vs. Calendly: Which Planner App is Better? |

Productivity often takes a hit from factors you don’t even notice. From long commutes to meetings that could be emailed, you’re losing productive hours!

Thankfully, effective planning tools can help reclaim that lost time. Powerful apps like and Calendly have become go-to tools for many professionals who want to manage their time effectively. But they serve fundamentally different purposes. 

But which one’s the right choice for you? Should you use ’s all-in-one project management approach or Calendly’s specialized expertise in automating meeting scheduling? In this article on vs. Calendly, we’ll break down the key features, benefits, and differences to help you decide which calendar app will help you reclaim control of your time.

vs. Calendly at a Glance

Feature		Calendly
Primary use case	An everything app for work that comprises AI-powered task management, smart scheduling, Chat, collaboration, and goal-tracking	Simplified scheduling platform for automating meetings
Task management	Comprehensive task creation, assignment, tracking, and organization across multiple views	Not available
Scheduling	Includes Calendar for creating, managing, and joining events within your workspace	Advanced scheduling tools, customizable event types, and meeting automations
Document creation	Built-in Docs for wikis, SOPs, and knowledge sharing	Not available
Time tracking	Integrated time-tracking capabilities for tasks and projects	Not available
Team collaboration	Real-time chat, whiteboards, comments, and integrations for seamless collaboration	Team scheduling (round-robin, collective) and calendar integration for meeting coordination
Automation	Custom automations for repetitive tasks and workflows	Automated reminders, follow-ups, and calendar syncing
Integrations	Extensive third-party integrations, including Slack, Google Drive, and Zapier	Integrates with CRMs, Stripe, PayPal, marketing tools, and productivity platforms
Analytics	Dashboards for tracking team performance, workload, and project progress	Analytics and insights focused on meeting performance and scheduling efficiency
AI features	AI-powered tools for task management, content creation, and project recommendations	Not available
Mobile app	Yes, fully functional mobile app for task and project management	Yes, a mobile app for scheduling and managing meetings
Whiteboards	Collaborative visual planning tools for brainstorming and ideation	Not available

What Is ? 

is your everything app for work that can simplify your workflows, improve team productivity, and support better planning. 

From emails and tasks to checklists, sprints, and project documentation, unifies all the necessary tools, increasing collaboration effectiveness by up to 30%. 

But doesn’t just consolidate all your tools; it also creates a smoother experience for your teams. You can assign tasks, schedule calls, track progress with customizable views and dashboards, and improve teamwork with features like comments and @mentions. 

With the newly enhanced Calendar, you can now schedule and join meetings directly from your workspace—blending planning and execution without ever switching tabs.

All of this is done without having to switch between tabs. ✅ 

also excels as a powerful project management calendar app. It allows you to set clear timelines, create task dependencies, and easily manage short-term and long-term goals.

Whether you’re planning your day, week, or month, has the right view for it—choose from Calendar View, Timeline View, or Gantt charts to visually take stock of your work. You can even set recurring tasks to automate the planning of regular activities so nothing slips through the cracks.

What truly sets apart is its flexibility and accessibility. As a cloud-based platform, it’s designed to support teams wherever they are, whether working in real-time or asynchronously.

Something that Marianela Fernandez, a Water Treatment Consultant from Eco Supplier Panamá, highlights: 

features

has features that make managing projects, tasks, and workflows easier, smarter, and at scale. 

For example, Walk the Room (WtR) needed a way to improve its production planning as the business grew. By using , they connected teams, improved collaboration, and made task management more efficient. 

What started with 28 seats has grown to over 70 active users in just 20 months. This growth shows how has scaled with WtR, becoming a key part of their success.

With its wide range of tools designed for customization and collaboration, can help your teams stay organized and connected. 

Let’s take a look at some of its standout features that can make this possible:

Feature #1: Plan, Schedule, and Stay Ahead with Calendar

Calendar is your command center for organizing tasks, events, and meetings in one place.

Whether mapping out your week or reviewing event information, planning a campaign, or coordinating a cross-functional team, the Calendar gives you total visibility and control over your time. You can toggle between daily, weekly, or monthly views to see upcoming tasks, deadlines, and events at a glance. Tasks can be color-coded by project or priority to help you stay focused.

But goes beyond task planning. With the built-in scheduling functionality, you can create calendar events, invite attendees, and even join meetings directly from your workspace. Say goodbye to tab-switching—your calls, tasks, and projects are finally in sync. Use Calendar’s in-built AI to suggest time blocks and re-jigged priorities based on due dates.

It also integrates with tools like Google Calendar and Outlook, so your schedule stays updated in real time. You can schedule recurring events or meetings, attach agendas, and track the next steps—all linked to your projects and tasks.

✅ Drag-and-drop rescheduling
✅ Custom filtering by assignee, priority, or tag
✅ Two-way calendar sync and join links for calls
✅ In-line event creation within task views

Need to fast-track your weekly or monthly planning? Use the Calendar Planner Template to organize your days with custom tags, filters, and pre-built views.

