framadate looks more like doodle? This is seems to be for booking appointments, e.g. small business owners could use it so that customers book appointments.
The cool thing, this could likely be extended with other calendar systems as it is OSS. I assume the author just scratched their own itch first.
That’ll be in the next feature I guess. I think the main idea initially was to show people their own events before booking available times and before invitee accept the invite too. It’s a simple feature that I found missing from calendly
However I see the point where people might not have google account (or other services)
Free accounts in calendly only allow for one event type. Maybe this allows to offer more event types (e.g. different lengths) for free.
Furthermore you could self-host, if you don’t want to trust Calendly. calendars are somewhat problematic privacy wise. Especially considering if this gets extended with support for other calendar systems than Google.
I don't want Calendly mining my event data which is extremely sensitive.
From their privacy policy:
> We may disclose information to current or future affiliates or subsidiaries for research, marketing, and other purposes consistent with this Privacy Notice.
When you have an open source project, you always know what we do with your data, which is very important nowadays. Also apart from that we have small feature that aim to improve user experience when creating or accepting invite. In this case we show their own events in calendar so they have an overview of what are they doing during the week.
It’s a fun project, also I open sourced the infrastructure part so you can self host too.
Thank you, very helpful answer. I was not trying to be antagonistic, I had never heard a critique of calendly and wanted to understand how an open source project would improve the situation. I agree, very important to understand how your data is used.
There is already Cal.com (formerly Calendso) [0] which is a more matured product. I do personally feel though Calcom's codebase is unnecessarily complex and bug-prone.
Nice to see new alternatives in this space. It would have been nicer to see a comparison with Calcom and some self-hosting guidelines.
The fact that you need to login to Google and share Google Calendars really underscores the need for an open Calendar standard. I know CalDAV exists, but it's always been a huge headache.
Yeah.. the original idea is to show user (both inviter and invitee) their events as well when choosing the time. Which is not possible in calendly. But I guess that’s another drawback!
"A VPS costs you $5. My service is $2. True you can host it with your other applications on the VPS you already own. Set up a reverse proxy and update it every now and then - or sign up and stop worrying. Go for a walk. Have a beer. Cheers!"
Yes but that's a second thought. First it has to be more $-cheaper and then you have to cradle the thought that their time is valuable too. But that has to be their idea, if it's not, than you are only after their money
This is a drive-by comment, but for free/open source software, it is really helpful to have a screenshot or two. The unfortunate truth is that a lot of open source software has mediocre design, and for a Calendly alternative (where I'll share a link with prospective work contacts), a good UX is very important.
At risk of being that rsync commenter, I do think paying $12/month (as Calendly and Cal charge) for multiple meeting types is a bit much. I'm mostly ok with the free tier, though.
I think I would appreciate it in both places! One more piece of drive by advice: I would reduce the font-weight of the hero text on the front page ("Meetsy takes two calendars..."). Unnecessarily bold text is a common pet peeve of mine.
Can I ask if you're trying to monetize this service anywhere? If not, would you mind making it a bit more clear how to run it on the Github page (e.g. with a compose.yml)?
> I would reduce the font-weight of the hero text on the front page ("Meetsy takes two calendars..."). Unnecessarily bold text is a common pet peeve of mine.
No worries, i'll take this into account tonight as well.
I will also update with a screenshot, do you think a screenshot of the invitee's page where they can accept the invite would be good enough? I actually have a video I made (not professionally, just a screen recording) to show google for the OAuth spec but I have to make it better.
> Can I ask if you're trying to monetize this service anywhere? If not, would you mind making it a bit more clear how to run it on the Github page (e.g. with a compose.yml)?
At the moment I'm not trying to monetize it as it is just for fun side project, but if it gain a lot of traction probably I will just to cover the server cost. Either way it will always be open source and you can self host. compose.yml exist in the api/ folder (this is how i deploy it), front end was deployed with vercel so don't need any of that.
I have been a Calendly user for 2+ years and have renewed for another year. The thing with the likes of Calendar is that it cannot make mistakes on the features that are supposed to work. Calendly just works.
