It takes an average of eight emails to set up a meeting. For salespeople, that's a lot of time you could've spent giving demos, nurturing leads, or grabbing an extra afternoon coffee.
Want to avoid back-and-forth scheduling emails and reduce the number of missed meetings?
That's where an automated scheduling tool comes in handy. A good one automates the complicated logistics of scheduling and hosting sales meetings, sends follow-ups, and even makes finding the right time a breeze.
This frees up your sales team to focus on what really matters: closing deals.
From response rate to final conversion, automated scheduling tools provide a substantial advantage over self-scheduling and manual meeting management.
Basic appointment scheduling software tools offer features like automatic booking using simple booking systems, automated reminders, and automatic confirmations and follow-ups.
However, many of these tools are packed with advanced functionality. Think AI-powered meeting assistants, integrations with all your favorite tools, and much more.
1. Calendly
Calendly is one of my favorite scheduling apps because it's user-friendly and allows you to create customizable rules. For example, if you can prevent people from booking an appointment in the next 24 hours or ask them to answer questions before booking.
With Calendly, you can easily set your availability, share the link, or embed it on your website and prospects can choose an open slot that fits their schedule. Calendly syncs to your calendar of choice, and you can set different time durations (e.g., 15 mins, 30mins, 1hr) so clients have options. You can even create different types of meetings, such as a demo call or introduction meeting.
Calendly also automates notifications and creates calendar invites when a new meeting is booked.
This keeps you organized, reduces phone tag, and customers will be impressed by the smooth design and ease of use.
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Calendly also offers sales-specific features like analytics to provide insight into the best days and times to schedule meetings with your team, lead routing, and the ability to send pre-discovery call questions to prospects before they book.
Calendly and Close have a native integration, giving you access to more data in one place. You can also use Close's scheduling links, which dynamically insert each user’s link when using email templates.
Free basic version available? Yes
Free trial available? Yes (14 days)
Pricing: Paid plans start at $10/month per person
2. SavvyCal
That awkward dance of finding a time to meet can be a pain. And most scheduling tools put the burden on the recipient. SavvyCal believes using a scheduling tool should be as easy for the recipient as it is for the sender.
One of SavvyCal’s coolest features is the ability to overlay both parties’ calendars into one view, making it SUPER simple to pinpoint a date and time that works for everyone.
You can even create a shared calendar view for multiple people and share that link. (For example, you could share times you and another sales rep are both available to meet with a client.)
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Another key feature is its focus on personalization. You rank your availability by preference instead of showcasing all availability equally. You can limit and fine-tune schedule frequency, making meeting overload a thing of the past.
You can also send personalized links on the fly when making a great first impression, which is everything.
They also have a free Meeting Polls tool that makes scheduling group meetings a breeze.
That’s not all: you can even receive payments (and collect sales tax) with SavvyCal.
A few bonuses:
With the native Close CRM + SavvyCal integration, you can automatically create and update your Close Contacts when a prospect books a meeting with your team.
And there’s a SavvyCal Chrome extension!
Free basic version available? Yes
Free trial available? Free version that can be upgraded later
Pricing: Plans start at $12/month
3. Clara Labs
Taking automation to the next level, Clara Labs is a virtual employee trained by real-life EAs and generated by machine intelligence.
To make an appointment, cc clara@yourdomain.com, just as you would with a flesh-and-blood assistant. The natural language interface makes it virtually (ha) impossible to tell that the sender is computer-generated, and with human supervision from sales reps, mistakes are minimal.
With Clara, humans and machines come together to make a seamless scheduling platform. Its ideal for small businesses who don't have the resources to hire a full time assistant!
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Free basic version available? Not clear, as they are working on a new version
Free trial available? Used to be two weeks, but let's see what will change with the new version.
Pricing: Used to be $99, but it might change with the new version.
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4. Dialpad
Get the most out of scheduling AI with Dialpad (formerly UberConference).