With the new Calendar, you’re not just visualizing your workload but actively managing it.

Feature #2: Coordinate Team Meetings with

An essential planner feature? Seamlessly managing meetings.

The Meetings features take that hassle out of scheduling and managing meetings. 

Instead of toggling between a calendar app and your project management platform, you can schedule, track, and run effective meetings directly within . 

The calendar integration syncs meeting times with tasks and projects while setting agendas within , which keeps meetings focused and productive. 

Afterward, you can add action items, decisions, and notes directly to the meeting task to keep follow-ups organized. This seamless integration helps keep everyone aligned, turning meetings into actionable next steps instead of just calendar events.

Feature #3: Plan your calendar with templates

With the Calendar Planner Template, you can plan your days, weeks, and months without starting from scratch. 

One of the standout features of the Calendar Planner Template is its versatility. It allows you to switch between multiple views—whether you need a monthly, weekly, or daily breakdown of your tasks and events, the template can be adjusted to fit your needs. 

This daily planner template’s customizable tags and filters further enhance your ability to organize tasks by category, helping you stay focused on what matters most.

You can add detailed descriptions, attachments, subtasks, and checklists to tasks within the calendar view. This makes it easy to manage both high-level task scheduling and thorough project planning in one place.

Feature #4: Take notes, summarize, and automate your way to a better day

What if your planner app could take some tasks off your plate? Brain can! It has integrated AI features to bring the power of automation and smart suggestions directly to your workflow.

One standout feature is the AI Notetaker, which automatically records, transcribes and summarizes your meetings. Instead of scrambling to jot down action items, the AI Notetaker captures decisions, next steps, and key discussion points—making your meetings more productive and easier to follow up on.

Paired with task context, the AI Notetaker ensures every meeting stays actionable, automatically linking insights to relevant workspaces. You can even create tasks directly from your meeting summaries, instantly turning a conversation into execution.

Brain also helps you:

• Automate repetitive tasks
• Generate summaries for long task lists
• Suggest improvements to project workflows
• Analyze data trends and generate progress reports

These AI-powered features help you stay ahead of deadlines, reduce manual effort, and make more informed decisions.

pricing

What Is Calendly? 

Calendly is a leading appointment scheduling software that simplifies meeting coordination. 

Its primary function is to eliminate the back-and-forth emails typically involved in finding a suitable meeting time. It lets users set their availability preferences, share a link, and let others book appointments directly into their synced calendar.

It connects with personal and professional calendars (Google, Outlook, Office 365, iCloud) to show real-time availability and prevent double bookings. Its simplicity appeals to individuals, while its features scale well for teams and large enterprises needing streamlined external scheduling.  

Calendly features

Calendly excels because it’s easy to use and integrates well into your daily routine. Let’s break down its key features:

Feature #1: Simplified calendar integration

Calendly connects with popular calendar tools like Google Calendar, Outlook, and Office 365. 

Once connected, it automatically tracks your schedule and updates your availability in real time. You can avoid double bookings or scheduling conflicts effortlessly

Feature #2: Customizable availability for flexible meeting booking

You’re in complete control of when you’re available for meetings. Calendly lets you:

• Set specific working hours
• Add buffer times before and after meetings
• Adjust for time zones or meeting locations

This ensures you only book meetings when it works for you, helping you stay organized and stress-free.

Feature #3: Video conferencing integration for online meetings

Calendly integrates with tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.

When someone schedules a meeting, the platform automatically adds a video conferencing link to the event. You don’t need to set it up manually—it’s all handled for you, saving time and effort.

Feature #4: Custom event types and link sharing for more control

Calendly lets you create custom meeting types to suit your needs. For example:

• One-on-one meetings
• Group sessions
• Webinars or workshops

You can set the duration, location, and attendees’ meeting requirements. You can even add forms or questions for people to fill out when they book a meeting so you’re fully prepared in advance.

You can generate a personalized Calendly link to share with clients, coworkers, or anyone who needs to schedule time with you.

Calendly pricing

• Free
• Standard: $12/month per seat
• Teams: $20/month per seat
• Enterprise: Starts at $15k/year

vs. Calendly: Features Compared 

Both tools are excellent within their respective domains. Here’s how they compare on key features:

1. Task and project management

excels as a project management platform, offering tools like task lists, Gantt charts, timelines, calendars, and Kanban boards. It allows users to create subtasks, add task dependencies, and assign custom statuses for automated workflows. 

Features like time tracking, workload management, and goal tracking make it a comprehensive solution for managing projects of all sizes. 

’s monthly calendar templates, Custom Fields, and reporting tools simplify task organization and progress tracking. 

Calendly, on the other hand, is not designed for task or project management. Its sole focus is scheduling meetings, so it lacks task creation, assignment, or progress-tracking features.

