Five of the best shared team calendars compared

Do you feel like your calendar is getting so crowded that it's hard to keep track of all your important dates? Perhaps you've tried to relay deadlines to your team members, but you're finding it challenging to collaborate with them. Or maybe you don't even use a calendar, and it's becoming taxing just trying to remember all of your obligations.

Enter: online shared team calendars — a great solution to some of your calendar woes.

In today’s blog post, we’re going to dive deep into the best shared team calendars so that you never have to carry the responsibility of trying to remember and jot down everyone’s events, due dates, team meetings, etc.

Whether you have an existing group of team members already, or you’re thinking about hiring a team, a shared team calendar is going to help you collaborate and communicate with your coworkers.

What is a shared team calendar?

Even though the name pretty much says it all, it's still important to go over definitions so that we're all on the same page! At its core, a team calendar is a synced calendar that coworkers have access to. Businesses commonly use these team calendars to keep track of meetings, time-off dates, task and project deadlines, and anything else that's important for the entire team to know.

However, with technology, team calendars have gotten quite sophisticated and have more functionality than ever before. For example, you can share certain events with only the team members who need to see them, they can contain all sorts of scheduling tools, you can create team channels for each department in your business, and there are even team calendars that double as a project management tool.

With all these diverse calendar features, how would you know which platform is best for your team? We did the research and came up with five of the best shared team calendar platforms, so you can avoid the all-too-common decision fatigue. Let's get into it.

Criteria we looked at to choose the best shared calendars

Before we get into the best shared team calendars, let’s go over the criteria we used to choose the calendars mentioned on this list. Yep, just like when you hire team members, some standards must be met when choosing the right shared calendar before you decide to integrate them into your workplace.

Each team calendar had to meet the following five criteria make it on this list:

1. Robust collaboration and sharing tools
2. Simple interface and software
3. Integrations with other online business tools
4. iOS and Android versions
5. Ability to create calendar views, or at least access an easy-to-use calendar view
   

Now that we have the criteria down, here are our picks!

1. Asana

Asana is one of the shared calendars that also functions as a project planning and project management software. While we believe the interface could be a bit more user-friendly (their drag-and-drop tools are sensitive and it can be unclear how to switch between tasks, which can lead to a lot of clicking around), it’s still a robust tool that’s easy to share and collaborate with your team members.

Functionality Highlights

Using Asana will undoubtedly help your team stay organized, on task, and up-to-date about team meetings, but there are a few functionalities that really stand out to us. The first is that you can integrate Asana into other business tools, such as Slack, so that you spend less time switching between platforms when you receive notifications and updates about projects.

Asana also has a great iOS and Android interface. Unlike some calendar apps, such as Clickup, using the mobile version of Asana feels intuitive and is a similar experience to the desktop version.

Price

Asana has a few options when it comes to its plans. The free, or Basic plan, is great for an individual or a small team that’s just getting started with the app. And yes, this plan includes the calendar view!

2. Clickup

More than a calendar app, the team at Clickup describes their platform as a “productivity app to replace them all.” You can see why they can make this bold statement as soon as you create an account because they include so many useful tools on the platform. One of those very useful tools? Calendars, of course!

The calendar view on Clickup is super easy to use and simple to navigate, which is why we had to include it on this list of best shared team calendars, even though it’s generally regarded more as an agile project planning software. 

Functionality Highlights

While there are numerous benefits to using Clickup, a couple really take the cake. The first is that, as we just mentioned, it doesn’t just contain a shared calendar but it’s also a project management tool. So, depending on the type of work you do, you can resort to Clickup to house everything in your business. What does that translate to? You can create team calendars that essentially streamline your entire workflow because you can see exactly when your coworkers have time off, any important deadlines, when you have a team meeting or client meeting, and much more.

The calendar features are especially great in Clickup because you can create and set specific permissions for each calendar you create in Clickup. For example, you can have an internal team calendar that only people in your teams channel can see (it also adjusts times depending on the time zone you’re in), and/or a calendar for each of your clients that only they can see. The bottom line? Having these specific permissions leaves room for a lot of flexibility and personalization.

Lastly, Clickup lets you integrate with 1,000+ business tools, such as Slack and Outlook, which means you can minimize switching tabs every time you get notifications.

