Whether online or offline, it’s hard to figure out how many parties are meeting at the same time when they have free time. These meeting scheduling apps make it easy to find a common time slot or share your free time slot to get others to agree.
Today, most companies use Calendly to schedule meetings, and through links, everyone gives their favorite time slot. But while this is great for businesses, private individuals and small teams don’t want to pay for such features. Thankfully, there are some excellent free alternatives to Calendly tools that allow for the best meeting time in a situation that is convenient for everyone.
1. ZCal (Web): The best 100% free Calendly alternatives
ZCal’s mission seems to be to get Calendly out, as it offers Calendly’s most important features for free. The makers also specifically stated that it will always remain 100% free and that they won’t show ads.
The app works with Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar to import your calendar from multiple calendars. When you create a ZCal invitation, you can add a name, location (or video conference link), description, cover photo, and welcome video.
You can make unlimited 1-on-1 invitations, group invitations, or meeting voting. Meeting voting is how you find out everyone’s free time by asking them to vote on a time slot. Set the available date ranges and choose a half-hour time period that suits you. Once everyone votes, you’ll get a simple analysis of the time period that voted the most, so you can fix the meeting.
ZCal also lets you create a profile when you sign up, including your resume and your LinkedIn and Twitter links. The idea was to make it more personal. It’s also the idea behind the welcome video, a short message you record on ZCal to attract attendees to the meeting.
2. Rallly (Web): Best mobile-friendly meeting voting creator
Whether as a creator or receiver, Rallly is the most impressive to use on mobile phones. Other than that, Rallly is open source, free, and ad-free. If you’re concerned about privacy, you can also run it on your server.
The app doesn’t require registration to get started, so you can quickly create your new events. Add details such as meeting name, location, and description, and then select a date. If you prefer, you can also add time periods on these dates (preferably using a week view) or keep an all-day period (preferably a month view). Add your name and email, have your admin’s login information sent to your mailbox, and you’ll be able to share the link with others.
Recipients have three options to reply. Yes (green), if needed (yellow), and no (gray). Once everyone has answered, you will see the results in a simple table. Participants can also leave comments in your polls, adding their names so you can identify them. But again, this also does not require registration.
Rallly also allows administrators or creators to change votes halfway through. You can update the poll with new details or options so people can re-vote and draw conclusions without having to open a new link. In a cool move, the app lets you export all your data as a CSV file, so if you have a lot of participants responding, you can calculate the numbers in a spreadsheet.
3. ZenCal (Web): The best meeting app for personal sharing of schedules
If you’re an individual selling a course, or a consultant for a sales hour course, you’ll need an online page where customers can see your free time and choose when to meet. ZenCal is the best free app in this regard, with a range of powerful features. Like ZCal, the makers of ZenCal point out that it’s always free for individuals and small teams.
Once you sign up for ZenCal, you can import unlimited calendars from Google Calendar and Outlook, creating a universal calendar in ZenCal. You can also set fixed working hours so that customers know your available schedule. If you schedule an event in another calendar during business hours, ZenCal will notify you of the update so you can block the time slot.
Finally, you’ll get a professional-looking page where customers can read a short introduction about you, a description of the course or conference you offer, and book a time slot. ZenCal offers many advanced features like Stripe’s payment integration, emails, and text alerts, among others.
In addition, ZenCal can also be a great tool for finding common meeting times for your team. You can add calendars for multiple teammates, view calendar overlays to quickly schedule times, and postpone and reschedule meetings.
4. StrawPoll (Web): Quickly conduct detailed polls on preferred times
StrawPoll is a paid software that allows you to cast all kinds of polls without registration, but the makers specifically boast about its ability to schedule meetings quickly and efficiently. In our tests, StrawPoll worked seamlessly, so it serves as a quick online meeting scheduling tool, especially for large numbers of people, with a thumbs up.
Click on the “Schedule a Meeting” option in SketchPoll and you’re good to go. Add a meeting title, an optional location, and a description. In the advanced settings, you can keep polls private to people with direct links, allow participants to have multiple options (or limit the number of options), allow answers to “if needed”, and hide participants from each other. You can also set an end date and choose who can edit the poll if needed.
Then, choose your date and set multiple time periods for each date. StrawPoll has a handy template that you can use to fill in multiple time slots with one click. Finally, share the link with the participants, or generate a QR code if you want to post a printout in the common area.
5. Meeting Scheduler for Gmail (Chrome): The easiest conferencing app for Google users
If your calendar is Google Calendar and your inbox is Gmail, then you can find the best meeting time in the Google ecosystem with this dexterous tool. Gmail’s meeting scheduler is connected to your Google Calendar, so you can share your available time in Gmail’s compose box.
Once you have installed this extension, the first thing to do is to set your general availability time, which will be the default setting for all invitations. When you click on the “Meeting Schedule” button, you will get a pop-up window to set the details. You can then add a meeting name, a location (with a link as a button), a duration, and even a GIF. List your available dates in the last step.
Gmail’s Meeting Scheduler will check the date, your available time, and your calendar schedule to create a list of time periods available to you. Then, when recipients receive your email, they can click a link to a page that shows those available time slots. Once they’ve chosen the time slot they want, the meeting is automatically scheduled in your Google Calendar, and you and the recipient are confirmed as participants. It’s convenient and fast!
Download: Meeting Scheduler for Gmail for Chrome (Free)
Organize your meetings with ease
Hopefully, with so many different ways to find a common time slot that works for everyone, it should be easier for you to schedule a meeting that everyone attends.
