Calendly vs. Google Calendar vs. YouCanBookMe

On the surface, Google Calendar and Calendly might look like similar booking tools, but under the hood, they're appointment scheduling functionality is designed for vastly different audiences: Calendly serves enterprises while Google Calendar offers simple scheduling features handy for individuals.

But, as you’ll see, neither of them are ideal for small- to medium-sized businesses, which is why I included YouCanBookMe in the mix.

I'll be comparing the tools in five dimensions, crucial for software used to schedule meetings:

1. Ease of use
2. Scheduling features
3. Customization options
4. Integrations
5. Pricing

Here's how they stack up: Calendly vs. Google Calendar vs. YouCanBookMe (YCBM).

Comparison Summary: Calendly vs. Google Calendar vs. YouCanBookMe

Calendly is perfect for enterprises that need to coordinate between multiple teams and manage complex meeting schedules.

Google Calendar is aimed at individuals who need a simple scheduling solution that natively plugs into their Google Workspace ecosystem. Google Calendar works effectively for internal teams, facilitating shared visibility and simplifying scheduling. Some more advanced features are available through a paid Google Workspace plan.

And YouCanBookMe is ideal for professional service businesses and small international teams that need highly customizable booking software with extensive language support and personalized customer journey options.

What is Calendly?

"Easy scheduling ahead” 

Starting as a simple meeting link in 2013, Calendly has since grown into a comprehensive platform used to manage and schedule events for over 20 million businesses.

Calendly achieved this by focusing on teamwork, with features like pooled availability and event types. It’s perfect for enterprises as it offers an array of powerful features and 100+ native integrations to fit in any tech stack. Calendly integrates with various applications to streamline and automate tasks, enhancing productivity through workflow automation.

It uses a decentralized, “modular” approach for creating scheduling pages, so any changes immediately reflect on all pages, making scheduling in large teams and complex workflows a breeze. But with great power comes great cost: Calendly is a relatively expensive scheduling tool.

Calendly is designed for enterprises looking for a completely automated scheduling platform to improve team performance and create a consistent customer experience throughout the organization.

What is YouCanBookMe?

"It Starts With You."

YouCanBookMe was born in 2010 with the goal of creating a user-friendly and customer-focused booking platform.

It shines as a dedicated scheduling tool that offers the best personalized experience possible for your customer while balancing ease of use, features, and affordability. YouCanBookMe's scheduling pages are fully customizable: from the color, and layout, to the footer and logo. It lets you preview the changes with its live page preview feature, supports 44 languages (including Arabic and symbol-based languages like Chinese or Japanese), and offers the most options for ensuring your client booking experience is unique to your business.

YouCanBookMe lets you create personalized email and SMS notifications based on each customer’s booking journey, and to top it all off, it offers customer support to all clients on paid plans or free trials.

Considering those points, YouCanBookMe is ideal for individuals and small-to-medium sized businesses that need to set up and use custom booking pages quickly—especially if they’re working on the global market and want to increase conversions with personalized experiences. YouCanBookMe is also ideal for managing both professional and personal life events, making it a versatile tool for users.

What is Google Calendar?

"Shareable Online Calendar" 

First released in 2009, Google Calendar is the most recognized time-management and calendar app in the world.

As the name suggests, Google Calendar started as a calendar for managing personal and professional appointments, events, and tasks in one place. With the Appointment Scheduling feature, Google Calendar is transitioning from being just a calendar app to a scheduling app where users can schedule meetings and add them to their calendars based on their availability (meeting length, time slots, and descriptions). 

Google Calendar automatically adjusts for time zones, ensuring clarity and preventing confusion in scheduling. As expected, Google Calendar's integrations include other Google apps, such as Gmail and Google Meet, making it a go-to for avid Google users.

Interestingly, Google’s Appointment Scheduling feature provides only the basic tools necessary for scheduling, like appointment slots, email notifications, calendar invites, and booking forms. This shows they are nowhere near competing with industry leaders Calendly and YCBM who offer much more: booking analytics, SMS notifications, branding, team collaboration, and so on. 

In the Calendly vs. Google Calendar comparison, Google Calendar offers a straightforward scheduling app best suited for individual Google Workspace users who don't require advanced features for managing a large or diverse client base.

Google Calendar now offers tiered pricing, alongside YouCanBookMe and Calendly

All three scheduling apps offer free plans.

