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Calendly vs. PayPal Payments Pro vs. Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Calendly

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/ACalendly 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

    PayPal Payments Pro

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/APayPal Payments Pro is an enterprise-class ecommerce payment solution, that provides payment processing security to build a professional-grade ecommerce site. It can be configured to meet business needs and works across devices. Users can tap into over 390 million active customer accounts around the globe.

    $0.02

    per transaction

    Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/AAcuity Scheduling is an appointment management platform developed by the company of the same name in New York and acquired by Squarespace in 2019.

    $14

    per month

    Pricing
    CalendlyPayPal Payments ProAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Editions & Modules
    Standard
    $10
    per month (billed annually) per seat
    Teams
    $16
    per month (billed annually) per seat
    Enterprise
    Starts at $15k
    per year
    QR code Transactions
    1.90% + fixed fee
    per transaction
    Charity Transactions
    2.20% + fixed fee
    per transaction
    Commercial Transactions - In-Store
    2.70% + fixed fee
    per transaction
    Commercial Transactions - Online
    2.90% + fixed fee
    per transaction
    PayPal's pay later offers
    2.90% + fixed fee
    per transaction
    Venmo
    2.90% + fixed fee
    per transaction
    Emerging
    $14
    per month
    Growing
    $23
    per month
    Powerhouse
    $45
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    CalendlyPayPal Payments ProAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Free Trial
    YesNoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsMonthly billing also available.——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    CalendlyPayPal Payments ProAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Considered Multiple Products
    Calendly
    Chose Calendly
    Calendly is also very affordable, starting at free! The Salesforce integration is beneficial for those that would like some record-keeping of their appointments, or integrate it with other processes.
    I don't charge per appointments (clients are billed differently), so an …
    Incentivized
    Chose Calendly
    Although Acuity offers a cheaper solution when you are using teams and has the ability to add pictures to appointments with a nice interface. It pales in comparison to Calendly when integrating calendars, especially multiple calendar integrations.

