Clockwise vs. Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company vs. x.ai

This is great for Operations people who need to parse through many calendars at once when scheduling meetings, even if the rest of the organization isn't using it. Clockwise does not allow you to put meetings on other people's calendars, though, or find times for meetings that you aren't in, so keep that in mind. It has still been a life-saver for me. Clockwise isn't great for scheduling client meetings due to the fact that it automatically places emojis in the names of the meetings, and there are other little branding things that are impossible to remove even on paid plans. I tended to just find time for the meetings in Clockwise and then move back to Google Calendar to schedule them

Incentivized

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

X.ai is very well suited for a departmental type use where Amy has access to everyone's calendar. It is a requirement that people keep their calendars up to date and live by them. Otherwise Amy might think that you are free when you have a flight booked or are on vacation. She is extremely good for those times when a prospect agrees to talk to you at a conference. I just send them a quick email, cc Amy and tell her to set up a call, and it magically shows up on my calendar!

Incentivized

• Dedicates travel time for any offsite meetings.
• Dedicates personal "breather" time built into your schedule.
• Allows for collaboration meetings across departments.

Incentivized

• 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

• x.ai makes it easy to initiate, schedule, and manage meetings with internal and external constituents. Especially in the case of internal constituents, scheduling is almost instantaneous on the team plan because the AI can see the available/busy schedules for anyone in our G Suite domain and schedule meetings based on my preferences and the other person's availability.
• The calendar function makes it easy for me to share a limited calendar with others so that they can automatically schedule a meeting with me without having to go back and forth.
• The customer service team at x.ai is stellar. They are kind, quick to respond, and typically resolve cases on the first try. They are also incredibly receptive to feedback and new ideas that often get incorporated into the product.

Incentivized

• Sometimes I am unable to remove the "travel time" slot booked on my calendar for offsite meetings. It's a bit glitchy and reappears after deleting.

Incentivized

• 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

• One person mentioned that the zoom link isn't easy to open from the calendar appointment
• Some people have been confused by using the names "Amy" or "Andrew", not realizing these are AI bots. So, I now use the "X.ai scheduler" to avoid confusion

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

It doesn't have a dark mode, which is not fun. There is no Month or Year view which isn't great, only day or week. It's hard to get used to and the flexible meetings aren't as intuitive as they claim to be/should be. This is great for scheduling, but in terms of functioning as a calendar, it's not my go-to choice. The JOIN button for the upcoming virtual meeting is nice, though. Clockwise would have gotten a nine if I could schedule meetings on other people's calendars or remove my availability from the equation when scheduling meetings that I won't be in

Incentivized

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

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

Support has been quick. We have not really had an issue, more just implementation questions.

Clockwise has additional features/bells and whistles that the others do not. For example, the travel time feature if you are booking meetings that you need to drive to and from. Also booking across teams, rather than having to enter each individual manually

Incentivized

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

Heard about Claralabs AI assistant from friends using this service. But I found x.ai to be suited for my requirements. Claralabs is also good but when it comes to pricing and ROI, x.ai is better.

Incentivized

• Time savings.
• Time management.
• Lower stress levels - preventing burn out.

Incentivized

• 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

• I have hours back in my schedule every week, meaning I have more billable time, free time, and fewer things to worry about!
• Having an AI assistant fits for my personal brand.

Incentivized