Calendly vs. Acuity

Gone are the days when you had to schedule appointments via email or phone. Thanks to scheduling apps, appointments can be arranged and managed conveniently. This way, you never have to miss an important meeting ever again.

Acuity and Calendly are two of the most prominent options on the market. But which one is best suited to your needs? This article will provide a detailed comparison of the two apps.

Acuity and Calendly: Brief Overview

Although both scheduling apps have different use purposes, Acuity is more of a business solution, while Calendly allows you to streamline your calendar.

More specifically, Acuity is a comprehensive appointment scheduling and business management tool that works as a personal assistant. Look at the app as a planner that allows users to manage client appointments. As such, Acuity is more accurately described as an appointment booking application than a meeting scheduler. Clients can self-schedule, reserve space, and view users’ availability.

The app also enables location and employee management, invoicing and payment acceptance, membership, and group classes. The best part is that it’s integrated with web conferencing platforms to streamline the process of booking reservations and holding meeting sessions.

In contrast, Calendly is a meeting scheduler that helps users automate their appointment scheduling process. It integrates easily with different calendars, making it easy to manage your calendar all in one place. Like Acuity, it also supports your clients’ booking appointments with you. Instead of sending back-and-forth emails to decide on a perfect meeting time, you can share your availability, enabling your clients to choose what works best and making meetings easy.

However, it doesn’t offer the other business solutions that Acuity does, like invoicing, as it functions strictly as a calendar management tool.

Detailed Comparison Between Calendly and Acuity

Having seen what both apps offer, let’s make a more detailed comparison of their essential benefits and drawbacks.

Basic Tools

All apps should come with certain must-have features. For online schedulers, appointment scheduling, reminders, and group meetings are essential. Acuity and Calendly offer the basics with similar functionalities; it’s in the advanced features that they differ significantly.

Scheduling

Both apps assist in scheduling appointments and reservations with clients. Users can sync their calendars and the system will automatically pick out convenient meeting dates. However, they both support calendar integration with Calendly connecting with up to six calendars.

You can schedule group meetings, webinars, and web conferences for your in-house team or people outside your organization on both tools. Participants outside your company receive links with Calendly and a calendar for Acuity users. The link or calendar lets users view and choose the best meeting time and receive event information. You can also arrange one-on-one meetings.

In both platforms, scheduling is shown in the invitees’ local time, an excellent feature for global businesses. If you’re a business based in the U.S., and you have two clients in the U.K. and India, they get to book an appointment based on their local time zones, respectively, instead of yours.

Group Meetings

Acuity and Calendly offer advanced group meeting features. You can organize meetings between a large group and get everyone to agree on a time slot based on their different time zones. For instance, Calendly has a Meeting Poll feature that lets users create a poll for participants to vote on the best time for a group meeting.

Also, you can manage participants by restricting the number of people who attend the meeting. Plus, you can send information about the event to invitees ahead of the meeting.

Notifications

Users and their clients can’t always keep up with all their notifications, especially if the former has a lot of bookings. Fortunately, the two apps offer a solution by providing automated periodic reminders to alert you of the meeting time. Also, users can send messages to participants before and after meetings. For instance, you can send additional information before events or an appreciative note after the sessions.

Advanced Tools

Besides the basic tools, the apps offer other advanced features that optimize the scheduling process.

Collaboration

The two apps support collaboration between teams. As such, they can be used to organize meeting schedules in-house. You can create events for all team members or restrict access to certain staff members. For instance, if you want to meet with only the admin team, you can create events that will only be visible to the admin staff.

Additionally, Calendly offers user access controls that enable you to manage permissions granted to members of your staff. For instance, you can provide a senior staff member with full calendar access and editing permission, while others can only view it.

They both offer powerful tools to enhance team collaboration and reduce time conflict. However, they differ in the provision of certain features. For instance, Calendly provides different event types that keep all participants on the same page. It displays the availability of the entire organization with team-wide pages or specific departments on one page. On the other hand, Acuity offers multi-location appointment settings to keep team members organized even in different locations.

Payment

As mentioned, Calendly is more streamlined as a scheduling app and doesn’t include advanced business management features like Acuity. Calendly facilitates payment through integrations with Stripe and PayPal. But that’s really all there is to its payment capabilities.

Acuity comes with accounting and invoicing features and supports more advanced payment tools. The app allows you to accept payments online or in person through a point-of-sale (POS) portal. Furthermore, users can set up and manage subscription billing for recurring services or memberships. You can also create payment plans and appointment packages.

The platform helps you set up and send invoices and manage your accounts. Plus, it provides intake and agreement forms, customizable forms that enhance membership and subscriptions.

Customization

Calendly and Acuity offer customization features to add certain rules to meetings or schedules. For instance, you can limit who has access to certain events on both apps. Users can also change schedule workflow, like adding new fields, pages, and URLs.