With no PINs or downloads, Dialpad gives you dedicated individual numbers and URLs whenever you book a meeting. Meetings are always accessible via your browser or the app.
At a specified date and time, all parties dial into the Dialpad number provided in a calendar invitation, and voila: screen sharing, document sharing, presentations…, and even the ability to see who’s talking and quickly view their social media profiles.
With advanced AI features like creating meeting agendas, transcribing meetings, and writing call summary notes, Dialpad frees you up to focus on what matters in meetings: content and discussion.
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Invites work with any calendar system, on any device.
Dialpad also offers AI-powered sales features, including sentiment analysis and AI-assisted coaching, so it's more than just another appointment-scheduling app.
Free basic version available? No
Free trial available? Yes, 14 days
Pricing: Premium plans start at $15/month (if paid annually)
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5. Need To Meet
If you feel the pain of scheduling for groups of people, then NeedToMeet is where it’s at.
With a custom scheduling link or NeedToMeet invite, poll your group to help find mutually convenient meeting times by creating event pages with multiple dates and discussing details for whatever you’re scheduling. When people respond, you'll get an email notification.
No more incessant emailing with several people and juggling multiple email threads. No more rechecking your agenda. Just a plain calendar with easy selections. Participants can even see which people chose which opening, so those with more availability can adapt to those with less.
It’s team collaboration made easy.
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Free basic version available? Yes
Free trial available? Yes
Pricing: Starts at free account; up to $19/year for the advanced version
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6. OnceHub
OnceHub is a comprehensive solution for the entire customer lifecycle. Its two-way system eliminates the back-and-forth of confirming a time to meet.
To use it, you’ll create an online booking page with availability preferences to schedule demos, consultations, or follow-ups and link it to your prospect. They can then book on your page—from any device—and the meeting is swiftly added to everyone’s calendar.
They have a laundry list of cool additional features (time-zone conversion, group sessions, reports, and many more) that make this tool attractive. You can even personalize logos, images, colors, and the welcome messages you use.
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In addition to scheduling features, the feature-rich OnceHub platform lets you design incredibly complex meeting journey workflows based on user responses and even allows them to interact with chatbots or call now. This is ideal for larger businesses or startups looking to better serve customers before and after the sale.
Free basic version available? Yes
Free trial available? Yes (free version that you can upgrade)
Pricing: Plans start at $10/user/month
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7. Acuity
Automate prospect meetings, cancellations, reminders, and even payments with Acuity.
Clients can see your real-time calendar availability and self-select a time that works best for you both. On your end, set multiple calendars and time blocks for different appointments or blackout certain dates altogether.
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It integrates well with Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal, and Office365 and has an embed option for those of you with your own website. Get notified when a new appointment is booked. Then, from your phone, tell Acuity to update your calendars.
It’s as simple as that.
Free basic version available? No
Free trial available? Yes (7 days)
Pricing: Plans start at $16/month
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8. Pick
This app is rightly titled, as it helps you select meeting times and dates that work best for all attendees by comparing availabilities, regardless of email domain.
Pick identifies the best mutual time, then schedules a meeting via email. It also provides a special URL to share it with last-minute participants (a prospect’s assistant, business partner, whatever).
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The best part is the mobile scheduling aspect, which makes setting meetings on the go easy. You can even create opportunity from the treadmill, mid-stride, no sweat.
Free basic version available? No
Free trial available? No
Pricing: $9/month
9. World Clock
Dealing with clients and team members across different countries and time zones can make scheduling difficult. Even simply converting times online can be cumbersome.
That’s where World Clock Meeting Planner comes in.
It makes it easy to compare times across multiple cities to find a meeting time that fits everyone’s schedule without having to Google each city to determine the time zone. It does have pretty basic features, but you’ll spend less time scheduling meetings and more time having them. Which is a win.
Pricing: Free for all
10. Doodle
This app incorporates several calendars, eliminating the need to switch between them to check availability.
You can propose dates directly from the Doodle calendar and poll participants for the best mutual time to connect. It also automatically syncs appointments to your preferred calendar to reduce conflicting appointment bookings.
