Calendly and Book My Appointments both give you a link that lets people book time with you, but they were built for two different jobs. Calendly is a meeting scheduler: it sits on top of your work calendar and is designed to get a call or a demo booked with as little friction as possible. Book My Appointments is an appointment booking system for local service businesses: a menu of services with real durations, staff who each have their own hours, and a request that you approve before it’s confirmed.
That difference explains almost every other difference between them, including the price.
This comparison uses Calendly’s published pricing as of 18 October 2026. Calendly changes its plans from time to time, so check its pricing page before you commit.
Quick Comparison
| Book My Appointments | Calendly | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes, no time limit: full service menu, accept/decline, Google Calendar push | Yes: 1 event type, 1 calendar connection |
| Paid pricing | Pro $1.99/month per business, 7-day free trial | Standard $12/seat monthly ($10 billed annually) · Teams $20/seat monthly ($16 annually) |
| How bookings are confirmed | You accept or decline each request | Instantly, no approval step |
| Staff scheduling | Pro: staff hours, “choose your pro”, fair rotation | Teams tier: round-robin and routing |
| Calendar sync | One-way push to Google Calendar (free plan) | Reads and writes your calendar |
| Customer reminders | Email reminders | From Standard |
| Customer self-service | Customers can cancel (free customer account) | Customers can reschedule or cancel |
| Payments at booking | No | Stripe or PayPal from Standard |
| Mobile apps | Web, iOS, Android | iOS, Android, browser extension |
Short version: Calendly is the better meeting scheduler and the more complete product. Book My Appointments costs far less, fits a service business more naturally, and gives you approval control on its free plan.
Pricing
Book My Appointments has a free plan with no time limit, not a trial. On it you get your booking page at go.bookmyappointments.com/your-business, a full service menu with custom durations, flexible and split weekly hours, per-service availability windows, time-off and vacation blocking, accept or decline on every request, double-booking protection, Google Calendar sync, a website embed, branded confirmation emails to the customer, and apps for web, iOS and Android.
Pro is $1.99 a month per business, with a 7-day free trial, whether you subscribe on the web or in the app. It is priced per business rather than per user. An early-bird rate holds that price for the first 10,000 businesses to sign up.
Calendly has a free plan too, but it is deliberately narrow: one event type and one connected calendar. That’s enough for “book a 30-minute call with me” and not enough to publish a menu of services. Its paid plans are priced per seat:
- Standard: $12 per seat per month, or $10 billed annually. Unlimited event types, automated reminders, and Stripe or PayPal payments.
- Teams: $20 per seat per month, or $16 billed annually. Adds round-robin assignment and routing.
- Enterprise: from $15,000 a year, with a 50-seat minimum.
What that means in practice. Seats are the thing to watch. A solo operator on Calendly Standard pays $120 to $144 a year. The same person on Book My Appointments Pro pays about $24. On Calendly, every extra person who takes bookings needs another paid seat, so a four-person team on Teams costs roughly $64 to $80 a month.
Booking Experience
Calendly is a meeting-first flow. You publish an event type (“30-minute consultation”), the invitee opens the link, sees the times your connected calendar says you’re free, picks one, and it’s booked. It’s fast, familiar to anyone who has booked a call, and it handles time zones automatically.
Book My Appointments is a service-menu flow. Your page lists the services you offer with the duration you set for each one. The customer picks a service, then a time from the availability window you set for that service, and sends a request. You’re notified instantly, and the customer gets a branded confirmation email once you accept. Unanswered requests clear themselves after 48 hours, so your calendar doesn’t fill up with limbo. Both products handle time zones, and both give you a link you can embed on your website.
The trade-off: Calendly’s flow has fewer steps and confirms immediately. Book My Appointments’ flow fits a service business better, with durations and availability that differ per service, and gives you a say before the slot is committed.
Appointment Approval
This is the clearest split between the two.
Book My Appointments treats every booking as a request. The time isn’t confirmed until you accept it. You can decline anything that doesn’t work: a first-time customer wanting your last slot on a Saturday, a job you’d rather quote first, a time you’d like to keep clear. Approval is on the free plan, not a paid upsell.
Calendly is built around instant confirmation. The invitee picks a time your calendar says is free and it’s booked, without a decision from you. For back-to-back calls that’s exactly the point. For a business that wants to vet who’s coming in, it’s a limitation, and the usual workaround is tightening your availability rather than screening bookings.
Who each suits: if a booked slot means committing your chair, your bay or your room, approval control matters, and Book My Appointments has it for free. If your slots are interchangeable and speed is the goal, Calendly’s model is better.
Staff Scheduling
Book My Appointments Pro adds staff members, each with their own working hours and days off. Customers can use “choose your pro” to pick a specific person, and when they don’t, bookings are rotated fairly across the team. Staff get their own logins. You can also create an appointment manually and reschedule an existing one from the business side.
Calendly handles teams by seat. Each host needs a paid seat, and round-robin distribution is on the Teams plan. Calendly’s team features are aimed at sales and success teams, such as distributing inbound meetings, routing by form answers and pooling availability, rather than at a rota of staff who each do different services.
The fair comparison: Calendly’s team scheduling is more sophisticated. Book My Appointments’ is far cheaper and shaped like a shift rota rather than a sales pipeline. For a salon, clinic or garage, the shape usually matters more than the sophistication. For a sales team, the reverse.
