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When it comes to appointment scheduling software, two names consistently emerge as top choices for businesses. Zoho Bookings and Calendly. Both platforms offer streamlined scheduling, customized bookings, and integrations aimed at boosting productivity. However, each system has its own strengths, so choosing the right tool depends on your specific needs.
In this blog, we present a detailed Zoho Bookings vs Calendly comparison for 2025, highlighting features, pricing, and ease of use. Whether you’re a freelancer or looking for the best scheduling software 2025 for your business, this guide will help you make an informed decision.
Why Appointment Scheduling Software Matters in 2025 ?
A good scheduling software automates meeting bookings, eliminates the back-and-forth emails, syncs calendars, reduces no-shows, and allows seamless integration with payment gateways and communication tools. The right choice can:-
- Save time and minimize manual intervention
- Improve the customer booking experience
- Give a professional, branded touch to your booking process
- Integrate with business systems for automating and reporting
What is Zoho Bookings?
Zoho Bookings is a cloud-based software designed to meet all your calendar needs, featuring simple event scheduling and appointment management with other individuals. Its customizable booking page enables guests to plan more efficiently. This feature is especially useful for guided tours, workshops, and webinars. It also works well with businesses of all sizes across all industries.
Features of Zoho Bookings
1. Two-Way calendar Sync
Zoho Booking offers two-way sync with Zoho CRM, Zoho Mail, Google, Outlook and Microsoft Calendars and also supports payment gateways.
2. Team Scheduling
You can share pooled availability with customers on the booking page.
3. Update Your CRM
You can keep track of your appointments, mark customers as leads or contacts, and plan for follow-up from your CRM.
4. Multiple Workspaces
Manage branches, departments, or multiple teams from a single dashboard, each with its own individual branding and services.
5. Advanced Customization
Set up services, buffer, custom meeting types, personalized branding, and embed booking pages on your site seamlessly.
What is Calendly ?
Calendly is an online scheduling app that allows users to schedule appointments with other people. Its customizable booking page enables guests to plan more efficiently. This feature is especially useful for guided tours, workshops, and webinars. It also works well with businesses of all sizes and across all industries.
Key Features of Calendly
- User-Friendly
- Powerful Integrations
- Automated email
- Team Scheduling
Zoho Bookings vs Calendly Comparison: Features, Pricing & Integrations
This Zoho Bookings vs Calendly comparison highlights features, pricing, and integrations so businesses can select the best scheduling software in 2025. Both platforms are among the most popular appointment scheduling software for small businesses and enterprises alike.
1. Multiple Location Management
Zoho Booking excels with robust multi-location management capabilities. Businesses can create numerous workspaces to manage branches, departments, or services with dedicated branding and staff separation. Every branch or department can have its own bookings logic and branding, which is essential for companies working across several locations or diverse service offerings.
In contrast, Calendly lacks a dedicated workspace architecture. While group booking pages are available for teams handling multiple business branches, it means juggling multiple accounts or manually configuring different setups.
2. Customization and Branding
When it comes to customization, Zoho Bookings stands out. It offers full white-labeling, branded booking URLs, custom email templates, and the ability to integrate the booking page directly on company domains. With over 20 themes and layouts, businesses can tailor every aspect of the customer experience to their brand. Additionally, businesses are able to create dedicated booking pages for each meeting type or staff member.
Calendly provides only basic branding options. Businesses can add their logo and select a color theme, but Calendly branding generally remains on the booking interfaces unless a high-tier plan is chosen, and customization options are limited.
3. Custom Notification and Reminders
Both platforms offer automated confirmation and reminder notifications, significantly reducing no-shows and keeping clients engaged. Zoho Bookings goes further, allowing fully customizable email and SMS templates that can include logos, etc. Unique branding colors, and HTML design. Unique sender addresses can be set, and businesses have granular control over every communication sent to customers.
Calendly does provide automated notifications, but the customization is far more limited than that of Zoho Bookings.
4. Payment Collection and Flexibility
Zoho Bookings allows businesses to collect full or partial payments upfront, set cutoff windows, and upload terms and conditions for appointment changes. This increases attendance rates and provides flexibility for businesses that want to qualify leads or pre-validate customers.
Calendly supports payment collection via Stripe or PayPal, but it lacks some of Zoho’s critical controls, such as partial deposits or advanced cancellation rules.
5. Analytics and Reporting
Zoho Bookings includes a powerful reporting module capable of monitoring both appointments and revenue. These analytics help businesses spot growth opportunities, analyze booking trends, and track financial performance directly from the dashboard.
Calendly offers analytics about meeting volume and the type of cancellations, but does not provide deep integration with revenue or sales reporting unless combined with external applications or advanced tiers.
6. Third-party Integration
Zoho Bookings integrates deeply with Zoho’s suite of business apps (like Zoho CRM, Zoho Flow, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Calendar), and you can also integrate it with third-party CRM solutions like HubSpot, LeadSquared and many other apps.
Calendly boasts strong third-party integrations like Google, Outlook, Office 365, Salesforce, Zoom, Zapier, Stripe and PayPal.
7. Pricing
Zoho Bookings is more affordable, with paid plans starting at $8/user/month and a robust free plan, especially for small businesses. Pricing is scalable, and features like branding and advanced reporting are included at a low cost.
Calendly’s pricing plan is higher, starting at $12/user/month, and includes more advanced features like white-labeling or advanced admin controls.
Which Scheduling Software is Best For Your Business?
When comparing Zoho Bookings vs Calendly in 2025, the best scheduling software for your business depends on scale and requirements. For appointment scheduling software for small businesses that need branding and CRM integration, Zoho Bookings is a stronger fit. Meanwhile, Calendly works best for individuals and small teams who want simplicity and quick setup
As a Zoho Premium Partner, we specialize in helping businesses smoothly implement Zoho Booking to save time, reduce no-shows and improve customer experience.
Source – Zoho Bookings vs Calendly: Best Scheduling Software 2025

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