The Calendly Story

What is Calendly used for?

With the unprecedented advent of the covid-19 pandemic into our lives, WFH is the future of work for most companies. Consequently, SaaS and tech companies are working hard to make the communications faster, easier and more efficient by the day. Introducing Calendly - A cloud based service to schedule meetings, avoiding the hassle of back and forth emails required to set it up. 

Calendly as a Problem Solver

Calendly is built around a very simple functionality. It is a freemium service that allows people to schedule and confirm meetings in a hassle-free way and also syncs with other cloud calendars like Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. 

Target Market and Audience

Calendly can be used by individuals, teams or literally anyone who loves light design and wants to manage time in a more efficient way. All you have to do is tell Calendly your available preferences and the tool will take care of the rest.

How to Use Calendly?

1. Let Calendly know your available time-slots. 
2. Share your link - embed it on the website or simple share it
3. Get booked - In 2 simple steps, your schedule is set plus you avoid back and forth on emails.
   

There are various reasons why they call themselves ‘The best automated scheduling software for you and everyone you meet.’ Here are few impressive components - 

1. Syncs in all your calendars so you’ll never be double booked.
2. Makes the most of your time, helps you plan ahead and control your availability 
3. You can share your availability link wherever needed - social profiles, website, campaigns etc
4. Schedule your meetings wherever you are, with locations for virtual or in-person meetings. 
   

Features Worth Mentioning

You can optimize and enhance your experience by integrating your most-used software on Calendly - 

1. Integrate Salesforce and with the help of Zapier you can connect many more integrations to cut down clerical tasks. 
2. Connect Paypal / Stripe to accept payments at the time of booking. 
3. Stay up to date with cancellations or any sudden changes wherever you are.
4. Get connected with Google Analytics, CRM, sales tools and so much more
   

Conclusion - Calendly is trying to make your work-life as simple as possible by making your day to day tasks as streamlined as possible.

Competitors to Calendly

It’s 2021 and let’s just say if you have an idea, someone is either doing it and you have to do it better or if your idea is innovative someone is going to also get inspired and build something similar. Coming to the point - Calendly has a lot of competitors namely - YouCanBook.me, TimeTap, Setmore, and Picktime. They all have their own set of pros and cons and which one you pick can be decided by knowing your company’s requirements. 

Growth Challenges Faced by Calendly

This software fortunately has been smart since the time it’s beta version was released, they never had any first world SaaS issues. However, it was a new concept and getting people to buy their paid plans was tough in the beginning but they in-time solved the issue by flipping the funnel and understanding what their audience base exactly wanted. Also, due to increased acceptance in the industries for SaaS and various efforts to make work communications better, Calendly was able to gain a lot of traction in its early stages itself. 

The team also monitored their audience and their usage patterns which lead to a lot of small UX changes which as they mentioned lead to 61% leads scheduling their calls. Eventually, they increased integrations to make it easier and tap more audience from different segments which are still working as it claims to have 10M users with that number growing 1,180% last year. The company last year made about $70 million annually in subscription revenues from its SaaS-based business model.

Funding and Leadership

Calendly was founded in 2011 and since then it has been turning good profits for a startup, every year. The scheduling software had raised $550K and recently raised $350 million from OpenView Venture Partners and Iconiq. They needed funding to grow their team, collaborate with other software companies to strengthen their integrations to meet their goals of becoming the central part of the meeting life cycle. 

Pricing

Calendly’s can be used for free with limited features. Their pricing plans start with a basic package of as low as $10 per month per user for individuals, for small businesses at $15/user and for larger businesses - they provide customized plans.