    Calendly’s interface is easy …
    Incentivized
    Chose Calendly
    I was using Google Calendar before this to track my meetings but this one has several advantages over that. It syncs better with Outlook. It is easier to use. And you can automate a large part of your meeting set up. I don't know if any other software can do all of that.
    Incentivized
    Chose Calendly
    Calendly is cost-free, simple, and fast to use. It has never given me any problems or ever given me a reason to look elsewhere for another scheduler.
    Incentivized
    PayPal
    Chose PayPal Payments Pro
    PayPal gets me money quicker than Stripe does, but Stripe integrates with Acuity.
    Incentivized
    Squarespace
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    I chose Acuity over Calendly because of the better integrations with my tech, and the payment options.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Calendly and Acuity Scheduling have a similar feature set and both are user friendly. The reason I selected Acuity Scheduling, ultimately, is that it offers an always free plan that has a robust enough feature set to make the software practical and usable, whereas the free tier …
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    I prefer Acuity Scheduling to Calendly mainly for the customization capabilities. It fits many different business models. Calendly is more basic.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Calendly did not allow clients to make multiple appts at once so it was too much of a hassle for clients who wanted to schedule 5 appts. I like that Acuity allows them to do it in one form.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    I liked Calendly, but Acuity seemed to be the industry leader and it works with SquareSpace, which is a huge plus. I want whatever app I use to be around for the long haul.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    I had issues with the Calendly/Zoom integration. No problems integrating Zoom and Acuity.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    The Acuity embedded calendar loads. Fast. That's KEY to everything. I don't like a slow load time because it's representative of my brand. The UI design, while not 100% yet, or as beautiful as Calendly's, is just what I need. They come up with all sorts of new, innovative ways …
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Calendly I just like better but Acuity is free, so I’ll get used to it.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Doodle is better for arranging group meetings; AS isn't really designed for this.
    Calendly is OK, but doesn't have a mobile app which AS does.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    I chose Acuity because I have a Squarespace website and it seamlessly integrated into my website very easily.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Acuity's user interface was much cleaner and easier to use when scheduling meetings. We love that you can embed it within your own website and it shows the calendar right there instead of redirecting you. Acuity gave us the ability to customize our meeting types and the …
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Acuity is just way easier for me to use and has everything that I need (and their packages are very reasonably priced).
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Acuity is the most feature packed and customisable by far.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Acuity Scheduling has better features and much more ease of use.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Overall, the cost, ease of use, and setup were all above average with Acuity. I tried many different programs (some not listed as a comparison) but I was very happy with Acuity and am glad we stuck with it.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Before Acuity I was doing everything on my own. I've selected Acuity because it was recommended by a few colleagues. I did the trial week and honestly, I find it great.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Before, I was manually scheduling appointments into my Google calendar. Now, it's all done through the site. No more back and forth conversations about: Does this date work for you? What about this date? This time or that time? etc. My client can see all my availability and set …
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Acuity is by far more robust and I think it looks more sleek when embedded or even if you give someone the Acuity direct link.
    Incentivized
    Chose Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    When I was first looking for a booking system, I tried many such as Satori, the Coaches Console, Calendly and several other free and paid services, but none were as easy to use, as full of fabulous features or offered as fantastic customer service support as Acuity. It's hand's …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    98%
    Would buy again
    62 Answers
    85%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    96%
    Would buy again
    26 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    61 Answers
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    36 Answers
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    26 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    63 Answers
    90%
    Happy with the feature set
    36 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    27 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    52 Answers
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    33 Answers
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    24 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    55 Answers
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    35 Answers
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    26 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    CalendlyPayPal Payments ProAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Small Businesses
    Square Appointments
    Score10 out of 10
    Apple Pay
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Square Appointments
    Score10 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Chili Piper
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Payoneer
    Score8 out of 10
    Chili Piper
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Doodle
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Checkout.com
    Score10 out of 10
    Doodle
    Score8.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CalendlyPayPal Payments ProAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.5
    (90 ratings)
    8.2
    (72 ratings)
    9.3
    (48 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.3
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.5
    (9 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.7
    (32 ratings)
    2.3
    (9 ratings)
    9.7
    (16 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CalendlyPayPal Payments ProAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PayPal
    Paypal is great for personal payments as well as business payments for ecommerce of for paying monthly memberships. It is a user friendly software that needs little expertise to get used to. For larger payments, the fees become high therefore it is more suitable for payments of upto few hundred dollars.
