Resist the urge to complicate your product in the name of adding more features. Sometimes, simplicity is your biggest competitive advantage. Calendly is supposed to do one simple thing: let me book, schedule, and manage meetings. Yet, I signed up with that very basic expectation, and somehow found myself struggling to figure out where or how to even begin. It’s a reminder that more features don’t necessarily mean a better product. If users have to think too hard to accomplish the very thing your product was built for, something is wrong. This is one reason I still have so much respect for @piggyvest . Despite how much they’ve grown, they’ve managed to preserve the simplicity that made their product appealing in the first place. Build more value, not more complexity.
Calendly on X
Calendly's fans are loud — 13 people praise it and 8 defend its value — but 14 resent being sent a link, and what people weigh against it most are X's own calls (15) and building a booking page oneself (10).
First written 27 Oct · what changed · from 123 posts by 117 people
Tracking posts that say “calendly”
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Tone· 28 posts· written 27 Oct
How do people feel about Calendly?
Praise leads: 13 of the 28 people posting about how they feel about Calendly recommend it or say it solved their scheduling, against 4 who regret it or plan to leave, 8 defending its value and 3 treating it as simply the default.
People who like it describe the same small win: a link that ends the back-and-forth. They say Calendly links solved the problem fast, that picking a slot to book a podcast or a one-to-one zoom was simple, and that time-zone settings showing an appointment in the guest's local time prevent avoidable mistakes. One posted their link and had 35+ signups in under 12 hours; another counts it among tools that have "genuinely improved my life".
The next group defends the price rather than praising the product: that a $15 a month subscription is cheaper than having well-paid employees build a replacement with AI, that a cheap clone misses "ten years of edge cases" such as a time-zone bug at a daylight-saving boundary, that it does much more in enterprise, and that handing the job to an assistant or an agent puts the ping-pong back on the founder.
The dissenters are fewer and specific: signing up and not finding where to begin, leaving because the best features are paid, and regretting meetings auto-accepted onto the calendar. 3 people treat it as a credibility signal, the way DocuSign is one.
- Praises it13
- Defends its value8
- Soured on it or leaving4
- It's simply the standard3
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If your $200k/year employees spend their time vibe coding a replacement for a $15/mo Calendly subscription, your business is not going to make it.
Calendly makes around $29M/mo just to show people a list of free time slots and book a call. It's that easy.
Not for me! Use calendly liberally for everyone.
calendly. it's a booking page and a calendar api, one weekend
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Pain points· 42 posts from 41 people· written 27 Oct
What do people complain about with Calendly?
The complaints are led not by the software but by being on the receiving end of a link: 14 of the 41 people posting about problems resent being sent a Calendly link, ahead of price (7) and phishing pages dressed up as Calendly (7), which are level with each other.
Being sent a link is the biggest complaint. People read it as shifting the work onto them, "homework for the prospect": the sender is selling something and wants the buyer to go find a time. Others say it delays — a link plus a "grab 15 mins this week?" email, a link standing between a buyer and the pricing page, and the contrast with a phone call that takes 90 seconds rather than three weeks.
Price and phishing are level behind it. On price, people name the per-seat charge, a free tier capped at one active event type and one connected calendar, an annual bill for a large team called "criminal", paying for features half of which go unused, and leaving because the best features are paid. On phishing, fake booking pages turn up in recruiting and press scams: fake Meta Careers interview pages, a fake TechCrunch interview, one booking that redirected to a lookalike X login page. A security firm warns job seekers; one person asks when Calendly faces legal liability.
Smaller troubles: booked slots nobody joins, with reminders called unreliable; a two-calendar sync mess; captchas that block agents; and layout changes people want reversed.
- Being sent a Calendly link14
- Price and paywalls7
- Scams and phishing via Calendly links7
- Bookings that turn into no-shows4
- Bugs and broken integrations3
- Unwelcome redesigns and clutter3
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We need to bring back calling people. Why have we normalized Calendly culture? You want to talk to someone, so you send them a scheduling link, coordinate availability, and somehow end up speaking three weeks later. Just pick up the phone and call them. 90 seconds. 120 seconds. That’s all you need to make an introduction, solve a problem, or move a deal forward. We’ve created so much unnecessary bureaucracy around basic human interaction. Call more people.
Resist the urge to complicate your product in the name of adding more features. Sometimes, simplicity is your biggest competitive advantage. Calendly is supposed to do one simple thing: let me book, schedule, and manage meetings. Yet, I signed up with that very basic expectation, and somehow found myself struggling to figure out where or how to even begin. It’s a reminder that more features don’t necessarily mean a better product. If users have to think too hard to accomplish the very thing your product was built for, something is wrong. This is one reason I still have so much respect for @piggyvest . Despite how much they’ve grown, they’ve managed to preserve the simplicity that made their product appealing in the first place. Build more value, not more complexity.
