I've researched a lot of salon software, and Timely was the top-of-the-line software that does it all compared to competitors. It has a friendly interface, offers easy ways to communicate with clients via text and emails, and provides insights and reports, so it indeed does everything you need for booking software. On top of that, it's cloud-based, so say goodbye to only accessing your appointment book through your computer at the salon.
Youcanbook.me is great for small businesses or for self-employed professionals who need an easy-to-use and cost-effective solution for handling large numbers of clients. It's great for eliminating inconvenient miscommunication and tedious back-to-back emails in order to set a proper date and/or meeting details. However, if you need a more sophisticated system that fits into your company's IT procedures and carries sensitive data, an in house solution would fit best.
One really helpful feature of YouCanBook.Me for our organization is that everyone can see appointment times in their own time zone. We frequently schedule interviews with applicants nationwide, as well as communicating with team members located in 32 different countries, so this has really simplified scheduling.
We rely heavily on Google Calendar for staff scheduling, so it is great that YouCanBook.Me can sync your availability straight from your calendar as well as automatically adding meetings to your calendar when they are booked.
We use YouCanBook.Me to schedule follow-up calls with people we meet at conferences and other recruiting events. It's really simple to have someone sign up for a call, and this has been a really effective tool for us to stay in communication with prospects.
I don't like the generic email invite to a Zoom meeting it sends out. Once I get the date sent to me in my email, I have to cancel the meeting and re-set the meeting with my own personalized Zoom Invite. Sometimes that is confusing for the prospect. However, now that I write this...I see an article on the web site about creating a unique Zoom meeting invite. I will have to check that out.
I set my work days as 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. but on the calendar it shows a time available at 6 p.m. My last appointment should be listed as 5 p.m., as my appointments are in 30-minute increments and I leave at 5:30 p.m. So that is confusing and resulted in a few appointments booked when I am not actually working.
I book demos for a coworker, and if he is busy in another meeting, I have to block it off in my calendar as "Jack is Busy" so that prospects won't pick a time that is not available for Jack. I wish there was a way I could link his Outlook calendar to my YouCanBook.Me. Perhaps there is, but I am unaware of it.
Timely is by far the most user-friendly and fun to use. It's got a great interface, works on iPads, and training is super easy for the team. Other software is clunky and takes too long to set up and train the team to use.
YouCanBook.Me allows fuller messaging in addition to appointments. Calendly is more minimalist than YouCanBook.Me. I prefer having more control over the look and feel, and functionality than it offers.
Bragging rights, yes. Always cool to tell how automated your business is.
ROI, no. In our case, it wasn't worth the time spent in integration into the website, system setup, plus subscription fee. However, take into account, that High-Value Professional Services is a wrong industry for this product.
Convenience and confidence that there will be no double booking across G Suite and Timely was tested and were really handy at the times.
No ability to use our own SMTP. If your server has Anti-Spoofing DKIM and etc., setting it up with Timely was a nightmare as support had no idea. So a lot of emails were going to Spam on the client's side.
It's helped our Professional Services Team immensely. Although we don't have numbers as far as an ROI, we use it daily across our whole team of 8 project managers.
We also use youcanbook.me to schedule in interviews with our 20+ researchers who are moderating sessions. Our admin team also uses youcanbook.me to allow our employees to schedule our weekly massages.