Super convenient when you’re scheduling calls with multiple parties.
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Free basic version available? Yes
Free trial available? No (you can upgrade from the free version)
Pricing: Individual plans start at $6.95/month
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11. 10to8
10to8’s booking software can speed up the sales process by ensuring prospects show up to your meeting.
After setting up your availability, you can choose to display it on a public booking page or direct prospects to specific types of calls via private links.
Your clients will receive reminders about their appointments, which you can track to see if they were opened. This will make the booking process seamless for your leads and reduce no-shows. In fact, 10to8 can reduce no-shows by up to 90 percent.
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10to8 syncs with your external calendars, but it also integrates with thousands of apps you use every day, like Zoom, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, and Slack.
Free basic version available? Yes
Free trial available? Yes, 14 days
Pricing: Starts at $460 per year (includes 200 appointments per month); there are also bespoke packages for teams with unique needs
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12. Ourly
Ourly helps you automate your scheduling scheduling. All you have to do is share your link and prospects can book a meeting without having to go back and forth searching for availability.
You can also embed Ourly on your website so visitors can book a meeting with you directly from the website itself.
Serviceform specializes in servicing the real estate and automotive industries, therefore all of their conversion tools, including Ourly are built to optimize your sales process.
You can also create calendars for various teams and departments and have bookings automatically assigned by availability or random.
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Free basic version available? No
Free trial available? No (you can upgrade from the free version)
Pricing: Starts at $49 per month per user
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13. Appointlet
Appointlet is a business-first online scheduling tool for small and midsize employees. The app helps you define your meeting availability and share it with others. This makes it easier for your salespeople to find a time that works for all meeting attendees.
Plus, you can easily set up reminders and keep the details in front of the meeting participants as the meeting approaches.
You can sort and filter through the attendees list to access any necessary information as new bookings come in. You can even use the dashboard to join a virtual conference or cancel/reschedule a meeting.
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Appointlet's free plan is a great way to streamline your process if you work at a company with a not-so-great scheduling workflow. Their generous free plan offers typically costly features, like unlimited meetings, meeting types, and number of meeting participants.
As you get comfortable with the app, there's a simple interface to invite coworkers to join you and set up their own scheduling pages under one account.
Later down the road, if the company wants to scale up, transferring ownership to an administrator takes only a few clicks. Appointlet's highly-rated customer support can help you with that, too.
Don't let back-and-forth emails keep you or your team from hitting your goals. If you're trying to save time on scheduling, check out this app.
Free basic version available? Yes (it comes with a great feature set, too!)
Free trial available? Yes
Pricing: Starts at $8.00/month
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14. Microsoft Bookings
If your team uses Microsoft 365, you can use the Microsoft Bookings app to schedule and manage meetings.
Microsoft Bookings integrates with your Microsoft 365 calendar. Whenever you book an online meeting, a Teams Meeting link is generated and sent to meeting invitees. You can also access Microsoft Bookings through an app within Teams.
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If you’re already a Microsoft user, Microsoft Bookings is a great choice since it integrates well with the features you already use. The tool has many draws, such as your ability to manage multiple calendars, each with their own page structure, information, users, types of appointments, and communication.
Free basic version available? No
Free trial available? Yes (one month)
Pricing: Available with Microsoft 365 plans that start at $6/month
Streamline the Sales Process with Appointment Scheduling + Virtual Assistants and Apps
Scheduling assistants save you time, keep you organized, and foster ongoing contact with your prospects. Even better, you project professionalism when you use an appointment-scheduling virtual assistant.
If you or your team can’t afford to have your own real personal assistant, any of one these programs can do the work for you and convey the same sense of success to your clients.
The tools we recommend look, act, and feel sophisticated. Use AI meeting software to save time and make more money.
To get the most out of your scheduling software, pair it with a CRM like Close that offers seamless integration with a host of scheduling tools like Calendly, Zapier, and Accuity, making Close a great CRM option.
