It’s hard for busy people to meet with other busy people. Many knowledge workers know what it feels like to view three to four of their colleagues’ calendars alongside their own, only to meet blinding color blocks with limited (or no white space).
Add in distributed time zones and attendees from across the globe, and suddenly, you face the impossible.
Thankfully, with group scheduling apps, these challenges don’t have to be impossible.
In this article, you will learn what group scheduling apps are, what to look for when choosing a tool that works best for you, and four top group scheduling apps.
Table of contents:
- What are group scheduling apps?
- What should I look for in a group scheduler? some text
- Is it easy to set up?
- Will most users find it easy to use?
- Does it help with scheduling internal or external meetings, or both?
- Will it disrupt my other workflows? What are the integrations like?
- Is customization important to me?
- What’s my budget (and does the tool fit in my budget?)
What are group scheduling apps?
At the most basic level, group scheduling apps make finding a time to meet easy for everyone involved. They automate scheduling for the meeting organizer and attendees. People use group scheduling apps to reduce the hassle of finding available white space across calendars.
Today, there are many group schedulers available. Some apps work best for coordinating external-facing meetings, such as between you and a prospective customer. Others help internal teams find time for team meetings (think coordinating a marketing team meeting, perhaps across time zones) and other ad hoc internal meetings (last-minute but sometimes necessary conversations that might include making a decision or responding to an issue). The best group scheduling apps help everyone involved in the meeting save time.
What should I look for in a group scheduler?
Since different types of group schedulers are available, we’ve compiled a checklist of questions to help you find a tool that works best for you. Run through this list individually and use it to guide your group scheduler tool search.
Is it easy to set up?
Remember, you want to use a group scheduler to save time (not spend more on administrative overhead and scheduling). This includes the initial setup and any additional activities that might take place, such as creating and sending a meeting link to a group. Avoid tools with steep initial learning curves if you don’t have the time to invest.
Will most users find it easy to use?
A group meeting scheduler should make your calendar management easier, but it’s arguably more important to ensure that it makes meeting attendees' lives easier. What good is a group meeting scheduler if it saves you time, but you replace that time with answering questions about the tool or manually scheduling a meeting because someone won’t use it? Don’t replace one scheduling headache with another. Look for an app your audience will find intuitive and easy to navigate.
Does it help with scheduling internal or external meetings, or both?
Where is your biggest scheduling pain point? Are you a manager of an internal team spending most of your workweek meeting with other leaders and your direct reports? Or are you a salesperson spending most of your workweek scheduling external calls with prospects?
Pause and ask yourself what type of meetings you need help scheduling: internal, external, or a combination. This should be a guiding factor in your decision-making process, as group schedulers serve various purposes.
Some scheduling apps only work for internal meetings (like one-on-ones, team meetings, etc.). Others work best for external scheduling for those who need to meet with clients, partners, agencies, and more. Some tools do both so that you can have the best of both worlds regarding effective calendar management. Look for a tool that will solve your specific challenges.
Will it disrupt my other workflows? What are the integrations like?
Adopting new tools can cause more harm than good if they don’t fit into current workflows. Workers with disjointed technology stacks waste unnecessary time switching contexts and manually filling in gaps between tools.
For example, let’s suppose your organization uses Zoom for video conferencing. If you choose a group scheduling tool that doesn’t integrate with Zoom, you must manually generate a Zoom link to add to your group scheduler whenever you want to schedule a meeting.
Explore the available integrations to learn more about how the tool will (or won’t) work with the ones you use daily.
Is customization important to me?
Some tools allow you to customize various aspects of the meeting booking experience. For example, you may be able to create meeting scheduling pages with your brand colors and logo for a consistent brand feel. Decide if that’s important to you; if it is, be sure to explore customization options.
What’s my budget (and does the tool fit in my budget?)
Before diving into your research, determine your budget to determine which tools you can immediately rule out. Don’t bother researching apps that are too far outside your budget if you know you don’t have any wiggle room.
4 top calendar group scheduling apps
1. Clockwise
Clockwise is a well-loved group scheduling app for companies like Color, Intercom, Oyster, Segment, and over 40,000 other organizations. With intelligent calendar management powered by artificial intelligence, Clockwise coordinates the way you, your team, and your company prefer to work.
Clockwise is the top choice for internal and external meeting coordination help regarding group scheduling. Clockwise works well for coordinating impromptu meetings with your teammates, simplifying meeting scheduling with a combination of internal and external attendees, and sharing your availability externally, all while ensuring you make time for what matters (aka, the work you need to accomplish outside of those meetings).
