Online calendar or scheduler

December 10, 2018 11:06 AM

I need a simple appointment scheduler/calendar for clients to use for a one-time scheduling of meetings with me. Ideally this would be a Google Calendar appointment scheduler function, but they seem to reserve this for "work or school accounts" . I assume this means gsuite and I don't have a good reason to have it otherwise. Is there another option or should I bite the bullet and pay for GSuite just for this one function?

I'm an individual offering handyman/home repair services in a super busy market, and I need an appointment scheduler that doesn't require prospective "clients" to sign up for a new site with login and password in order to schedule with me- they will only schedule an initial meeting with me once and I'm worried about losing clients if they have to click through a bunch of stuff. I do a lot of small jobs and sometimes gain or lose clients based ENTIRELY on how quickly the communication goes.

I'm periodically away from a computer for many days at a time and am super busy, and sometimes get a flood of client requests all at once. Scheduling with them gets overwhelming when I'm talking to them variously via text, voice, and email and am only looking at a small phone screen when I do all my communicating while also trying to make progress on a job. I work morning to night some weeks because I do my regular work and then go look at jobs in the evening, which doesn't leave me a lot of time to also have regular 'office hours' time in the evening to organize all the email/scheduling communicating. Because some of the prospective clients are in a hurry, it's bad to make them wait til I get around to emailing them back in response to scheduling-related messages- I tend to lose them to someone else who's more available.

I'd like to automate this process a little, hopefully by using Google Calendar, which virtually everyone already has. I want a process where they look at my calendar/scheduler, and pick one of the available evenings for example, without signing up, and I want that to block that timeslot out (ie make it unavaialble) immediately- basic appointment scheduler stuff. I DO NOT want to pay for one of the appointment schedulers that massage therapists and other providers of recurring services get, as this is only a one-off, one-time thing for each client.

I'm sure someone will suggest Doodle (because it doesn't require making an account) but I'm not sure there's a good option for my situation there (it's for group polling for meetings with multiple people).

Is getting myself on gsuite my best option?

posted by twoplussix to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Hmmmm, maybe something like Calendly might work for you?
posted by diffuse at 11:08 AM on December 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: to be clear, the reason I don't want to use one of the 'recurring client scheduler' things is not the cost, it's the fact that people typically have to sign up and create an account. That's great for massage therapists who want to build an email list of clients, but I don't need that function and don't want clients to jump through even the most basic hoops.
posted by twoplussix at 11:09 AM on December 10, 2018

Timify seems to have a free product that will do what you want it to. The demo on their site has a 'guest' option with no login/password required to make a booking, just basic details (name, phone number).
posted by Happy Dave at 11:16 AM on December 10, 2018

Response by poster: also, sorry to threadsit!

I haven't actually confirmed that "this option is for work or school accounts" actually refers to gsuite, but I have another question:

Is there any other good reason why a solo handywoman without employees or a website might want to have gsuite? I don't really want to put up a site (buying a domain is required for gsuite) as I get enough business already and don't need to impress people with a website for legitimacy, but I'd love to hear suggestions if I'm missing something.
posted by twoplussix at 11:24 AM on December 10, 2018

Your time is worth money, and while you're probably have to throw a bit of money at this problem to solve it, it should end up paying for itself quite quickly. A premium plan with wordpress.com will run you $10 month, plus whatever it costs you for a domain name after the first year, and you can build a simple website that has a scheduler plugin to allow people to set up appointments. The advantage of having your own domain name is obvious; when folks call, you can just tell them to go to my-business-site.com and book their appointment at their convenience. Also, by owning your own domain & site, you avoid the risk that a free scheduling service might go out of business or change their terms. You might not think you need a website to get more business or look more legit, but that's not all a website is for... it's also for providing and keeping control of the ways that folks use to get in touch with you. And by listing the kinds of work you do, you can also filter out folks that are looking for somebody to do things that you don't do, so that's gonna save you some time and effort right there.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 1:38 PM on December 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: All your clients have to do with Calendly is click on the Calendly link and select a time that works for them.

They don't have to sign up for anything.

Calendly works with whatever personal calendar you use.

It's really simple.
posted by JamesBay at 1:55 PM on December 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

I book appointments with someone who uses YouCanBook.Me and it's really easy and doesn't require me to sign up or create an account.
posted by hukka at 2:53 PM on December 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I started using Calendly for this recently, and it is great. It is easy for people to sign up, as mentioned. You can customize the fields people have to enter when they sign up, I added one for Agenda so I have a note in my calendar for each meeting saying what it is about. You can set a time range for appointments each day. It is also easy to change that on specific days (showing no availability if you are out of town, or shorter hours if you have a doctor appointment). Free use gives you one appointment type. If you want to have multiple appointment options of different lengths of time you need to pay.

It has made my life much less annoying.
posted by medusa at 7:48 AM on December 12, 2018