2. Scheduling and calendar integration

includes a robust Calendar View for planning and a full Calendar for scheduling and managing events. With features like attendee invites, join links, calendar syncing, and in-task scheduling, now provides an integrated experience for time management. While Calendly still leads in advanced availability and scheduling automation, quickly closes the gap by embedding scheduling into its broader productivity suite.

Calendly, on the other hand, is purpose-built for scheduling. It automatically syncs with the most popular calendars, such as Google Calendar, Outlook, and Apple Calendar, to ensure no overlaps or double bookings.

Additional features like buffer times, time zone detection, and customizable event types make Calendly ideal for managing complex schedules. Its automated reminders and follow-ups further simplify meeting coordination.

3. Collaboration tools

Collaboration is one of ’s core strengths. Every feature on the platform—from chat to comments and whiteboards to documents—has been built to facilitate communication with your team.

Its ability to centralize team communication within tasks or projects ensures fewer tools are needed. Additionally, teams can share project updates through dashboards and reports.

Calendly, though, provides limited collaboration tools. 

It supports team scheduling features like round-robin assignments and collective scheduling, which help coordinate team availability. However, it doesn’t offer features like task-level communication or collaborative editing of documents.

4. Automations

provides advanced automations for various workflows, such as moving tasks between statuses, sending reminders, or assigning tasks based on triggers like due dates. These automations are highly customizable, enabling users to tailor them to their project needs.

Since Calendly focuses solely on scheduling, its automations are tailored to that aspect. It offers features like automated meeting reminders, follow-up emails, and workflows for approval-based scheduling. These automations save time by reducing back-and-forth communication.

5. Time tracking

includes built-in time tracking, enabling users to log hours directly within tasks. This feature is invaluable for businesses needing to track billable hours or assess team productivity.

also supports integrations with third-party time tracking tools like Toggl and Harvest for additional flexibility.

On the contrary, Calendly does not offer time-tracking features. It’s dedicated to scheduling, which means it doesn’t include tools for tracking time spent on tasks or projects.

6. Integrations

integrates with over 1,000 apps, including Slack, Zoom, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams—and even Calendly!

Its API also allows developers to create custom integrations. Whether you need to manage communication, file sharing, or workflow automation, offers extensive compatibility.

While Calendly’s integrations are sufficient for scheduling workflows, the overall number and variety of integrations are more limited than .

7. User interface

’s interface helps you manage your site properly—whether it’s project timelines, team collaboration, or calendar events—everything stays streamlined in one place. While this versatility is a strength, it can also make the UI feel overwhelming for first-time users. It’s best suited for users willing to invest time in learning the platform.

Calendly’s interface is clean and user-friendly, making it ideal for beginners. Setting up events, defining availability, and sharing scheduling links are intuitive processes that require minimal learning.

8. Ease of use

Due to its extensive feature set, has a steeper learning curve. However, its comprehensive tutorials, schedule templates, and support resources make onboarding manageable for motivated users.

Calendly is designed for ease of use, allowing even first-time users to set up events and share scheduling links within minutes. Its simplicity makes it accessible to non-technical users.

vs. Calendly on Reddit

When Redditors discuss vs. Calendly, the discussion often revolves around the specific problems each tool solves and how well it fits into everyday workflows. 

For those needing a project management solution, is frequently a favorite. 

Redditors who use highlight its customization options, saying it’s great for teams juggling multiple tasks and deadlines. Many users love its flexibility—offering views like Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and timelines—along with built-in features like time tracking and reporting. 

A common complaint on Reddit remains ’s vast feature set, which can feel overwhelming, especially for solo users or small teams that might not need its full power.

Meanwhile, Calendly is a go-to recommendation for people looking to simplify scheduling. 

Redditors who have tried Calendly often praise its ease of use and time-saving functionality, particularly for coordinating meetings across different time zones. 

It’s described as “set it and forget it,” many appreciate that it eliminates the tedious back-and-forth of finding availability.

However, some Redditors note its limitations, pointing out that Calendly doesn’t go beyond scheduling—it’s not designed for managing tasks or workflows.

Calling both and Calendly “planner apps” highlights their different approaches to planning. Calendly excels at planning meetings and automating the scheduling process. excels as a Calendly alternative at planning work—tasks, projects, goals, and deadlines – while providing tools to manage the time and meetings around that work.  

For teams needing a comprehensive platform to manage tasks and projects, collaborate, track goals, and handle internal planning and scheduling, is the clear winner. Its versatility and integrated feature set provide far greater overall value and eliminate the need for multiple separate tools.

If your only need is to automate the booking of external appointments and easily share your availability, Calendly remains an excellent, best-in-class solution. It does one job exceptionally well.

However, for holistic work planning, project execution, and team collaboration, offers the depth and flexibility that Calendly, by design, does not. It empowers you to manage not just your schedule but your entire workflow.

Sign up for a free trial now to get started.

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