Best features for group scheduling:
- AI Scheduler: Clockwise AI Scheduler honors your work preferences and quickly and reliably handles the messy job of scheduling, so you can spend less time on complex calendar management and more time on whatever matters most. You can interact with AI Scheduler to schedule, reschedule, and cancel meetings and find time to meet when there is none. You can also ask AI Scheduler to create a scheduling link, automatically generating a one-time-use link for you (great for appointment scheduling).
- Clockwise Scheduling Links: As a Clockwise user, you can create free and unlimited scheduling links to share your availability stress-free. Clockwise understands and protects your preferences, making it easy to share the most ideal times to meet. This feature also includes many-to-one scheduling, so you can aggregate the availability of multiple team members and share it with external invitees.
- Round-robin scheduling: Within Clockwise Scheduling Links, there’s an option to enable round-robin functionality, which allows you to distribute meetings among all available teammates. You can distribute meetings based on meeting time availability, teammate availability, priority, and last time since booking.
- Flexible meetings: Finding a time that works for a group meeting across time zones and priorities can be like finding a needle in a haystack—nearly impossible. We make this easier with our flexible meetings feature. By marking your 1:1s and team syncs as flexible (because these meetings need to happen, but not necessarily at the exact time scheduled), you can open up your day to make it easier to find group meeting times.
- Customization options: If you answered “Yes!” to the question “Is customization important to me?” we have good news! You can customize your booking pages (what invitees will see when you share a Scheduling Link with them) with your logo and a custom username.
Integrations overview:
Clockwise integrates with some of the most popular tools you use every day, including:
- Calendar apps: Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook
- Collaboration and project management tools: Slack and Asana
- Video conferencing software: Zoom
Pricing:
Clockwise has four pricing tiers:
- Try our free version and schedule seamlessly outside your organization with unlimited Clockwise Scheduling Links
- Teams: $6.75 per user per month, billed annually
- Business: $11.50 per user per month, billed annually
- Enterprise: Custom pricing is available for organizations with advanced security and customization needs
2. Calendar
Calendar is an app that offers various calendar scheduling features for teams. It allows users to combine their calendars (personal, work, and others) into a centralized location. It then reviews your connected calendars to find open spaces for scheduling events (which you can customize to include meeting length, location options, etc.).
Features for group scheduling:
- Custom Availability Links: Share your availability via email, text, or website. Create your scheduling events and customize your scheduling pages. Then, send your customized calendar links to anyone, and they can schedule with you based on your availability.
- Round Robin: Sync schedules across a team to promote fair distribution.
- Multiple Hosts: This feature allows a scheduler to meet with a collective group of hosts at once. For example, an external invitee can meet with you and a handful of your teammates.
- Group: Many schedulers can meet with a host simultaneously (think, one presentation about your product’s new features for many current clients).
- Meeting Polls: You can create a poll of meeting times to share with meeting invitees, allowing them to vote for a time that works best for them. Then, you can easily view the most popular times and schedule the meeting.
- Find a Time: If you need to schedule a meeting with other Calendar users, you can use the Find a Time feature to enter multiple calendars, see when everyone is busy or available, and create an event when everyone is free.
- Chrome extension: This extension provides quick and immediate access to your meeting links and scheduling events, so you can share your availability quickly without leaving your inbox or other app.
Integrations overview:
Calendar integrates with many popular workday tools, including:
- Calendars: Google Calendar, Office 365 Calendar, Apple iCloud Calendar, and Exchange Server Calendar
- Video conferencing software: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet
- Payment tools: Stripe
- Customer relationship management (CRM) tools: Salesforce and HubSpot
- Available as a mobile app on iOS and Android
Pricing:
Calendar has four pricing tiers:
- Try Calendar free for 14 days (includes one personalized calendar link and five customizable scheduling events)
- Standard: $10/month per user, billed annually
- Pro: $12/month per user, billed annually
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for teams of 30+ with advanced security, control, and support
3. Doodle
Doodle is a group scheduling tool known for its group polling features and capabilities. It works best to schedule group meetings with invitees across many domains or organizations, offering availability for those who may have non-traditional schedules (e.g., academics) and hosting group events. For example, if you need to schedule a board meeting, you can quickly send a group poll to your busy board members and gather availability responses.
