Doodle vs. Calendly: Battle of the booking apps

Scheduling can be a nightmare. There's nothing worse than back and forth over email, text, WhatsApp or any other messaging platform as you try to settle on a time that suits everyone's busy schedules.

This goes for work meetings and consultations, but it also goes for family catchups, birthdays, and any time you've got to get more than five people in a room.

Fortunately, tools like Calendly and Doodle give you more control over one-on-one and group scheduling. Just pick the times you're available and have your clients, team or aunties and uncles book in a slot that works best for them.

Sounds great! But which one should you choose? And how many differences are there between the two? Let's find out.

Summary

When it comes to Doodle vs Calendly, both scheduling tools are quite similar in terms of their features, pricing, and enterprise-level service. Choosing the right tool depends on what you prioritize.

Here are some recommendations based on a few standout areas of difference:

• If you need a Chrome extension, pick Calendly.
• If you need a mobile app, pick Calendly.
• If you want a large library of native integrations, pick Calendly.
• If you need deeper discounts for annual payments, pick Doodle.
• If you're booking lots of group meetings, pick Doodle.

Ultimately, both tools are extremely similar. They are also quite costly when you consider they only do one thing—scheduling. Paperform is a more cost-effective option, giving you a full suite of tools (forms, bookings, payments, e-signatures) for a single subscription.

Calendly vs Doodle: Overview

Both of these companies are privately owned and serve similar audiences. But they each have backgrounds outside of the almost cookie-cutter Silicon Valley success stories.

Calendly

Calendly is an online booking and scheduling app that simplifies the process of scheduling appointments and meetings. Its main focus is on the user experience, providing an easy-to-use interface that makes scheduling a breeze.

Some of the unique features of Calendly include:

1. Automated time zone detection: Calendly automatically detects the time zone of the user and the invitee, making the scheduling process seamless.
2. **Personalized scheduling links:**Create custom scheduling links that you can share with invitees, making it easy to schedule meetings or appointments.
3. Multiple event types: Allows users to create different types of events with different durations, so they can choose the type of event that suits their needs best.
4. Team scheduling: Paid plans offer team scheduling features, which allow multiple users to manage their availability and schedules in a single account.
5. Integrations: Calendly integrates with a wide range of apps and tools, such as Google Calendar, Zoom, Salesforce, and more, making it easy to manage all your appointments in one place.

Calendly's focus on user experience and automation sets it apart from other scheduling and booking apps. It's a popular choice for professionals who need to manage their schedules efficiently and effectively.

Doodle

Doodle is a popular online scheduling and booking app that allows users to easily create and share polls to find the best meeting times for a group of people. You can quickly schedule meetings, events, and appointments with colleagues, friends, or family members.

Doodle's main features include:

1. Poll creation: Create a poll with multiple time slots and send it to a group of people to vote on their availability.
2. Customization: Customize polls with options such as a specific time zone, preferred dates, and multiple-choice options.
3. Availability tracking: Track the availability of each participant and easily find the best time for everyone.
4. Integrations: Integrate with other calendar and scheduling apps, such as Google Calendar and Outlook, making it easy to add events to your calendar.
5. Reminders: Send reminders to all participants of the scheduled event to ensure they don't forget.

Doodle is a convenient and efficient tool for scheduling and booking meetings and events, making it a popular choice for both personal and professional use.

Calendly vs Doodle: Customer reviews

According to G2, both Calendly and Doodle are equally well-loved. They both have 4.5-star ratings from about 2000 reviews each, with users of both tools reporting a overwhelmingly positive experience.

In fact, both companies are neck and neck in pretty much every feature. The main area where these two services diverge is in the audiences that they support. Based on review websites, it appears that:

• Calendly is preferred by individuals and small businesses due to the fact (60% of Calendly’s reviewers are from small businesses).
• Doodle has a larger enterprise market with about 30% of reviews coming from businesses with over 1000 employees (compared to Calendly's 10%).