Price

Clickup has incredibly fair prices for how powerful and useful the platform is. You can start out with a free plan to get used to setting up your workspace. (Clickup, although easy to use once you get the hang of it, requires some time and effort to set up.) On the free plan, you can invite unlimited members to your workspace, which means you can create calendars for your team and your clients. If you need to set custom permissions, so that your clients only see certain calendar events, you’ll need to upgrade to their Unlimited plan.

3. Microsoft Outlook Calendar

If calendars were ranked like celebrities, then we’re getting into the A-list category of calendars. To start, we'll talk about the one that's been around as old as time — Microsoft Outlook Calendar. 

Functionality Highlights

There’s a reason why Outlook is incredibly popular — the comprehensive calendar features are hard to beat. With the ability to schedule meetings with its scheduling tools, create recurring events, check team members’ workload and time-off dates, and more, Outlook is truly an exemplary team calendar. Plus, with a free Microsoft account, you get access to a few other business tools (which have certain limitations), such as Microsoft Teams.

Price

Using Outlook Calendar is free for all platforms, including desktop, iOS, and Android devices. However, if you want access to other business tools Microsoft offers, such as Sharepoint, Excel, Publisher, Sharepoint calendar, and more, you’ll have to upgrade and subscribe to Microsoft 365.

4. Google Calendar

The other A-list calendar is Google Calendar, and for good reason! The team at Google has had a while to develop and perfect their calendar into the minimalistic platform it is. The only prerequisite required is to have a Gmail account or Google Workspace account.

Functionality Highlights

There are surprisingly a ton of awesome calendar features with humble Google Calendar. The first is the fact that you can add calendars from other business tools or create calendars within Google Calendar for each of your obligations, but they live on one, central hub calendar. You can distinguish which calendar events belong to which obligation with their color coding feature. You can also create a color-coded shared team calendar, so that every team member is on the same page about important dates. For example, all green events can signify your work obligations, all blue events can signify personal obligations, and so on. For more information on how to do that, check out this blog post about 7 tips to turbocharge your Google Calendar.

Calendar View, a specific type of view you can access on desktop and mobile, lets you plan ahead and avoid being late to important events by automatically populating images and maps of where you're going. If you’re switching time zones, Google Calendar will automatically change your event times to match the time zone that you’re in.

And arguably the best tool for efficiency? When you receive an email with a reservation or event invitation, it'll automatically get added to your calendar so you don't have to worry about remembering to do it yourself.

Price

Google Calendar is free for personal use. However, if you want access to all the tools Google Workspace has to offer (their set of business apps for organizations that need to communicate and collaborate), you can expect to pay a monthly subscription, which is anywhere from $6/month to $18+/month.

5. Clockwise

We saved the best for last! Ok, ok, while we might be a bit biased, we here at Clockwise have developed our platform so that you can take control of your calendar rather than feeling like your calendar is taking control of you.

Functionality Highlights

Clockwise is a free time orchestration tool that helps you streamline your workflow and minimize distractions. With the ability to automatically optimize your calendar with flexible meetings calendar functionality, you can ensure you’re not overbooking yourself without needing to manually micro-manage your calendar.

Clockwise will automatically also block off Focus Time on your calendar, which means you can set the amount of hours per week you need interrupted work time, so you can focus on crushing your to-do list.

Clockwise is also great for working with team members. With the shared team calendar features, you can check on each of your coworker's bandwidth, set no meeting days for ultimate focus, see when someone has time off, schedule team meetings easily with a time zone-friendly availability calendar. Clockwise also integrates with Slack and Asana for ultimate time management and productivity. Plus, Clockwise helps you sync work and personal calendars.

Price

Clockwise offers just a couple of plans to avoid decision fatigue. Like most calendar apps, we have a free plan that’s great if you’re just starting out. For just $6.75/month, you can get access to advanced calendar controls and team productivity tools.

Final thoughts

Hopefully, this blog post will help you get organized when it comes to your calendar. It’s truly one of the most important aspects to get right in order if you want to maximize your time, efficiency, and productivity. And with so many integrations available these days, it’s simple to get your team members, no matter what time zone they may be in, on the same page about deadlines and team meetings.

Read next, on using a Slack Shared Team Calendar.