Features for group scheduling:
- Group Polls: Start a group poll and invite anyone to participate (regardless of whether they have a Doodle account). You can view an overview to track who responds (or doesn’t), so you can follow up with a friendly nudge if needed. Then, Doodle automatically sends calendar invites to anyone who provided an email in their availability response. You can also set automatic reminders and give a deadline to respond to a group poll.
- Booking Page: You can create a Booking Page and quickly grab and share your link. Set your hours (each Booking Page can have its own hours), limit bookings per day (if you prefer), and take advantage of reminders that help prevent no-shows.
- Sign-Up Sheet: Use the Sign-Up Sheet feature to create an event and let anyone sign up for it. Limit the attendees per session, let Doodle manage the heavy lifting of converting time zones, and export your attendee list for follow-ups after the event.
- Customization options: Custom branding is available on paid plans.
Integrations overview:
Doodle integrates with:
- Calendars: Google Calendar, Microsoft Office 365
- Video conferencing tools: Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams
- Workflow apps: Zapier
Pricing:
Doodle offers four pricing tiers:
- Free plan for one user forever: includes unlimited Group Polls and one Booking Page
- Pro: $6.95 per user per month, billed annually (for one user)
- Team: $8.95 per user per month, billed annually for up to 20 users
- Enterprise: Custom payment and invoicing terms available upon request
4. SavvyCal
SavvyCal is a scheduling tool that provides team scheduling, payment integrations on scheduling links, and free meeting polls for group scheduling. With SavvyCal, you can defend your focus and flow by setting meeting frequency limits and encouraging people to schedule meetings near others to prevent fragmented time.
Features for group scheduling:
- Round-robin scheduling links: Share the combined availability for a group of people and randomly choose an organizer available to meet at the requested time. You can optimize for availability (random selection) or evenness (cycle through organizers).
- Ability to factor in outside colleagues: Invite an external attendee to share their availability for free. The other person does not need a paid SavvyCal account to do this. When the external attendee shares with you, you can see their free and busy times (no meeting details), which can help streamline scheduling across multiple individuals from separate organizations.
- Meeting polls for group scheduling: SavvyCal offers free meeting polls for group scheduling. You can pick any available time slots on your calendar, ask meeting invitees to vote on which times work best for them, and book the time that works best for everyone. Meeting invitees can overlay their calendars on top of your availability to quickly find a mutual time that works.
- Custom Branding: Give your scheduling links a personal touch with custom branding options available on the paid plans.
- Chrome extension: You can quickly access your scheduling links from any webpage. By giving your recipients a calendar instead of a list of time slots, they can overlay their calendars on top of yours to find available time that works.
Integrations overview:
SavvyCal integrates with many other tools, including but not limited to:
- Calendars: Fastmail Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, and iCloud Calendar
- Video conferencing tools: Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom
- Meeting room booking apps: Whereby
- Payment tools: Stripe
Pricing:
SavvyCal offers three pricing tiers:
- Free: includes the calendar overlay feature, availability-sharing with colleagues, and the ability to draft and test your scheduling links
- Basic: $12 per user per month
- Premium: $20 per user per month
Students, educators, and non-profits can save 25% (contact support for more information).
Group scheduling apps: the breakdown
Which group scheduling app should you use? Only you can decide. Clockwise works best for managing the entire scheduling process, including assisting with scheduling internal and external meetings. Clockwise offers many calendar management features to help you manage your workday at an affordable cost compared to other apps on this list.
While Calendar offers many great group scheduling features, the app doesn’t consider all of your workday preferences, including Focus Time (like Clockwise does). Doodle works well for sending group polls to invitees spread across organizations and email domains, and they have geared it toward external group scheduling. SavvyCal’s group scheduling features are comprehensive and intentional, but the tool is geared toward external meetings and comes up at a slightly higher price point than others.
One feature that truly sets Clockwise apart is Clockwise AI Scheduler, the first AI assistant and calendar experience that lets anyone delegate calendar management (including group meeting scheduling). Interact with AI Scheduler to make your scheduling requests, and let Clockwise do the rest!
About the author
Alyssa Towns has written productivity and time management content for Clockwise for several years. Early in her career, she dove into time management strategies to effectively manage her workday calendar and 10+ C-Suite officers' calendars across various organizations. She uses her training in change management to write time management, the future of work, and career content that helps people change their behaviors and habits. In addition, she writes about artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology for G2's Learn Hub. When she isn't writing, Alyssa enjoys trying new restaurants with her husband, playing with her Bengal cats, adventuring outdoors, or reading a book from her TBR list.
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