Now, there's a chance that this has more to do with Doodle's six-year headstart on Calendly as a business. Even so, it gives a good overview of which tools have been adopted by certain business sizes, for you to use as a guide for your business.

It’s possible that large businesses signed up for Doodle when it was the only option and just never left. On the other end, Calendly offers more capabilities with its free tier that might appeal to small businesses and individuals. But we’ll get to pricing in a moment.

Calendly vs Doodle: Strengths and drawbacks

These two scheduling applications offer such a similar set of features that figuring out where either one stands out is a bit challenging. We're not just going to stuff up for the sake of it, and we could only really find a few sections where one tool stands out above the other:

• Doodle's schedule polling: Doodle's polling tool lets you collaboratively schedule meetings by polling each potential attendee and finding the best times available for everyone. From there, you can schedule your meeting at the best time to make the most people happy. Calendly offers a similar tool called Collective Events, but Schedule Polling works better and makes more sense.
• Calendly's ease of use: Again and again while researching this article, we saw the same thing repeated: Calendly is just so intuitive and easy to use. We definitely found a contrast compared to Doodle, which users complain about being clunky and confusing at times.

These are only minor differences, though. Both tools are extremely similar, and there's neither has a "killer app" that makes it a no-brainer to select one over the other.

Calendly vs Doodle: Security

Both scheduling apps boast enterprise-grade security. But, of the two, Calendly has a stronger focus on security.

Visit Calendly's security page or Doodle's security page for more details.

Calendly vs Doodle: Integrations and extensions

Both of these services are focused on streamlining communication and making life easier. As such, whatever appointment scheduling software you choose should be able to communicate with other software, as well as make your life easier.

They both integrate well with tools like Google Calendar, but that's just the start.

Calendly vs Doodle: Pricing

Both Doodle and Calendly have similar pricing structures, with free and paid tiers, as well as enterprise-level service. However, there are some differences worth noting.

Rather than copying the pricing pages into this article verbatim, we’re just going to go over notable areas. To make a more informed decision, check the pricing pages yourself to make sure you’re getting the features you need.

• Free tiers: Doodle's free tier offers unlimited group polls and a single booking page. Meanwhile, Calendly provides a handful of useful features and unlimited bookings, but only one event type.
• Paid tiers: Both Doodle and Calendly offer progressively more features at higher pricing tiers. Doodle's tiers cost $14.95 and $19.95, while Calendly has $10, $15, and $20 tiers. All paid tiers are per seat/user.
• Annual payments: Both companies offer a discount for paying annually. However, Doodle provides deeper discounts that can exceed 50% off.
• Enterprise: Doodle and Calendly offer enterprise-level perks, such as SSO, onboarding, and advanced support. However, there are some differences between the two tools. For instance, you need to be an Enterprise customer to access Doodle's API, while Calendly has better security at every level.

Overall, Doodle provides deeper discounts for annual payments, while Calendly has better security at every level. Check the pricing pages of each tool to make sure you're getting all the features you need for the right price.

Appointments are just the beginning

Both Calendly and Doodle are good schedulers. But they’re also one-trick ponies. They offer scheduling, and that’s just about it.

Your money and resources would be better spent on a more versatile tool that can handle a wide variety of tasks. The best tool for the job is Paperform! Paperform can replace every aspect of the other two tools, including:

• Scheduling appointments
• Syncing with appointment programs, like Google Calendar
• Schedule Polling

On top of that, Paperform won’t limit you to just scheduling. It's a versatile digital Swiss Army Knife that empowers you to do everything from accepting bookings to building forms, creating link-in-bio pages, setting email automations, and more.

If you’re already using Paperform in your day-to-day and want to start scheduling, look no further. Paperform, as always, has your back. If not, sign up for a free trial today and see how easy scheduling—and the rest of your work—can be.

Related reading

• The 10 best scheduling apps for small businesses
• 9 AI tools that'll save you hours every week
• 6 ways to automate lead management with Paperform and Zapier
• The 8 best Calendly alternatives in 2023
• How to run a successful asynchronous meeting