Best of Both Worlds: YouCanBookMe Scheduling Makes HubSpot Even Better

Be honest. How does it make you feel when you are faced with a HubSpot scheduling page? Like a lead that’s just been captured? We hear you. If you want your leads to feel differently, there's an alternative.

Full disclosure: YouCanBookMe is a happy HubSpot customer! 

We've been using it for years and it's an amazing product. But we don’t use the HubSpot free meeting scheduler, and here’s why: YouCanBookMe takes our scheduling to the next level. 

HubSpot is very clear that some of their ‘product suite’ is deliberately designed to be part of a bigger package.

This is what their CTO and co-founder Dharmesh Shah said recently about the history of HubSpot’s Product Development mindset:

Put another way, they're not aiming to be best in class. Not even in the top three. 

But your business - your offer to clients - should be best in class, to make sure you are getting everything you can out of the opportunities and relationships.

So the obvious priority for us for our new HubSpot integration was to have the best of both worlds: HubSpot + YouCanBookMe = match made in heaven 💞

And because we love and care about HubSpot, we went above and beyond the usual HubSpot integrations that other scheduling apps offer. 

Want to know more? Of course you do! Join the HubSpot love and let’s dive into what you can do using both tools.

1. Why should you be using an online scheduler in the first place?

Online scheduling is the most efficient way for prospects and customers to schedule meetings with you. It’s 24/7 scheduling that delivers new meetings while you're doing the work you love, automatically sends reminders, instantly updates your CRM, and follows up with leads afterwards.

If you’re not already using online scheduling, we’ve covered this topic extensively across our deep dives into:

• The best booking software tools on the market
• How to deliver a 5-star scheduling experience
• How scheduling software helps you convert leads

If you're still not sure, check those out. We'll wait for you! 

When you’re ready, we'll see you at point 2.

2. What are the key differences between HubSpot and YouCanBookMe?

HubSpot scheduling and YouCanBookMe are, at core, quite similar. But there are some pretty specific differences that can make or break the customer experience you deliver.

A. Styles and Appearance

The HubSpot scheduling page is pretty standard stuff. And that's ok. It’s not designed to be pretty; it’s basically a lead-capture form with a calendar attached.

YouCanBookMe, on the other hand, is designed to be beautiful. It's your business in a booking page.

Choose your own colors and styles

YouCanBookMe lets you choose your own colors and display styles. You can customize all the text, and you can add extra booking form questions with advanced functionality - like multiple choice drop-downs and text boxes - so you’re guaranteed to have the information you need to be prepared for every meeting.

Don’t just take it from us. Hear it from the customers we built it for:

Here’s what Emily, a copywriter and marketer, told us when she was first introduced to YouCanBookMe: 

And here’s what Romana, a marketing coach told us: 

Choose your calendar displays

But there’s more. You also get to choose how you display your times. You can select from calendar view, the week view, or a day view.

We know from speaking to our customers that this isn't just ’nice to have’ stuff. These options really matter, particularly when trying to close a sale. Our customers know what they are doing, and we don’t argue with them! 😉

Customize your calendar events

Another comparison is the calendar event that the systems create when you get a new booking.

Here is the event YouCanBookMe creates in a booker’s calendar (on the left), compared to the Hubspot calendar event:

At YouCanBookMe, our focus is on creating the best booking experience possible. So we work hard to make everything better for your customers. That means:

• Easily finding the meeting location link 
• Prominent cancel and reschedule links
• Beautiful formatting throughout

You can see what a huge difference it makes for your leads to easily manage their booking.

Why do we know it’s important? Geraint, a property auctioneer, tells his clients: 

And we’ve made those links as beautiful and easy to spot as possible.

If you're keen to get creative, check out this full rundown of everything you can do to customize your booking page.

Customize your HubSpot Activity events

And when it comes to the information in HubSpot, it gets even better. This is what the meeting looks like when the HubSpot scheduler adds it to the activity stream:

And this is what YouCanBookMe’s looks like.

Several big differences stand out. YouCanBookMe’s activity event lets you:

1. hop quickly between the activity in HubSpot and the booking in YouCanBookMe - to add a note or make a change - using the Manage Booking in YCBM link
2. join the video call directly from inside HubSpot with the Join the Meeting link
3. get all the information you need ahead of the meeting with booking form answers embedded directly in the activity
4. see at a glance whether the booking has been canceled, rescheduled, or marked as a no-show
5. Easily see any updates, including notes added to the booking

B. Match correct times and availability

In a lovely article on HubSpot’s page, it says, “if your meeting is a story, your customer is the hero.” We couldn’t agree more. So why then, when you desperately want to meet your customers, only offer them your time slots?

