Calendly vs. Gist

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Calendly
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Calendly helps organizations globally automate the meeting lifecycle by removing the scheduling back and forth, with the goal of enabling companies to close deals, hire candidates faster, and build relationships.
$12
per month per seat
Gist
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Gist is a unified marketing, sales, and support platform. It includes live chat, a help desk, knowledge base, email marketing, marketing automation, opt-in forms, and more.
$29
per month
Pricing
CalendlyGist
Editions & Modules
Standard
$10
per month (billed annually) per seat
Teams
$16
per month (billed annually) per seat
Enterprise
Starts at $15k
per year
Professional
$29.00
per month
Premium
$99.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CalendlyGist
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMonthly billing also available.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CalendlyGist
Features
CalendlyGist
Chat Analytics and Reports
Comparison of Chat Analytics and Reports features of Product A and Product B
Calendly
-
Ratings
Gist
8.9
2 Ratings
2% above category average
Chat history and transcripts00 Ratings8.92 Ratings
Chat reporting00 Ratings8.92 Ratings
Chat and web analytics00 Ratings8.92 Ratings
Best Alternatives
CalendlyGist
Small Businesses
vcita
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Olark
Olark
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
LeanData
LeanData
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Zoom Workplace
Zoom Workplace
Score 8.5 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CalendlyGist
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(90 ratings)
9.5
(112 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(2 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(4 ratings)
6.7
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(32 ratings)
8.6
(9 ratings)
User Testimonials
CalendlyGist
Likelihood to Recommend
Calendly
It's well suited for music students' lessons. It's well suited for online coaching, primarily through places like Zoom and more. It helps simplify things for your clients, lets you program your schedule, and allows it all to go automatically! If you are working with a senior population, it may be a little tricky for them to sign up and then really hard for them to cancel lessons. There isn't a way to go to the site and cancel. You have to pull up the confirmed email and cancel from there, but people can lose emails.
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Gist
If your marketing model is selling products, services, or SAAS where you are doing inbound marketing and your website will do most of the lead generation and conversion, this is a great product. From live chat, support, event tracking, and automation, you could almost put your entire business on autopilot. If your marketing model is mostly outreach to cold leads and conversion, this software currently does not have any type of sales stages or task generation. I would still use Gist for website inbound but use another software for outreach and cold leads then when they become a lead put them into Gist for marketing automation.
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Pros
Calendly
  • Sync with multiple calendar types so my schedule is always current.
  • Integration with Zoom to schedule meetings, send invites, and populate my Zoom app accordingly.
  • Automatic email communication to all parties with all relevant details in a clear format.
  • Allowing team members to do the same in a way that I'm also notified of what meetings are taking place saves a lot of time in terms of coordinating to find out what other people are doing.
  • Well-designed interface that simplifies everything down to its clearest expression. Language instruction and interaction are wonderfully simple and clear.
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Gist
  • Customer service via a unified inbox so you dont have to separately monitor your twitter, Facebook or IG account for consumer communication there. Gist unified all into one inbox, better than anyone else I've seen in the market. They archive all communications and tie them back to a single user so you get unified customer history / data.
  • Marketing segmentation and automation: they track user history and behavior across the site and have super detailed segmenting capability, on par with ActiveCampaign's, but better I'd say. Better UI for the marketing admin person, and more unified data than in AC.
  • Live chat and chatbot. Usually it's either one or the other but with Gist you can do both seamlessly.
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Cons
Calendly
  • After a meeting is booked, having the ability to change the location without canceling the entire booking.
  • Being able to offer 2 different locked in locations for certain time periods of the day within the same event. So you're not having to create 2 events for the same thing, only different locations.
  • Giving users permission to create their own routing forms. We run an independent business model where our users like to have control over their subscriptions.
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Gist
  • Plan limits can be confusing. For example, there is a monthly charge for support and a monthly charge for "growth," plus there's a separate charge depending on how many contacts and seats you have. Perhaps this is normal in the industry, but it can make it a little challenging to understand the bill every month.
  • The vast amount of features means development will never be as fast as you'd like it to be (even though they release updates all the time). This may not actually be a valid concern, and it certainly isn't unique to Gist (who doesn't have a wishlist they're waiting on their favorite SaaS to get to?), but I do believe the likelihood of being stuck without your desired feature being developed goes up a lot as the product gets bigger and bigger.
  • Email deliverability has been less than perfect in the past, but it has improved drastically in the last year.
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Likelihood to Renew
Calendly
For all reasons like workflows, UI, and the way Calendly keeps all of us engaged through the Collective forum. It's indeed undeniable that no other product covers all business needs like Calendly does. On the other side, this has also reduced the workload by enabling us to focus more on other tasks for the day
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Gist
Gist is a quite reliable service with a lot of added values. We don't need to pay for different Saas for these important features. If I had an issue the team was super responsive and helpful, that is essential for every business. The email delivery is great, so virtually no email has landed into spam folder
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Usability
Calendly
Calendly is extremely easy to use for selecting times and days for meetings. From my end, it's very easy to indicate the days and times that I am available for meetings. I have used other scheduling products, but Calendly has the smoothest way of operating. I highly recommend it for scheduling meetings
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Gist
It’s pretty simple, but it does a lot so there are more complicated features which depend on an individuals ability for software implementation. I am not an IT expert and I’ve managed to implement everything myself, others that are more tech-minded may find everything easier.
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Support Rating
Calendly
There is a lot of support for Calendly. Whenever I have had issues navigating through it, especially as a new user, I found multiple support on the web addressing my questions or concerns. There is a lot of in app informative notes accessible to users to navigate through Calendly when needed.
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Gist
Fantastic support. Ask a question, get an answer within 24 hours every time. And sometimes within a few minutes. They've always come through for me, helpful and, even when it's an issue on my end, they point me in the right direction.
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Alternatives Considered
Calendly
When I started using it, there were not many competitors in this space. I've seen some like Mixmax that seem to work well for solopreneurs or where free version might be better than Calendly's free version. I use the paid version of Calendly and it's just kept serving us well so why change?
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Gist
Gist combines all our previous products into one application and adds many more features that would require more apps. Gist is excellent and a no-brainer all-in-one application when compared to having to manage multiple applications at higher cost. The support from the whole Gist team has been extremely responsive.
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Return on Investment
Calendly
  • Positive: When people want to meet, I can simply send my Calendly link and it takes less than 5 seconds to do.
  • Positive: It integrates well with Zoom, which means that by default all my appointments include Zoom information for a remote call.
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Gist
  • They are perfect for me as a someone who needs a lot of bang for the buck. The chat messenger device on my website alone has brought me new prospects that I did not have to spend money recruiting.
  • I am able to save hours of time with the automated emails that are GDPR compliant.
  • I don't have to pay for a designer to have excellent looking emails either.
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ScreenShots

Calendly Screenshots

Screenshot of how to share a scheduling linkScreenshot of automated workflowsScreenshot of browser extensionsScreenshot of routing formsScreenshot of round robin & collective eventsScreenshot of admin management

Gist Screenshots

Screenshot of Live ChatScreenshot of Email MarketingScreenshot of Marketing Automation WorkflowsScreenshot of Knowledge BaseScreenshot of Meetings