I really wanted to like Cal.com (Calendso) and support the founders (awesome people). Unfortunately, after trying few times, I gave up. There are always some thing or the other that does not work as advertised.
We might still get back to Cal.com and host an instance ourselves for the team and try it again. However, I'm staying with Calendly for quite a while.
Any new calendar app, open source or otherwise, need to meet somewhere very stable enough to compete with the existing ones that has solved most known problems with scheduling.
Calendly is useful but lacks support for calendars. I'd love to see a replacement support subscriptions to feeds so that I'm not restricted to Google/Apple calendar services.
3. Vidcast of user experience to book a meeting on my meetsy
4. Demo instance (book a slot with Fakeman Bogus)
Hooking up Google Account without all this is not going to happen because I then have to go and de-authorize you after if I don't like it. At that point, I'm not going to do it.
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Why is this better than framadate? https://framadate.org/
The cool thing, this could likely be extended with other calendar systems as it is OSS. I assume the author just scratched their own itch first.
However I see the point where people might not have google account (or other services)
Furthermore you could self-host, if you don’t want to trust Calendly. calendars are somewhat problematic privacy wise. Especially considering if this gets extended with support for other calendar systems than Google.
Your wording sounds like there should be only one tool for any given problem.
From their privacy policy:
> We may disclose information to current or future affiliates or subsidiaries for research, marketing, and other purposes consistent with this Privacy Notice.
https://calendly.com/privacy
When you have an open source project, you always know what we do with your data, which is very important nowadays. Also apart from that we have small feature that aim to improve user experience when creating or accepting invite. In this case we show their own events in calendar so they have an overview of what are they doing during the week.
It’s a fun project, also I open sourced the infrastructure part so you can self host too.
I think others has add more good points too
Nice to see new alternatives in this space. It would have been nicer to see a comparison with Calcom and some self-hosting guidelines.
[0] https://github.com/calcom/cal.com
For example, I could take this. Host it on heroku. And charge cheaper price than calendly.
Not aiming to make millions a year. Maybe 1000 a month is good.
"A VPS costs you $5. My service is $2. True you can host it with your other applications on the VPS you already own. Set up a reverse proxy and update it every now and then - or sign up and stop worrying. Go for a walk. Have a beer. Cheers!"
It often is because your time is much more valuable.
At risk of being that rsync commenter, I do think paying $12/month (as Calendly and Cal charge) for multiple meeting types is a bit much. I'm mostly ok with the free tier, though.
Would love to update it straightaway
Can I ask if you're trying to monetize this service anywhere? If not, would you mind making it a bit more clear how to run it on the Github page (e.g. with a compose.yml)?
No worries, i'll take this into account tonight as well.
I will also update with a screenshot, do you think a screenshot of the invitee's page where they can accept the invite would be good enough? I actually have a video I made (not professionally, just a screen recording) to show google for the OAuth spec but I have to make it better.
> Can I ask if you're trying to monetize this service anywhere? If not, would you mind making it a bit more clear how to run it on the Github page (e.g. with a compose.yml)?
At the moment I'm not trying to monetize it as it is just for fun side project, but if it gain a lot of traction probably I will just to cover the server cost. Either way it will always be open source and you can self host. compose.yml exist in the api/ folder (this is how i deploy it), front end was deployed with vercel so don't need any of that.
I really wanted to like Cal.com (Calendso) and support the founders (awesome people). Unfortunately, after trying few times, I gave up. There are always some thing or the other that does not work as advertised.
We might still get back to Cal.com and host an instance ourselves for the team and try it again. However, I'm staying with Calendly for quite a while.
Any new calendar app, open source or otherwise, need to meet somewhere very stable enough to compete with the existing ones that has solved most known problems with scheduling.
1. Screenshots of product
2. Vidcast of set up experience
3. Vidcast of user experience to book a meeting on my meetsy
4. Demo instance (book a slot with Fakeman Bogus)
Hooking up Google Account without all this is not going to happen because I then have to go and de-authorize you after if I don't like it. At that point, I'm not going to do it.