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.
I've tried some of the other online booking services and while there were good, they didn't have all of the features that Zoho Bookings does and since I'm already a Zoho One subscriber, it doesn't cost me anything more. I think virtually any type of business can use Bookings as it's not geared to a specific industry but can be customized for use in any type of industry. I would love to see salons use it as I think it can be truly a way for them to better book clients than using a paper calendar which I see many using. I also think massage therapists would also benefit but using Bookings. If you are a solopreneur or have a sales team, there's no way you can't benefit by using Bookings for your phone appointments, Zoom/Video meetings, or in-person meetings. There is also a resource function which allows you to block out conference rooms and other resources.
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.
It still needs more robust features and customization, like workflows and such. I'm confident they'll continue improving it, but some particular customization settings aren't available, in terms of triggers, content, look and feel, but it is mostly very detailed and particular. If you're ok with adapting to it, it is an excellent tool.
A lot of things are not great as this is a new tool, but they fix it relatively quickly. They don't have a direct phone number, but Zoho support has good service overall
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.
I found the integration with the two above is great if you're a Google Calendar user which we are not. While with Zoho Calendar we can have two way integration with Google Calendar there wasn't a need to do so. With Zoho Bookings which also integrates with Google Calendar we didn't have to worry about that as the integration with our Zoho Calendar was virtually automatic. There was also the cost consideration as the two above have a free version it was limited and didn't have all the bells and whistles we needed. Zoho Bookings provide us with everything from a single sign-on web browser and mobile app
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.
