BEST Online Scheduling Software | Doodle, Calendly & Acuity

the number one way to add more time to your calendar is to allow your clients to schedule themselves in this video I'm going to give you the pros and cons of three different online schedulers doodle calendly and acuity without further ado let's hop in hi i'm LaShonda host of the bootstrap busy vice show where i teach you how to grow your business now all three of these applications doodle calendly and acuity will give you a link that you would send to clients or potential clients in order for them to help you get on your calendar after that there are pros and cons to all of them and depending on what phase of business you're in or what your goal is one of these websites may be a better fit for you so let's get started with doodle when you're trying to find the perfect day and time to coordinate a group of people doodle is an incredible website for you to use and the best part about using doodle is it has a free version although their branding is on everything if you are trying to save money it's a great way for you to save time what you would do is set up a doodle survey and you would give people options dates and times that work for your availability and then they would comment on the survey telling you which day and times work for you after everyone has participated in the survey then you can pick the final date for your meeting so instead of you going back and forth and email asking people what works for them they can simply tell you in one location and you can create a lot of different options that fit on your calendar so if you find in your business that there are multiple people that you're trying to coordinate whether it's for a board meeting or you're working with a organization that has multiple people who are decision makers I would use doodle now they do have a premium version which removes the branding but at the end of the day most people who utilize this website could care less that doodles branding is on everything so that is the perfect website to use when you're trying to schedule a group now the downside to doodle is it's not a good website to utilize when you're only trying to schedule one person it is truly built for collaboration so it is not a one-size-fits-all platform and if you utilize doodle you will still need to choose another online scheduler for one-on-one meetings I recommend either using acuity or calendly depending on what your goals are calendly is a great website to use if you are trying to schedule a one-on-one meeting or an appointment so if you are a service based business you're a hairstylist or a coach this may be an incredible fit for you now they do offer a free version but it is extremely limited but there is a very good use for the free version if you use the free version of Collins Lee you can only do one type of appointment and I would recommend using this for customer support so if you want to give people the ability to schedule a 15-minute call or 30-minute call with your IT team or your customer service team you can utilize calendly for free to allow your customers to pick a date and time that works for you to help them troubleshoot problems that they're having with your business beyond that I don't think that the free version is a good fit for most entrepreneurs yes you can use it for discovery calls yes you can use it for customer support but once you start paying for calendly you open up the platform you're able to schedule unlimited events you're able to collect payments before people get on your calendar and that is when you're going to really start saving time in your business very early on in my marketing business I started to collect payments for strategy calls and what I did is I actually made a zap so when people paid within calendly and straight process that payment I also had that information go to my invoicing system when that information was sent to my invoicing system it created an invoice for them and it added the payment so not only did they get on my calendar I collected payment and I reconciled that payment automatically this helped me eliminate the need of having an assistant to do those admin things in my business this is how you can not only save time but make more money because you're freeing up your schedule from admin tasks and you're focusing more on providing the service that you offer now let's compare calendly to acuity if you start to pay for calendly you will be able to schedule unlimited events and collect payments but acuity takes it to the next level the number one thing that I love about acuity is it's owned by Squarespace now so when you create an acuity account you're going to be able to integrate acuity directly in your Squarespace account you're also able to use it for complex payments so not just a single payment you're able to sell subscriptions or memberships and for those of you who are licensed professional counselors you can also pay to be HIPAA compliant which is huge so not only can you save time and have your potential clients schedule themselves you can also take care of compliance within the same application which i think is super important so I would tell you when you are starting out calendly may be a good fit for you but I would graduate to using acuity because those complex payments being able to do reminder emails I do this all the time with my website clients when they sign up they receive an email saying hey you hopped on your calendar and here is the information about your but 24 hours out it sends him a reminder email and it says hey if something came up and you need to reschedule here is a link to reschedule I can also use the same system to send people reminder emails before onboarding sessions I have an email that sent out 72 hours before a new client onboarding session asking them what are five websites that you've looked at as inspiration from what you'd like for me to do for you so not only am I using acuity to get people on my calendar to potentially collect payments I can also use the same website to send out reminder emails and automate processes in my business when you are spending less time going back and forth when you are spending less time manually creating emails to new clients you can open up your calendar to take on more customers and when you take on more customers then you grow your business without changing very much at all so I highly recommend using an online scheduler doodle is the best way for you to collaborate with multiple people and find a date and time that works for you Callens Lee is a great way for you to schedule customer support calls and if you're watching your budget you can begin to pay for calendly to collect payments and to start to automate things in your business but if you're at the point where you want to do complicated scheduling not only do you want to collect payments not only if you want to provide an opportunity for people to schedule themselves but you want to create a series of complex reminder emails so that you don't have to make those emails from scratch acuity is a great fit for you you can also integrate within acuity with a bunch of other websites [Music] so you may not be ready to start out by using acuity but you can grow into it and they do have some smaller plans that do cost less so I'm not going to tell you which one to use it's important for you to understand how to use each one and for you to decide what are the goals you have for your business what are the problems that you're running into and what are the things that you find yourself doing again and again and again that you can delegate and automate to one of these three websites so I hope you guys enjoyed this video and it provided you with ways that you can save time in your business for your convenience I have included the links to doodle Cowley and acuity in the description so make sure you check those out if you like this video be sure to give it a thumbs up and if you're looking for tips tutorials reviews or busy vice be sure to subscribe to my channel and turn your notifications on until next time it's all for now thanks so much for stopping by my channel if you need more help to grow your business hop on over to LaShonda brown.com and sign up for my VIP vault which is my epic resource library filled with cheat sheets tutorials checklists and even stock photos for free just leave your first name and email address and I will send the password directly to you

Channel: Bootstrap Biz Advice

Views: 58,083

Keywords: Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Small Business, Freelancer, Side Hustle, Business Owner, Business Tips, Calendly, Acuity, Doodle, Time Saving Tips, Time Management, Online Scheduling Software, Acuity Scheduling App, Best Appointment Scheduling App, Calendly vs Acuity, Best Scheduling Software

Id: 6LDJCfs-W6k

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Mon May 11 2020