You can make the default offline messages more appropriate to your needs: 

And YouCanBookMe supports more than 40 languages, including right-to-left, Cyrillic and Arabic alphabets, so you can completely tailor it your audience.

And create a custom booking link that puts your name first, not theirs!

YouCanBookMe lets you embed your booking page directly into your business website and configure it to align perfectly with your brand. That means clients don’t have to leave your site to schedule time with you. 

Embedding your page, or adding a Book Now button, is a great way to engage with prospects while they are looking at your offering and when their need is top of mind. 

Coach Sheri Gazitt embeds a page for introductory consultations on her website. She also adds other pages, for paid sessions, on her Kartra page. 

The customizable booking form is a powerful way to make sure both sides are prepared for the work ahead. Sheri adds bespoke questions to gather the information she needs to make every meeting the best it can be.

“The booking form is awesome. In many cases, these are people I’ve never had an interaction with before. So I can ask questions at the time of booking that help me understand what they need, but that also get them thinking about the coaching journey and why they want to do it.” 

- Sheri Gazitt, Founder of TeenWise

Learn more about how Sheri uses YouCanBookMe to juggle all of her hats.

On YouCanBookMe’s paid plans, you can go even further, with customized colors for an exact match of your brand and website. You can even add a footer with text or a banner image to give instructions or promote a service.

Your imagination is the limit when it comes to customizing a YouCanBookMe page. Why is that so important? Because you need your business and your service to stand out from the crowd. 

Why spend time and effort building your brand and creating an awesome website, just to send people to a generic booking page that looks and behaves exactly the same as everyone else’s?

3. Your booker is King (and Queen) 👑

Our mantra inside YouCanBookMe is Booker is King:

(with apologies to a well-known fast food restaurant 😉).

Of course, every meeting scheduler says they are focused on their customers. But we believe it’s actually YOUR customers—your bookers—that are most important.

If scheduling a time with you isn’t a great experience—if it’s confusing, or boring, or complicated, or just a hassle—they won’t do it a second time. And if they avoid scheduling with you online, they’ll just call or email instead. Which is exactly the opposite of why you use appointment scheduling software in the first place! 

So we keep your clients in mind with everything we do. We offer easy online bookings with a few “extras” that make YouCanBookMe simply a better booking experience. 

Availability overlay 

Think about the hassle your client faces when they go to a Calendly booking page. Sure, they see all your availability. But what about theirs? How do they know when they are free to meet? 

They’ve got to open a new tab, or go to their phone’s calendar app, and go through the back and forth of comparing dates and times. Or, worse, they just choose a time and only realize later that they’ve double booked. Multiple reschedules and cancellations, anyone?

Want to find out why overlaying availability is the future for online scheduling? Learn more directly from our CEO on the etiquette behind sending calendar links with your bookers' experience in mind.

Availability displays 

Not every meeting works the same way. Why should every booking? 

Maybe you’ve got a fixed length project, or only take certain types of meetings on specific days. Showing your booker a whole months’ worth of availability - when all they need is a day or two - is a bit overkill. And it’s just too many clicks! 

YouCanBookMe offers a choice of views. You can select Day view, which means fewer clicks for clients since they just see available times.

(See the live booking page)

Or you can opt for Agenda view. We heard from A LOT of our customers that being able to see free slots on multiple upcoming days is super important for them, especially when finishing up a session with a client and trying to get the next one booked on the spot.

So we created the agenda view, which shows several days’ worth of available times at a glance.  

(See this page in action)

Both the Day view and the Agenda view jump to the first available time in the month so there’s no guessing or scrolling through loads of unavailable slots.

Findable online and IRL 

Just like not every meeting works the same, not every booker finds you in the same way. You might reach a lot of clients on social media or word of mouth, but what about those who see your poster or meet you at a conference?

YouCanBookMe supports sharing your booking link any way your clients and prospects need. That includes sharing on LinkedIn, Facebook, Linktree and X, as well as in-person.

Each booking link has its own QR code that you can download right from your account, so clients can easily schedule time with you from a promotional flyer, a business card, or even as they pass your front door.

4. Top-rated by business owners just like you 🙌

We’re not the only ones who agree YouCanBookMe is better than Calendly. Honest reviews from actual customers are the best way to find out how they compare.

Check out Trustpilot, where YouCanBookMe has a 4.2 star “Great” review from all kinds of small business owners.

Calendly... not so much.

YouCanBookMe is THE Calendly alternative

There are a lot of scheduling tools out there, and most of them are pretty good. But if you’re looking for a meeting scheduler that has a proven track record of performance, delivery, and for caring about your clients as much as you do, then YouCanBookMe is the only one to consider when you go to set up online scheduling. See for yourself: