Calendly vs Doodle – which one should you go for?
Calendly and Doodle have only very things in common: they both allow your customers or students to book time with you. However, the similarity ends there. Calendly is built to be used in business environment whereas Doodle is built with education in mind. It can also be used for friendly meet ups. If you want to do a poll among a group about the best time to meet, Doodle is the app fo you. For anything else, Calendly is a better choice.
If you want a Doodle alternative that offers Meeting Polls, check out Vyte.
A brief about Doodle
Doodle is one of the earliest, most popular online meeting schedulers in the market. Being the earliest in the market, they had a monopoly. However, there are more than 80 players in the market now. When comparing Doodle with some of the newer products, I felt that they are falling short.
Doodle has polls, surveys and bookable calendars. Polls are good when you have to find the best time to meet with a group.
Surveys are good when you want to discover the option that is best wanted by a group of people.
Bookable calendar is useful for you to share your availability with anyone and let them book a time with you.
Doodle also syncs with your Google and Microsoft contacts
Doodle offers SSO, mobile apps, dedicated success manager, 99.9% uptime SLA, training and priority support if you need that. These features have helped them penetrate larger organizations like universities.
Who will find Doodle limiting?
Doodle has many limitations compared to the competition.
- There is no option to embed your availability on a web page
- The UI is aged. I found some pop-up screens to be very clunky.
- Design is subjective but they could do better on that front.
- Custom questions on booking form have only single line fields. You cannot use the form for any sort of qualification about the booker.
- No easy access links to share meetings – It was difficult to locate
- Email notifications are not customizable
- No SMS reminders
- There is no reference to Zapier or Outlook add-in on the UI even though the website mentions them.
- Doodle takes separate permissions for connecting to Google calendar and Google contacts even though we sign up with a Google account.
- The survey and the poll page are visible to all participants. One can vote with their name alone. Others can see it – not an ideal way if the participants do not want to know each other.
- The booking confirmation page is not customizable. You cannot redirect people to your website.
- Cancelling an event was a struggle as it is not easy to locate the cancel button
Who will find Doodle useful?
Doodle is good if your meetings are predominantly collaborative in nature and with people you already know. It is understandable that the largest audience set of Doodle is from the education industry.
The free plan is extremely popular among freelancers and for non-business get togethers and meetings. People use to organize bachelor parties, barbeques and so on.
A brief about Calendly
Calendly is the most popular and widely used meeting scheduler. What sets them apart is the depth into which they have gone in the essentials of a meeting scheduler. They have done it keeping the user interface simple and minimalistic.
Calendly has one of the highest number of integrations, meeting types among meeting schedulers, and they offer the maximum flexibility in setting up availability. Their pricing is reasonable as well.
I am not saying that Calendly is the best for all use cases. If you do not have time to research for an online meeting scheduler that is the ideal fit your, Calendly is the safest bet.
Calendly has not gone deeper into customization of emails and booking pages, collaborative meeting scheduling features, recurring group appointments etc. You can check out Calendly alternatives who cover such things.
Calendly vs Doodle: Who will find Calendly limiting?
In service industries like salons, people visit salons for multiple treatments. You cannot book multiple services in one go with Calendly. Also, they do not have the classes feature. Calendly has not given much attention to the service industry. They focus on a different target audience.
They do not have meeting polls typical to meeting schedulers.
Calendly does not have customizations enough to brand the customer-facing aspect of scheduling: the booking page, the notification emails, domain mapping. If you are a company on the creative side, you will find Calendly limiting. Calendly appears to become expensive for teams larger than 5 members if you are on a tight budget for a scheduling tool.
Calendly vs Doodle : Who will find Calendly useful?
Almost everyone who wants to automate their scheduling! However, Calendly has a target audience – sales teams, recruiters, consultants and interviewers. Their priority for new features will be based on the requirements of this audience. So, if you are part of this group, you will greatly benefit.
Compare Calendly and Doodle
| Feature | Details | Doodle: Team plan | Calendly:Pro plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| $44.75 per calendar | $12/per user | ||
| Number of users | 5 | 1 | |
| Calendars | Calendar connections per user | 1 | 6 |
| Calendar integrations | Google, Outlook | Google Calendar, Office 365, Outlook and iCloud | |
| Services | One-on-one meetings | Yes | Yes |
| Meeting poll | Yes | No | |
| Group events (for tours, webinars, classes, etc.) | No | Yes | |
| Availability | Round-robin | No | Yes |
| Collective | No | Yes | |
| Set max number of meetings | No | Yes | |
| Offer unlimited services and appointments | Yes | Yes | |
| Sharing | Personalized booking page link | Yes | Yes |
| Embed scheduler into your website | No | Yes | |
| Brand your scheduler’s colors and copy | No | Yes | |
| Removable vendor branding | No | Yes | |
| Add links to event confirmation pages | No | Yes | |
| Invitee redirect | No | Yes | |
| Automatic time zone conversion for clients | Yes | Yes | |
| Display your logo | Yes | Yes | |
| Custom API & CSS for Developers | No | Yes | |
| Accept payments and deposits through Stripe, Square, or PayPal | No | Yes | |
| Color customization for booking page | No | Yes | |
| Copy and Paste Times | No | Yes | |
| Mobile apps | No | Yes | |
| Ask for email, phone, address | Yes | Yes | |
| Additional fields for Intake form | No | Yes | |
| Notifications and reminders | Automated event notifications | Yes | Yes |
| Customizable email notifications and reminders | Yes | Yes | |
| SMS notifications | No | Yes | |
| Workflows | No | Yes | |
| Integrations | Intercom integration | No | Yes |
| Over 700 app integrations with Zapier | Yes | Yes | |
| Microsoft Teams conferencing integration | Yes | Yes | |
| Salesforce integration and support | No | Yes | |
| HubSpot integration | No | Yes | |
| Google Analytics integration | No | Yes | |
| Zoom integration | Yes | Yes | |
| Google Meet, GoToMeeting integrations for online meetings | No | Yes | |
| MailChimp | No | Yes | |
| Facebook Pixel integration | No | Yes | |
| Support | Live Chat | No | Yes |
Calendly vs Doodle: The verdict
Apart from the Meeting Poll feature, Doodle does not have an advantage over Calendly. Even though the free plan of Doodle can offer some competition to Calendly, users will be tempted to go with Calendly for the appealing user interface, integrations, frequent updates, and better support.
Doodle is also inflexible in terms of their payment plans. The follow a slab-wise pricing and there is no monthly billing which can be hard for small businesses. However, Doodle might find interest in larger institutes who want to deploy the scheduling app across the campus and the departments.