It's easy for you, sure. But they still have to scramble between tabs, cross-checking when they’re free.

With YouCanBookMe, the customer IS the hero because they can overlay their availability directly onto your booking page (and before you ask, we are the category leader for that as well).

This is a game changer because it makes it so much easier for people to schedule time with you. No more double bookings and no-shows. They know immediately the time they book is the time they can make.

We know from our friends at Procurement Express (also HubSpot customers) that this is just one reason why they prefer to use YouCanBookMe:

If you are using YouCanBookMe for customer calls, it’s so important to ensure you are making it as easy as possible for people to schedule with you.

There are so many options to target your availability and times to your prospects and clients in exactly the right channels, like pasting times directly into emails, single-use booking links, QR codes, embedding your page in a website, or added as a link in your email signature.

C. Syncing your data with multiple calendars

You can only share one calendar with your HubSpot schedule. Even if you’re not running a byzantine system with 15 calendars all color-coded (Moi? Surely not!), it’s still tight to check availability on just one calendar when you’re juggling home, family, work, and meeting availability.

The only option for managing your time is constantly creating blocking events to keep up with events in your other calendars. 

Here's Emily about why that is a non-starter: 

YouCanBookMe allows you to check several calendars for availability, including Google, Microsoft, Apple and more!

Scheduling more than one team member is another area where HubSpot appointment scheduling doesn’t quite meet the needs.

A shared HubSpot and YouCanBookMe customer, Passion.io, switched from Calendly a few years ago because of our advanced team management features for group and round robin bookings. 

As a power HubSpot user themselves, they can now keep all this logic straight in the HubSpot CRM too.  

Here’s what Georgie, Onboarding lead at Passion.io had to say:

On HubSpot’s more expensive plans, you get to play with their ‘Group’ and ‘Round Robin’ functionality.  YouCanBookMe has all that, and still takes scheduling app features to the next level:

• Weighted rules for who gets booked
• Multiple bookings in one time slot
• Limit bookings per day

You can see why YouCanBookMe is a more specialized tool than HubSpot scheduler. We honestly don’t think the folks at HubSpot would disagree, it’s not their bag.

Check out our side-by-side comparison below with the features that both tools offer, and the extra things you get with integrating YouCanBookMe into your HubSpot account. 

You can find out how our integration works in the step by step guide below. Or, if you're ready to jump in, you can find it on the HubSpot Marketplace.

3. How does YouCanBookMe’s integration work with HubSpot?

Let’s get into the good stuff. 

The first principle of working with a CRM is it has to be the source of truth so you can make better decisions, keep track of your contacts, and keep on top of your business. YouCanBookMe’s integration is built around working with THE data boss: HubSpot.  

Here are all the things you can track inside HubSpot:

• Customers
• Contacts
• Customer touch points
• Customer activation
• Leads to demo
• Demo to follow-ups
• Follow-ups to conversions
• Meetings booked
• Rate of no-shows

This is how you turn leads into customers, nurturing them with emails, and following up with calls.

Nailing the meetings is super important so there is no acceptable margin of error. This is how we’ve approached our integration with YouCanBookMe to be your new HubSpot scheduler!

It takes literally 2 minutes to connect your YouCanBookMe account to HubSpot:

First, head to your account settings, click on ‘Integrations’ and connect using your credentials.

The ‘TL;DR’ version? When someone books a meeting on your YouCanBookMe page, you’ll immediately see that YCBM will:

• Check HubSpot to find the contact (or create a new one if it doesn't already exist)
• Add the booking to the activity stream
• Continue to track the booking for any updates: if it's rescheduled, canceled, marked as a no-show, etc.

Want to know more? Here's the ‘Lots of Time;Want to Read’ version: Integrating YouCanBookMe and HubSpot.

Once you’ve got everything set up, you can take advantage of all the extra features inside YouCanBookMe that can optimize your booking flows, safe in the knowledge that all that data is being carefully packed up and sent back to HubSpot to keep track.

We know YouCanBookMe is not the only HubSpot alternative for scheduling. But we think it's the only one that gives you the best of both worlds: a booking tool that is beautiful, powerful and easy to use, while also enhancing the CRM experience.

YouCanBookMe vs. HubSpot Comparison