Calendly, Google Calendar, and YouCanBookMe each offer free plans that include one calendar integration, a single booking page, and basic scheduling features. Even on the free plans, using these tools can save time by automating the scheduling process and reducing the need for manual updates.

Among them, Google Calendar’s free appointment scheduling is the most limited, providing only email reminders as its core feature.

YouCanBookMe’s free plan stands out as the most feature-rich—it offers capabilities not found in either Calendly or Google Calendar, such as such as taking payments for bookings and sending SMS reminders.

Calendly and Google Calendar charge per team member, while YouCanBookMe by linked calendars.

Calendly’s pricing starts at $10 per user/month, YouCanBookMe begins at $8.10/month for two calendar connections, and Google Calendar Appointment Scheduling is included in Google Workspace plans, which start at $6 per user/month.

Calendly uses a straightforward per-user pricing model for all of its paid plans. Starting at $10 per user/month (Standard Plan), each user gets access to unlimited event types, calendar integrations, and automation features. As your team grows, so does the cost, since each team member requires a separate subscription. For more advanced features, you can choose the Teams plan at $16 per month, or contact sales for the Enterprise plan which starts at $15K per year and includes custom pricing.

Google’s appointment scheduling feature is part of Google Workspace, which also charges per user. Pricing starts at $6 per user/month (Business Starter), with advanced scheduling features—like multiple booking pages, email reminders, and payment options—available only in through a paid Google Workspace plan: Business Standard ($12/month) or Business Plus ($18/month). 

YouCanBookMe stands out for its flexible pricing model. Its Individual ($8.10/month) and Professional ($11.70/month) plans are priced per account, not per user—making them more cost-effective for solo professionals or small teams that don’t need individual logins. These plans allow multiple calendar connections and booking pages without increasing cost per user.

YouCanBookMe's Teams Plan shifts to a more standard per-user pricing model at $16.20 per user/month. This is suited for larger organizations that need individual user access and more robust team features. If you have a team of 50+, you can also contact a sales rep for custom pricing.

If you're a solopreneur or small business owner seeking the best balance of affordability and advanced features, YouCanBookMe's Professional plan is worth looking into. 

YouCanBookMe and Google Calendar are easier to use, while Calendly offers more enterprise value.

YCBM and Google Calendar provide a streamlined setup experience, while Calendly uses different tools for managing events, workflows, and routing.

All the tools to create booking pages can be found in the left menu in YouCanBookMe (1). It also shows a live preview (3) of what the booking page would look like once published, something neither Calendly nor Google Calendar offers.

You can assign team members to a specific booking page (2) on YCBM—once you've upgraded—and link their calendars. Modules to create and automatically send notifications, custom booking forms, availability, and appearance can also be found in individual booking page editors. Both Calendly and YouCanBookMe offer seamless integration with various applications, enhancing the setup experience.

Meanwhile, Calendly takes a slightly different approach.

You find the tools to set up a booking page via the ‘Create’ button in the top left corner. To add a ‘New Event Type’, you need to select the button in the top right corner of the dashboard.

On the other hand, Google Calendar doesn’t have any special tools or tabs to create booking pages, it offers a simple user experience by giving you only the basic tools to create a booking page. 

You can find everything for creating a booking page under “Create > Appointment Scheduling”. Google Calendar leads you through a step-by-step process, from setting your availability and buffer times to creating booking forms and setting notification timings. It also shows you your calendar so you can check your availability while setting up your booking page.

Calendly and YouCanBookMe both offer integrations for analytics with Google Analytics and Meta Pixel. Google Calendar doesn’t offer analytics.

Calendly offers insights into the most popular meeting days, top-performing meeting types, and most booked team members. YouCanBookMe presents data on your most popular booking pages, how many meetings were cancelled, rescheduled, or marked as no-show, and how much money was made via your booking page. 

YouCanBookMe also lets you download all the meeting data in a CSV format which you can use to derive relevant insights into a data processing software of your choice.

Google Calendar offers the bare minimum while Calendly and YouCanBookMe offer a rich feature set for scheduling workflows.

YouCanBookMe is the most customizable, followed by Calendly and then Google Calendar

YCBM lets you create booking pages in 44 languages and dialects from 100 countries, while Calendly offers 8 options for invitee languages.

You can create booking pages in different languages in both Calendly and YCBM. But, YCBM offers 6 times more language options, including Arabic and Hebrew. 