Holy moly, internet security is going to be so difficult to maintain in the future. @Futana6, who has a history of posts surrounding @TechCrunch reached out to me about an interview regarding my “work as a Pokémon professor & involvement with the Pokémon ribbons community” With a quick glance, the account seems legit - 7 years old, verified, a few thousand followers. But the calendly link they sent me had me select a timeslot, then redirected me to “accounts - x .com”. On the surface, it looks nearly identical to the X help page. Though, it was only registered a few months ago. I was so close to entering in my Twitter login credentials to move forward. The message seemed familiar with my content, history with the community & historically seemed to have worked with TechCrunch. There are going to be AI agents working 24/7 to steal as much as they can. It’s scary. In a few minutes they can ingest more information about you than the people you genuinely know. Though in the end I was able to entirely disrupt the responses to expose it was not a real employee. ALWAYS be on the lookout for links that don’t seem quite right. Stay safe y’all
🚨 Job seekers, beware. We discovered fake “Meta Careers” interview pages that are stealing Facebook and Google logins. The scam starts with a fake Calendly booking page to schedule a 30-minute call with a recruiter. 1/🧵
Founder Journal #1 I was stood up from my first ever demo call today. Was super excited when I received the request yesterday and spent 1 hour preparing. Unfortunately the demo call was between me and my calendly notetaker🥲. It's all good. Full speed ahead!!
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Alternatives· 45 posts from 42 people· written 27 Oct
What are the alternatives to Calendly?
X's own calls are what people weigh Calendly against most: the largest group, 15 of the 42 people comparing alternatives, expect X to replace it, ahead of 10 building their own replacement, 5 going back to phoning or meeting in person and 4 handing scheduling to an agent.
X's calls draw the most comparison, largely from people who want X to take the job. They ask for a public booking link with visible slots, the way Calendly works, and for charging for calls; they call Calls a "Calendly killer" that removes the handoff across four apps, and count the reasons to send people to Calendly as gone. One user of Calendly's paid features says they are staying, and wants to see how buggy X calls are first.
Building a replacement is the second theme, and the motive is the bill: a seat at $10 to $12 a month, one prompt to an AI model producing a booking page with 30-minute slots and an .ics file, rebuilding only the parts of the tool they used, cancelling subscriptions for an internal custom solution. One put it as "paying for software is dead".
Behind those: phoning people or meeting in person, agents that schedule by voice, and a human assistant or setter. Named alternatives are single mentions — Cal.com, tried after Calendly and a home build; Calnode, self-hosted with a built-in MCP server; Google Calendar's free booking page; Metafy, where Calendly keeps more of the money; Systeme.io, whose confirmation emails can't be customized.
- X's calls and scheduling16
- Building your own replacement11
- Calling or arranging manually instead5
- Agents and bots that book for you4
- A human assistant or setter2
- Cal.com1
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hey @elonmusk @allegrajacchia , this new X Calls feature is pretty cool. but you know what would make it even better? make it work like Calendly. give me a public booking link where anyone can see my available slots and schedule an X call with me. and maybe let me charge for calls too, using an X-native payment system or even Dogecoin 👀 one less reason to leave X lol
X just put Calls in the sidebar. Quietly. No launch video. No announcement. But this is a Calendly killer. How a web3 call happens today: DM on X. "let's move to TG". "send me your Calendly". Google Meet link. 4 apps for one call. Most deals don't die in the pitch. They die in the handoff. X just removed the handoff. Who's booking the first call with me?
Banyak yang ngasih saran buat pake fitur Calls nya dari X ini dan pindah dari Calendly. Bagus? Banget kok! Tapi, kebetulan banyak fitur dari Calendly yang memudahkan untuk 1 hour call with Fierza. Selain itu, gw gak tau ini bug nya seberapa banyak kalau telpon pake X. Kalian pernah coba telpon orang pake X? How is it goes? Is it good?
I REPLACED CALENDLY WITH ONE PROMPT TO OPUS 5.5. NIGHT 1 OF KILLING $1,000/MONTH OF SUBSCRIPTIONS calendly standard is $10 a month per seat. i wanted to see how fast opus could build a free one a booking page is the link you send people so they can grab a time on your calendar without 6 emails back and forth what happened: → 16:40 one prompt. month calendar, 30 min slots, name and email, google calendar link, .ics file → 16:42 first version done → 16:42 booked wed 14:30 as a test. it worked and the slot disappeared → 16:42 bug: afternoon times were cut off on a laptop screen → 16:42 one fix later all 16 slots fit to make it yours you edit one block at the top of the file: your name, your days, your hours, your email. no signup for you or the guest, and it works on a phone what it still can't do: there's no backend yet, so two people could grab the same slot. that's the next prompt paying calendly: $120 a year. this: one html file and $0 watch 0:10, that's the moment it says you're booked the whole thing is about 175 lines. no framework, no database, nothing to host but one file saved so far: $10/month. goal: $1,000/month the prompt and the file are in the first reply ↓ night 2 is tomorrow. which $10+ tool should opus go after next?