Calendar Integration
Calendly wins this section. It is a calendar-native product: it connects to your calendar, reads your existing commitments so it never offers a time you’re busy, and writes bookings back. The free plan connects one calendar, and paid plans connect more.
Book My Appointments pushes accepted appointments to Google Calendar, and that’s included on the free plan. It’s one-way: your appointments appear in your calendar, but events already in your Google Calendar don’t block booking slots. You control availability inside Book My Appointments instead, through weekly hours, per-service windows and time-off blocking.
What this means for you: if your day already runs out of your calendar and a clash with a personal appointment is the risk, Calendly’s two-way connection is worth paying for. If your bookable hours are fixed shop hours, a one-way push is usually enough.
Reminders and Customer Self-Service
Both products now send customers email reminders before their appointment. On Calendly, automated reminders start on the Standard plan. Book My Appointments sends email reminders only, not text messages.
Customer self-service is where Calendly is ahead. Calendly lets invitees reschedule or cancel from their confirmation email. With Book My Appointments, customers can cancel from a free customer account, but they can’t move a booking themselves. To reschedule, they contact you and you change it from the business side, which is a Pro feature.
Mobile Apps
Both have mobile apps. Book My Appointments has web, iOS and Android apps for the business owner, with an instant push notification the moment a request comes in. That matters more here than in most products, because a request waits for you to act and clears itself after 48 hours. Customers never need an app: they book in a browser.
Calendly has iOS and Android apps plus a browser extension, on every plan including free, designed for managing meetings and sharing your link quickly.
Branding
This one is a wash. Calendly shows its branding on the free plan and charges to remove it. Book My Appointments shows its branding on the booking page on both free and Pro, with no tier that removes it.
Which Is Better for Local Businesses?
For most local service businesses, such as salons, barbers, tutors, auto shops, small clinics and trades, Book My Appointments fits the shape of the work better and costs a fraction as much: a service menu with real durations, staff with their own hours, and approval before a slot is committed, for $1.99 a month per business.
Be clear about the gaps before you switch:
- No customer self-rescheduling. With Calendly, invitees can move their own booking. With Book My Appointments, customers can cancel but you do the rescheduling.
- No instant confirmation. Every booking waits for you to accept it. If you can’t check requests regularly, customers wait.
- One-way calendar sync. Existing Google Calendar events don’t block booking slots.
- No payments or deposits at booking. Calendly connects Stripe and PayPal on its paid plans. Book My Appointments doesn’t take payments.
Calendly is the better choice if you mainly book meetings, calls, demos or consultations; if your availability lives in your calendar and two-way sync is essential; if you want customers to reschedule themselves; or if you route inbound meetings across a sales or success team.
Final Verdict
Choose Book My Appointments if you run a local service business, want a free plan that is a complete product rather than a trial, want to approve bookings before they’re confirmed, and don’t want to pay per seat. At $1.99 a month per business, it is one of the most affordable Calendly alternatives for a small business.
Choose Calendly if meetings are what you schedule, your calendar is the source of truth, you want customers to confirm instantly and reschedule themselves, and you want payments built in. It’s the more polished and more complete product, and the per-seat price is what pays for that.
For a wider comparison that also covers Square Appointments, Acuity Scheduling and Setmore, see our guide to the best appointment scheduling apps for small businesses, or our breakdown of the best free appointment scheduling software. You can also see the full feature list for Book My Appointments.
FAQ
Is Book My Appointments a good Calendly alternative?
For a local service business, yes, mainly on price and fit. Book My Appointments Pro is $1.99 a month per business, against $10 to $20 per seat per month on Calendly, and its free plan supports a full service menu where Calendly’s free plan is limited to one event type. It isn’t a like-for-like replacement: Calendly confirms instantly, lets customers reschedule themselves and takes payments, and Book My Appointments doesn’t.
What is the cheapest Calendly alternative for a small business?
Among the apps we’ve compared, Book My Appointments Pro is the cheapest paid plan with staff scheduling, at $1.99 a month per business. Setmore’s free plan covers up to four users with email reminders, so it’s worth a look if you don’t need approval control.
Does Book My Appointments have a free plan like Calendly?
Both have a free plan with no time limit, but they’re shaped differently. Calendly’s free plan gives you one event type and one connected calendar. Book My Appointments’ free plan gives you a full service menu with custom durations, split weekly hours, per-service availability, time-off blocking, accept or decline on every request, double-booking protection, Google Calendar sync, a website embed and confirmation emails.
Can customers reschedule with Book My Appointments the way they can with Calendly?
Not yet. With Calendly, customers can reschedule or cancel from their confirmation email. With Book My Appointments, customers can cancel from a free customer account, but only the business can reschedule, on the Pro plan.
Does Book My Appointments send appointment reminders?
Yes. Book My Appointments sends customers email reminders before their appointment, a branded confirmation email when you accept their request, and an instant notification to you when a request arrives. It doesn’t send text-message reminders. Calendly includes reminders from its Standard plan.
How much does Book My Appointments cost compared to Calendly?
Book My Appointments Pro is $1.99 a month per business, about $24 a year. Calendly is priced per seat: Standard is $12 a month ($10 billed annually) and Teams, the tier with round-robin assignment, is $20 a month ($16 billed annually) for each person.
Which is better for a salon or barbershop?
Book My Appointments is the closer fit: a service menu with per-service durations and availability, staff with individual hours, “choose your pro”, and approval before a booking is confirmed, at $1.99 a month per business. If you want customers to pay a deposit when they book, look at Square Appointments instead.