And, because you can customize the text in many sections of YCBM’s booking pages, you can create completely unique booking experiences for different languages and regions. You can also choose to auto-detect the user’s language as set on their desktop or mobile device.

YCBM and Calendly offer extensive customization options while Google Calendar doesn't.

Calendly lets you pick booking page colors from a limited set of colors, while YCBM takes that a step further with custom booking page colors and backgrounds. Both apps also let you include custom company logos and YouCanBookMe lets you customize footers. 

Meanwhile, Google Calendar only offers very basic customization options like adding a custom logo. You get very little control over how the page looks and feels, and have to rely on Google’s minimal look and unengaging booking experience.

Calendly, Google Calendar, and YCBM have booking forms, but YCBM’s integrated workflow makes it easier to set up and use. 

All three automated scheduling all offer booking forms, but they vary significantly in flexibility and ease of use.

Google Calendar provides a simple, easy-to-use booking form that's great for basic scheduling needs. However, it lacks the advanced customization options available in Calendly and YouCanBookMe.

YouCanBookMe stands out for its integrated workflow, which makes setup intuitive and user-friendly. It supports a wider variety of question types—including conditional logic, blocking questions, hidden fields, and passthrough variables—giving businesses more control over how appointments are booked.

Calendly offers similar capabilities, but its modular approach to booking flows can make customization more cumbersome, especially when trying to tailor the experience to different customer types or scenarios.

As a result, YouCanBookMe’s all-in-one booking pages offer a smoother, more personalized experience, helping customers navigate their scheduling journey more efficiently than either Calendly or Google Calendar.

After the booking, YCBM and Calendly let you set up custom SMS or email confirmations and alerts, and can automatically redirect clients to web pages for seamless booking experiences. Google Calendar doesn’t offer any such functionality.

Calendly and YCBM offer more embedding options than Google Calendar.

Calendly and YCBM offer similar embed options (1): inline embeds, popup widgets, and popup hyperlink texts. It's easier to embed widgets on your site using Calendly than YCBM but the end result is the same with both tools. Meanwhile, Google Calendar only offers inline and button embeds.

Calendly has 100+ native integrations, YCBM has 40+ native and 6,000+ Zapier integrations, while Google Calendar Appointment Scheduling has one

Calendly has 100+ native integrations, YCBM has 40+, while Google Calendar only connects to other tools in the Google Suite.

Google Calendar events only sync with other Google apps. Essentially, it solely integrates with the apps expected in a tool part of the Google Workspace: Google Sheets, Google Meet, Gmail, etc.

Compared to Calendly’s larger pool, even the native integrations that YCBM offers may seem restrictive. 

Calendly, Google Calendar, and YouCanBookMe all offer native Salesforce integrations.

Thanks to the native Salesforce integration with Calendly, you can directly update client information and appointments in real-time on the Salesforce platform.

The Google Calendar integration works a little differently, by only tracking your events and meetings on Salesforce, offering unique insights with activity metrics.  

YouCanBookMe will automatically create a new contact in Salesforce and create a new meeting activity for them, including all the booker and event details from your booking form responses.

Calendly, Google Calendar, and YouCanBookMe all allow you to accept payments through booking pages.

You can include payment options on your booking pages for both Calendly, Google Calendar, and YCBM.

Calendly supports both Stripe and PayPal, offering flexibility for businesses and clients.

YouCanBookMe and Google Calendar events integrate with Stripe, but YouCanBookMe’s integration is more advanced. It includes features like promo codes and vouchers, which Google Calendar currently lacks.

Calendly vs Google Calendar vs YouCanBookMe: Pros & Cons

Final Verdict: Calendly vs Google Calendar vs YouCanBookMe

Teams of less than 50 will love YCBM. Enterprises will love Calendly. Freelancers who already rely on Google Workspace will prefer Google Calendar.

Use Calendly if:

• You are an enterprise with a complex structure where each team needs its own booking page.
• You use a wide range of tools to run your business and want to natively connect your appointment scheduling software with them.

Use Google Calendar if:

• You are looking for a basic scheduling tool to manage your time.
• You have basic scheduling needs.
• You are already paying for Google Workspace products and heavily rely on Google apps for everyday work.

Use YouCanBookMe if:

• You are a small- to medium-sized team or an individual, looking for a booking app that lets you customize your client’s booking journey and present your brand.
• You want a hassle-free tool that lets you create new booking pages fast, with complete control over your branding and style.
• You work with international clients and need powerful language support and auto-translate features.