En 6 mois, on a supprimé presque 200k€ de licences SaaS chez nous en les remplaçant par nos propres systèmes IA. Réinjectés en acquisition (ROAS 5+), ces 200k€ deviennent potentiellement +1M€ de croissance. • calendly : 7200€ / an • Make : 20000€ / an • Google : 24000€ / an • Airtable : 3600€ / an • Typeform : 3000€ / an La liste est encore longue… Et toi l'IA t'as fait économiser combien dans ton business cette année ?
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Questions· 11 posts· written 27 Oct
What do people ask about Calendly?
The largest group of questions is about timing: 3 people debate when to send a Calendly link in outreach, ahead of 2 asking what Calendly is and 2 simply asking for or offering a link so they can book.
The timing question is put as a rule of thumb: a link in the first cold email is "proposing on the first date" and the link goes in email two, after the reply is earned. Another proposes a middle way — say you have booked a time on Calendly and ask them to confirm or reschedule — and a third asks a colleague whether they send theirs right away.
The rest of the questions are each asked by one or two people. What is Calendly, or why would someone use it. Asking for a link to book, or offering one ("feel free to send me your calendly boss").
Singles: the best self-hosted open-source alternative; whether a new booking page will convert better than a Calendly or cal link; why Calendly can't send meeting transcripts when it is connected through Claude and the AI notes are saved in it after calls; and how the animations on Calendly's landing page are built, since saving one gives a frozen frame instead of the animation.
- When to send the Calendly link3
- What is Calendly?2
- Asking for or offering a Calendly link2
- Is there a free or self-hosted alternative?1
- Can it send transcripts and notes?1
- Does it book better than a Calendly link?1
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calendly link in the first cold email is proposing on the first date. they don't even know your name yet. earn the reply first. the link goes in email 2.
won't the better version here be to just say I've booked x time on calendly, please confirm if it works with / reschdule. best of both worlds?
Are you sending them your calendly right away ?
down for it. feel free to send me your calendly boss
Best self hosted open source calendly, cal?
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Wishes· 5 posts· written 27 Oct
What do people want from Calendly?
The wishes go past the slot: 2 want meetings auto-accepted onto calendars and calls recorded with notes, and 2 want Calendly to work with AI agents, through MCP tools or a notetaker.
The first wish is that a booking should land on the calendar by itself. One person asks for a tool that auto-accepts a meeting from the recipient's calendar, saying it would have a huge impact on show-up rates because the meeting then actually appears on the calendar. Another says Calendly with recorded meetings and notes would really push it over the edge for teams.
The second is agent-friendly scheduling. One is surprised there isn't a current discussion of looping agents into Calendly for scheduling. Another imagines prompting Calendly for a custom link covering whatever slots or however many teammates' availabilities are needed, on the fly, then handing that link to an agent that picks the booking link from personal data.
A single wish sits apart: a shorter booking window, since 60 days ahead feels like too long to be scheduling a meeting.
- Recordings and auto-accepted meetings2
- Agent-friendly bookings and MCP tools2
- A shorter booking window1
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I heard there is a tool that auto-accepts a meeting from the recipients calendar (feature request). Huge impact on show-up rates since all meetings actually show up on the calendar.
If it was like Calendly with recorded meeting/notes, that would really push it over the edge for teams.
surprised there isn't an updated calendly discourse for looping in agents for scheduling
Insane! Imagine Calendly, but you can prompt it to give you a custom link, for any custom slots or any number of teammates' availabilities, or any other customization on the fly. Give that to your other agent that can customize the rules based on your Oura data and reply with the appropriate booking link to your emails :)
When I scheduled this meeting as my practice project on calendly, I was very happy that I finally got how the platform works. But looking at it now, there are somethings that I would like change e.g the 60 days scheduled, I mean why scheduling 60 days ahead of a meeting...
In their words
How do people talk about Calendly?
The phrases people use most, counted once per person.
- 1“calendly link”9
- 2“calendly links”5
- 3“booking page”3
- 4“booking link”2
- 5“open slots”2
- 6“per seat”2
- 7“fake calendly”2
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