Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) vs. CoSchedule Marketing Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
iCal
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
The Apple iCloud Calendar (formerly iCal), is the calendar tool associated to Apple's productivity product suite.N/A
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
CoSchedule provides a content calendar, content optimization, and contentmarketing products, with users among 50,000 marketers worldwide, helping them organize their work, deliver projects on time, and prove marketing team value.N/A
Pricing
Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal)CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
iCalCoSchedule Marketing Suite
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal)CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Features
Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal)CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Content Creation
Comparison of Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal)
-
Ratings
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
7.3
1 Ratings
8% below category average
Ideation00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Content collaboration00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Content calendar00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Content Publishing
Comparison of Content Publishing features of Product A and Product B
Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal)
-
Ratings
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
10.0
1 Ratings
23% above category average
Content distribution00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Content promotion00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Content automation00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Content Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Content Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal)
-
Ratings
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
10.0
1 Ratings
29% above category average
Closed-loop tracking and reporting00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Content performance analytics00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal)CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Small Businesses
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Score 10.0 out of 10
Vyond
Vyond
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Score 10.0 out of 10
Vyond
Vyond
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Google Calendar
Google Calendar
Score 9.4 out of 10
Vyond
Vyond
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal)CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
5.3
(13 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Usability
5.8
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal)CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Apple
Especially if they use apple devices, I would recommend this over other cloud based calendars for its tight integration with apple devices. You can generally add events by simply highlighting the relevant information and adding to the calendar. Or Apple mail will often automatically detect an event and give to the option to add it to your iCal with a single click of a button.
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CoSchedule
CoSchedule is great for businesses or agencies who need an overview of all their marketing efforts, and who want to establish collaboration between multiple departments. The calendar view is one of the best we've worked with and makes it easy to see exactly what's happening. There is some slight clunkiness when it comes to admin-related tasks, and a few things aren't easy to find, but there's great support.
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Pros
Apple
  • Perfectly syncs between all devices
  • It allows me to set multiple reminders before a meeting
  • When I add an address it automatically links to Apple Maps so I can see where i am going and also how long it will take me. I can easiy click on the link and it will start navigation for me, pretty cool
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CoSchedule
  • Best time to post is great at updating to when we get the most engagement by platform
  • Requeue tool to slate out additional posts for a given piece of content is a huge time saver
  • Aggregate analytics tool shows us a peek across our posts on a given platform that's actually easier to read than the platform itself
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Cons
Apple
  • I would love it to have more visualizations and not just the classic one in a common calendar and that it could be customized
  • You have the possibility to have a face-to-face call by sharing a link that, in my opinion, could be improved by creating groups of only contacts and limiting access to the meeting.
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CoSchedule
  • The platform seems sluggish as of late, likely as a result of the robust amount of data we are entering and the number of filters we're creating.
  • Social media scheduling exists, but we do run into publishing errors more often then we'd like.
  • Task templates when updated are not retroactive, so when you create projects for an entire year and then change a template, you need to go back and change them manually.
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Usability
Apple
As I've said, Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) does not work well when integrated with Microsoft Exchange/Outlook calendars. It's not very usable. Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) does not stay in sync well at all with Microsoft Exchange/Outlook. You will waste a lot of time manually resyncing your calendars and you will never be able to fully trust Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal).
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CoSchedule
The interface is very intuitive, from setting up social profiles, to posting, to tags, to optimizing for best day/time to post. It's super easy to scan the aggregate analytics. The calendar is very easy to grok at a glance, and the more advanced functionality is intuitive to set up.
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Support Rating
Apple
No answers on this topic
CoSchedule
I didn't have to use their official support, but I can say that they put out a lot of content online to help users. Their YouTube page has quite an array of tutorial videos explaining how things work and how to get the most out of their tools. If you're struggling, before picking up a phone or blasting off an email, try searching for your problem on YouTube or their forums.
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Alternatives Considered
Apple
For our Mac and IOS users, the use of the native iOS calendar and the cloud associated with it was an obvious choice for us, especially with the distribution of Apple products to our teams out in the field. For android users, it is easy to access the same services using the web-based client, and iCal allows various account types to be added to calendar invites. The iCal application allows the addition of 3rd party email and calendar accounts allow to be seamlessly integrated. All of the calendar accounts can be overlayed along with the native iCloud accounts. Google Calendar by comparison struggled to do all of these things as well, preferring their google Meet as the conference software and preferring Gmail accounts over all other types.
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CoSchedule
CoSchedule provides collaborative planning of projects. The calendar view is very well designed. Meetings and tasks can be scheduled and tracked easily. Whatever is being done, no matter how big the task/project is, it gives a bird-eye view of everything. Additionally, it also integrated very well with WordPress. Their customer service team is also very helpful.
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Return on Investment
Apple
  • As mentioned previously iCal provides more info to me than just an appointment
  • i can add attachments like notes or links to other services inside the appointment and these will synchronise across my devices.
  • The search functionality in iCal allows me to save items in the notes and then find them at a later stage. An example - I save key information about meetings or activities and then when I am looking for it at a later stage i can jjst search iCal and find it without having to look for documents or through my notes.
  • There is no default video call setting (like Google has Meet as a default and Microsoft has Teams) this is a problem in that I can't schedule video calls so the work around is that I sync to a Gmail calender and then schedule the video call (Meet) in Google
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CoSchedule
  • It has saved me about 1 hour per day to keep things organized from Asana to WordPress.
  • By not having a functioning Google Doc import feature, it costs me about 30 minutes for each blog post to copy paste all the content, images, etc.
  • By bundling too many features into their plans, many of which we don't use (e.g. social media scheduling), we lose a little ROI because we are not using the full feature set. We use and prefer Buffer for social media, so when CoSchedule raised their price $40+ per month on features we would not be using, that hurt.
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ScreenShots

CoSchedule Marketing Suite Screenshots

Screenshot of Calendar Organizer: Visualizes everything in real time, and shows every project on a unified calendar of record. Helps to keep stakeholders in the know and pivot quickly when priorities change.Screenshot of Content Organizer: Eliminates content bottlenecks from idea to promotion. Optimizes the editorial process, and centralizes publishing and promotion by connecting marketing tools.Screenshot of Work Organizer: Maximizes resources by implementing consistent, defined workflows to speed up production and identify how urgent changes impact proactively planned work.Screenshot of Asset Organizer: Catalogs and maintains control of brand assets with customized taxonomies to find, update, and share files. Folders and files can be shared with stakeholders to make sure work is up-to-date.Screenshot of Idea Board: Used to write down ideas, take in requests, and prioritize the projects that are up-next, before giving them a publish date and putting them on the calendar organizer.Screenshot of An AI-powered Marketing Intelligence Assistant that can be used to write first-draft copy, complete work faster, and generate new ideas.