Why I made the jump from Calendly to Acuity
For all you yoga teachers, health coaches, and personal trainers who are struggling with online booking… this one’s fore you:
I’ve been weighing this decision for some time now… I started using the free version of Calendly in 2016 to allow clients to book sessions with me. This has been a great tool since I work with clients across many time zones with varying schedules. Over the years, I’ve gradually upgraded my platform adding new features and options. But sadly, I’ve maxed my growth with Calendly. I’ve been piecing together two calendaring programs because Calendly just didn’t do everything I needed.
So, with a big, deep breath, this week, I made the switch.
Three major sticking points for me:
#1. Payment. Acuity allows clients to choose to pay with Stripe or PayPal. Calendly only allows me to offer clients one option at a time. They have both payment options available, but I can only offer one or the other. This is a major pain for me because half my clients prefer to use PayPal, while the other half prefers to use their credit/debit with Stripe. Cue the manual labor…
#2. Recurring Appointments. Acuity allows for recurring appointments! This is huge. I’ve been converting most of my clients over to regularly scheduled weekly or bimonthly calls. This helps us all stay on track! Calendly doesn’t allow for recurring appointments. So, I’ve been managing half of my bookings with Calendly and the other half with old-school iCal. This was fine for a while, but my schedule has gotten too complex to manage with two systems.
#3. Rescheduling/Cancelling Appointments. Acuity allows me to let clients cancel/reschedule appointments AND allows me to limit the window of time right before an appointment they can cancel. So, no last-minute cancellations. This is HUGE. Calendly is all or nothing. Either clients can’t cancel/reschedule at all or they can cancel/reschedule up until the minute before your appointment. Those in the biz know what a pain these last-minute cancellations can be!
#4. Multiple Appointment Options On One Page. I can offer options for 30, 45, 60-minute appointments on one page. With Calendly, I had to create individual pages for each one. Now, I can send clients to one page and they can decide how much time they want to book AND it’s easy to switch a 30-minute call to a 60-minute call. Streamlining my systems is a big goal for 2019.
#5. Style. Acuity lets me use the custom fonts and colors on my website, so the design is seamless! This has been a major sticking point with me. I want the embedded calendars to match the rest of my site.
#6. Want to book group sessions/workshops? Acuity does that too!
Oh, and I’m still only paying $15/mo. Seriously!? It was time to change.