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    I think any business can benefit from Acuity Scheduling. In my experience, however, and maybe I just haven’t found the correct settings yet, it’s been difficult to manage 4 business schedules with multiple employees and varying hours that change day-to-day and week-to-week. So I definitely would recommend it to more simple business models with set hours, as it seems like it would have all the functions one might need. I still would recommend to more complex businesses like mine as well, but also include discussion of some of the potential drawbacks.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PayPal
    • PayPal offers me the option of converting my currency deposited in my account to another currency, so I can complete all kinds of payments and send money to employees who are in another country for business reasons.
    • The mobile phone application is too fast, I can make payments to my employees in a matter of seconds without having to wait for the web version to load.
    • Scheduled payments are great. PayPal allows me to add a list of contacts to my PayPal Business account, and after adding the contacts, I can schedule payments for a specific day and time. It's easier to make automated payroll payments with PayPal.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    • Clicking on the link opens up my calendar, which has an uncluttered look, making it easy for my prospects and clients to review their options and make their choice.
    • I am able to customize my schedule, the types of appointments I want to offer, and even decide how many appointments I want in a day. There are so many details that I can customize.
    • I can customize how my calendar and emails look for my prospects and clients so that I come across professional and coordinated. I want the look of my business, website, etc. to have a polished, cohesive, and interesting presence.
    • I love that there is a workshop/class/series option for my workshops. My attendees reserve their place and pay upfront. I can duplicate these events or add future dates. It's wonderful. This saves us a lot of time and is so convenient.
    • I haven't had any trouble with my scheduler. It works flawlessly, so I don't have to take time out of my day to fix, troubleshoot or call customer service.
    • I love that I can add questions for my prospects to answer right away before booking a call. This means 3 fewer steps for me. 1. They answer these questions without an email from me. 2. They make their reservation and get a follow-up email, right away. 3. I customized the follow-up email with more details and actions to take to prepare for our call.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PayPal
    • Sometimes the UX flow would not deliver the customer back to our site, leaving orders in limbo "Pre-approved" status. The customer would call days later asking why we hadn't shipped it.
    • The PayPal logo on the checkout page can be kind of large and obtrusive.
    • They mention new features and programs on their login page, but it's hard to find any details on them deeper in the software.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    • Administrator interface is tricky to use. It is not easy to add new types of meetings or edit the settings on the current types of meetings we have
    • I'd like to see them send out more reminder emails leading up to the meeting scheduled to reduce the number of no-shows and reschedules
    • Make it easier to customize the confirmation emails-- easier ability to add videos and customizable text
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PayPal
    No answers on this topic
    Squarespace
    Acuity Scheduling has been very reliable. If you don't believe me, check out their status page here. They do a pretty decent job maintaining their app. To be fair, it's a pretty simple tool so they shouldn't run into too many hiccups given it doesn't feature near as many options as other applications on the market run.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    PayPal
    No answers on this topic
    Squarespace
    It is very easy to use once you get to know the program but with years of working with the program I am still finding new things that I had wished I knew about earlier. I feel like aspects of the website become hidden that would help productivity a lot if I knew they existed beforehand.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PayPal
    Customer service representatives were unable to explain why customer in Australia were unable to make payments using our link. It turned out that customers in Australia must create an account. PayPal's user interface did not reveal this to our customers in Australia. There was plenty about this issue appearing in online forums and PayPal customer service couldn't explain this. This change in PayPal's usability happened between April and May of 2021 and was done without notice to vendors (like us).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    Every time I had a question on how to do something or had any issues with Acuity Scheduling, mainly in the very beginning, when I was learning the platform, customer service was excellent. They were prompt to respond, friendly, and very helpful until I had the right solution.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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?
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PayPal
    I don't think there's really any competition here. There's Venmo (also owned by PayPal) who is now offering business accounts, but it still isn't quite the same. The closest thing in terms of ease of use would be Apple Pay or Google Pay (and there are a handful of others out there, but we offer Apple and Google Pay). As a business, I prefer Apple or Google Pay to PayPal Payments, but we offer either Google or Apple Pay, PayPal, and credit card options and PayPal is always right up there with credit cards. I don't foresee us ever getting rid of PayPal Payments as an option, but we do try to only offer it on request for higher ticket items or high dollar installment purchases.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    In the case of Schedulicity, the system was awesome (very easy to set up and had some nice features) but did not offer the functionality and flexibility that AcuityScheduling does. In the case of SimplyBook.me, they offer lots of functionality but the interface is extremely complex and you pay a la carte for features so you're going to pay exponentially more for the same set of features as compared to AcuityScheduling. Their customer service was also lacking, in my opinion.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PayPal
    • Our daily revenue has been increased when started PayPal Payments as the payment gateway.
    • Refund rate and recurring revenue is stable and disputes are handled properly.
    • Forex Fluctuations is controlled and solved the buying experience for few users.
    • Solved problem for different currencies and retained our users.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    • Minimizing no shows
    • Giving me back time by taking tasks off my mind/to-do list to focus on bigger more important things
    • Payment management (it helps me make sure I receive my payments/recurring payments and follow up with clients if a payment has failed)
    • Honestly just saving me from scheduling nightmares and headaches
    • Timezones! It does it for you! (I work internationally)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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