Calendly vs. iContact

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.

Incentivized

I would only recommend it if someone was a small business. I think they are the best suited for companies who will send out a coupon or offer here and there. The most recent updates made it more complicated to use for more complicated processes. It is easy to train someone on the program, and so quick to learn. But I would also only stick to the simpler things. I also think the colorful templates are great, and show great creativity. But again, it is hard to justify recommending the program when it isn't WYSIWYG.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Contact management. iContact is really great for entering all your contact. You are able to put them onto different lists, and let them choose which lists they would like to be a part of as well. There are many data fields provided to fill in information.
• Emailing. We use the email feature at least once a month. They are always improving and adding new features, which is very helpful in presenting content in a new and exciting way to our readers. There are many options with remade templates and themes, or you can add your own.
• Insights. It is really helpful being able to have the data to see what is working and what isn't. It is nice to be able to go back and see how things went in the past compared to now. Opens, clicks, shares, etc.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• We also would like to send transactional messages which don't require an opt-out, this is a challenge with iContact. (May be a feature with pro?)
• The regular version of iContact doesn't support event management or logic flows for automated messaging.
• Custom form fields have limited field type options (can't build a drop-down).

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

iContact has been a quick and easy way to send any announcements and news directly to email and social media subscribers. Its tracking and reporting capabilities turn a simple email into a marketing campaign that can be used as a tool to efficiently gauge reader response and customer satisfaction, and ultimately to reach potential customers. The consistency and excellent customer service is what makes this program a pleasant experience.

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

I rate iContact as an easy to use program due to its user friendly dashboard and user interface. Most companies of small to medium size do not have a dedicated marketer, therefore it is someone multitasking who may or may not have this kind of experience. iContact makes it relatively simple and can actually expand one's knowledge in the area of business promotion.

Incentivized

iContact is regularly up and running. Only once has it been unavailable for maintenance, which is to be expected and even desired for optimal performance when needed.

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.

Incentivized

They have always been responsive to any issues or concerns that have arisen with our account. Our customer account manager participates in our monthly county-wide communicators meetings via telephone to ensure that we are getting the most from the service. He also analyzes our lists to help us weed out inactive contacts.

Incentivized

The templates are difficult to customize, and they don't render well in email platforms

i wouldn't be using it if i wasn't satisfied. time is money

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?

Incentivized

I didn't have a say in the decision because I wasn't with the company at the time. I listed HubSpot here because I know we used it in conjunction with iContact for email automation, but HubSpot Email was only recently built-out to the point where it is today. Now, iContact and HubSpot are no longer integrated.

iContact stays the same with the number of users added or taken away. It certainly remains reliable despite increased usage, and so, can be considered scaleable in that aspect.

• 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.

Incentivized

• We have a template for webinars that we send every month. We just edit it and send. This couldn't be easier (once you know where to find it).
• We like the breakdown of statistics in the dashboard. They're easy to read.
• iContact isn't a comprehensive solution, so it is only one of a few products we use for marketing.

Incentivized