Additionally, you can set a minimum time in advance to prevent last-minute appointments, maximum number of meetings per day, or intervals between events so as not to overstretch your team. With Acuity, you can also block certain available times off as “Busy” if you want to keep it free.

Again, brand awareness is big for advertising your business. Both platforms cater to this need by ensuring users can personalize their scheduling pages with their brand logo, color, and other company properties.

Integration

Both tools support native and third-party integrations, but Calendly has more than 100 native integrations, while Acuity has about 30. They enable connections with calendars, web conferencing apps, payment gateways, email marketing platforms, CRMs, and social media platforms.

Calendly supports the major calendars from Google Calendar to Outlook Calendar. It’s also great with video conferencing platforms, enabling integration with Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Microsoft Teams, amongst others.

Acuity integrates with the usual suspects: the major calendars and web conferencing tools. Naturally, it works well with Squarespace since the platform acquired it. But with just over 30 integrations, this aspect could be stronger.

However, both are compatible with Zapier, and you can access many more tools using it.

User Interface and Experience

With Calendly and Acuity, you get intuitive platforms with a clean user interface. Better still, they’re both easy to use and navigate. However, Calendly takes simplicity up a notch. The interface focuses more on straightforward navigation and functionality. You get the event types from the home page and can create your events, set up automated workflows, and view activities without hassle.

Conversely, Acuity has more advanced customization features, compromising on simplicity. While simpler than some other apps, it takes a little getting used to compared with Calendly.

Reports and Analytics

Depending on your priorities, reports and analytics might not be that important with a scheduling app. However, for service providers, monitoring appointments can point to the business’s health. Thankfully, Acuity and Calendly both provide insight into these metrics.

Acuity provides reports on appointment types, no-shows, and revenue, considering that it also supports accounting. Calendly, however, focuses on appointments utilized, appointment volume, invitee remarks, and the appointment date. Furthermore, both platforms allow you to export data.

Learning Curve

As stated earlier, the apps are easy to use and navigate. Therefore, you don’t necessarily have to be advanced in tech to operate them. You can learn how to use the two platforms with a bit of software knowledge. The applications already set the complicated aspects by default; you just need to personalize them as required.

That said, Calendly is easier to master. But they have help centers with detailed guides on using the platform.

Mobile Apps

Acuity and Calendly have mobile apps on Google Play and App Store. Both can be used to schedule meetings, book appointments, receive notifications, and manage availability. Acuity apps can also be used to send invoices and receipts, manage secure payments, and send mobile payment links.

Price

Calendly is the more affordable option, with a free trial or paid plans. The plan is free forever with essential features such as one calendar connection, automated notification, unlimited meetings on one active event type, customized URL and branded pages, and integration with Zoom, Slack, and Google Meet. The paid version ranges from $10 per seat per month to the customized Enterprise plan. They also accept annual payments with discounted prices per month. For instance, the lowest tier falls to $8 per month if paid per year.

Acuity’s free trial lasts seven days. Its cheapest plan goes for $20 per month for one staff or location, client self-scheduling, unlimited services and appointments, reminders and follow-up emails, payments through Stripe, Square, or PayPal, and connection to Google Meet, Zoom, and GoToMeeting.

The highest tier costs $61 per month for more advanced features like 36 staff or locations, subscriptions, appointment packages, automatic time zone detection, SMS reminders worldwide, membership, and branded scheduling page. Like Calendly, you get a discount for subscribing annually at $16 per month for the lower tier.

Other Features

Acuity offers client management services that are missing in Calendly. You can keep track of client information and a list of appointments they’ve booked. This way, you can manage your clients and even market to them.

Calendly offers a routing logic that allows you to create forms that direct your clients to a particular event type and a custom message or URL.

FAQs

Can my small business use Acuity?

Yes, small businesses and enterprises can use both Acuity and Calendly. Choosing Acuity for your business will depend on your specific needs. For instance, if you don’t have a CRM or accounting tool, it might be more economical to use Acuity as you’ll be getting all these features in one platform.

Can Acuity and Calendly integrate with my existing Calendar?

If you use any of the popular calendars, the answer is yes. Both platforms are designed to manage your schedule using your calendar to avoid clashes in your appointments. As such, they integrate with Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, and even iCloud through Zapier.

Are there limits to the number of appointments I can schedule in a month on Acuity and Calendly?

Depending on your package, they both have certain limitations. For instance, Calendly allows unlimited event types and meetings for the lowest tiers, while Acuity offers unlimited services and appointments for the cheapest plan. However, the latter charges per seat while Acuity’s lowest plan is limited to one staff member.

Calendly vs Acuity: Which Is Best for You?

Ultimately, it all boils down to what’s best for you. If you’re under budget constraints or a freelancer who needs a basic online scheduler, Calendly is more suitable. The app will also be better for you if additional integrations or a more straightforward interface are a priority. If you’re an enterprise that needs additional client management and accounting services, however, or are big on customization, you should go for Acuity.

Which of these apps do you use to schedule appointments? And what do you enjoy most about the tools? Let us know in the comments section below.