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iCal

Score8.5 out of 10

52 Reviews and Ratings

What is iCal?

The Apple iCloud Calendar (formerly iCal), is the calendar tool associated to Apple's productivity product suite.

Categories & Use Cases

Who Buys & Uses Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal)

iCal Reviews

What users are saying about iCal.
View all iCal reviews

Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) For All Calendar Needs

Incentivized
Kayla Edds
Principal Agent in Sales at Bennett Insurance Agency (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are an insurance agency with agents that have multiple days or times that are in and out of the office, we are able to use Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) to be able to coordinate times and dates that everyone will or won't be in the office and it gives others a time block that is color coordinated to be able to organize their own times and dates accordingly. It has been a gamechanger.

Pros

  • Color blocks
  • Ease of use
  • Being able to invite others to calendars
  • Having private or public calendars

Cons

  • Inviting others that may not have iphones to use the calendar and all functions.

Return on Investment

  • Being able to keep up with our employees calendars to schedule appointments for them if needed.
  • Being able to give out information on employees schedules at a glance with ease.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Calendar and Skylight

Other Software Used

Skylight, Amazon Alexa for Business, ChatGPT, CLion, Coralogix, HawkSoft, Infinite Campus, Fetch, SurveyMonkey, Canva, Jotform

Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) is 1 For Apple Users

Incentivized
Josh EdneyView profile
Executive Pastor in Corporate at Bridge Church (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

This platform keeps me organized with meetings and my daily schedule. It ensures I don't have conflicting meetings. I can create multiple calendar types.

Pros

  • Creating a daily schedule
  • Customizing the meeting with links, notes, and attachments
  • The app hands off well from mobile to computer to tablet

Cons

  • Searching for a previous event might not yield the search result you're looking for
  • Disable the option where events are suggested to your calendar
  • Integration with non-Apple devices is behind other calendar platforms

Return on Investment

  • Scheduling a meeting is more efficient
  • I no longer double book meetings
  • I can access my calendar from anywhere and setup a meeting at any time

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Calendar and Calendly

Other Software Used

Slack, ClickUp, QuickBooks Desktop for Mac

iCal is a great time management tool

Incentivized
Brett LevyView profile
CMO in Marketing at Beyond Intent (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am a Mac User and my entire office and ecosystem is Apple so iCal is the main Calendar that is shared between me and my team and my customers. As we are only on Apple devices iCal syncs seamlessly across our iPhones and iPads too. We also have a public iCal that is used to book appointments with our team

Pros

  • Perfectly syncs between all devices
  • It allows me to set multiple reminders before a meeting
  • When I add an address it automatically links to Apple Maps so I can see where i am going and also how long it will take me. I can easiy click on the link and it will start navigation for me, pretty cool

Cons

  • It is not easy to share with non-apple users (like Google calendar is)
  • The default setting are not easy to change so if you prefer to use Waze you can't change the iCal to make Waze the default navigation
  • iCal doesn't have an easy to use booking system wher you can share a link like Calendly

Return on Investment

  • As mentioned previously iCal provides more info to me than just an appointment
  • i can add attachments like notes or links to other services inside the appointment and these will synchronise across my devices.
  • The search functionality in iCal allows me to save items in the notes and then find them at a later stage. An example - I save key information about meetings or activities and then when I am looking for it at a later stage i can jjst search iCal and find it without having to look for documents or through my notes.
  • There is no default video call setting (like Google has Meet as a default and Microsoft has Teams) this is a problem in that I can't schedule video calls so the work around is that I sync to a Gmail calender and then schedule the video call (Meet) in Google

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Calendar and Microsoft 365

Other Software Used

Asana, HighLevel, HubSpot CRM, Klaviyo, Planable

Constant syncing issues with Microsoft Exchange/Outlook

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use the Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) app on my Mac to view and manage my Microsoft Exchange/Outlook powered calendar. In my experience, the Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) app is incredibly buggy and I often end up with duplicated events (or no events) that don't/do appear if I view my calendar directly in Outlook. It's more common than not that my Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) calendar is out of sync in some way with Outlook. I've been using this setup for about five years and Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) has been a constant, consistent battle for me. I don't recommend using Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) with Microsoft Exchange/Outlook calendars.

Pros

  • Simple layout
  • It tells you the current date on the app's desktop icon
  • The easy-to-access month vs week views are helpful

Cons

  • Integration with Microsoft Exchange/Outlook calendars
  • Staying in sync with third party calendars
  • Ability to easily re-sync / reset events with third party calendars

Return on Investment

  • Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) has caused me to miss meetings because it didn't sync up properly with my Microsoft Exchange/Outlook calendar
  • Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) has caused me frustration because it will often show duplicate events that aren't duplicated in my Microsoft Exchange/Outlook calendar.
  • Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) has caused my headaches and wasted my time by causing me to have to manually re-sync my Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) calendar with my Microsoft Exchange/Outlook calendar. Apple iCloud Calendar (iCal) offers no easy way to do this automatically.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Exchange

Other Software Used

Slack, Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Apple iCal is great for an Apple World

Incentivized
Adam Prose
Service Manager in Information Technology at Bailey Office Outfitters (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use iCal to coordinate private and shared availability times of our employees to help manage our time better. We have private as well as shared calendars setup and populated with the relevant information needed to plan our upcoming day, week, and sometimes month. Apple iCal allows us to not only plan for the time consideration of the event in question, but the travel time and prior preparation time needed for the event as well. We have notifications setup for reminders before, day of, and time to leave to ensure we are where we need to be.

Pros

  • Visual Organization
  • Time Management
  • Notification
  • Integration with Apple devices

Cons

  • Populating locations of events can be harder sometimes
  • Location of event may also not be in the correct place (down the street one direction or another from actual location)
  • Populating via another software can be tricky as well

Return on Investment

  • Mostly intangible positives such as being on time
  • Having a realistic idea of your daily time commitments
  • Communicating those realistic time commitments to customers so they are not waiting on you.

Alternatives Considered

Google Calendar