Cal.com, Calendly and Setmore: Which Online Booking Tool Suits Your Business?

All three let customers pick a time and book it without a phone call, and all three have a free plan. They were built for different jobs, though: Calendly and Cal.com for meetings, Setmore for appointments with staff. Here's how their plans compare, where each falls short, and how to put one on your website.

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Three tools, three starting points

Calendly is a meeting scheduler. You connect your calendar, set the hours you're available, and send people a link where they pick a slot. Its plans are priced per seat, and its own pricing page notes that the people booking don't need an account or a seat. It's built around one-on-one and team meetings: sales calls, consultations, interviews.

Cal.com does the same core job, and its free plan even lists an import from Calendly. Its free plan is unusually generous for one person, and it grew out of open-source software: its code is published on GitHub, and a stripped-back, MIT-licensed community version, Cal.diy, can be run on your own server. Cal.diy leaves out teams, workflows and other enterprise features, and its own notes recommend it for personal, non-production use.

Setmore comes at it from the other side. It's an appointment book for service businesses, with a calendar for each staff member and a booking page where customers choose a service and, if you like, a person. Setmore counts each staff calendar as a user, even if that person never logs in.

The question to start with isn't which tool has the most features. It's whether your customers book a meeting with you, or an appointment for a service with someone on your team.

The plans side by side

These are the plans as listed on each company's pricing page in November 2026. The pages show prices in dollars without naming the currency, and they appear to be US dollars, so check the amount in Australian dollars, and whether GST is added, at checkout.

Free and entry-level paid plans compared
Question	Calendly	Cal.com	Setmore
Free plan	One event type and one calendar connection	One user, unlimited booking links and calendars	Up to 4 users
First paid plan	Standard, shown as $10 per seat a month; the page offers yearly or monthly billing and lists a saving for yearly	Teams, $12 per user a month, with 25% off listed for yearly billing	Pro, $5 per user a month on annual billing
Taking payment when booking	Stripe or PayPal, on Standard and above	Stripe or PayPal, on the free plan	Square, Stripe or PayPal on the free plan; deposits on Pro
Reminders	Automated reminders on Standard and above	Email and SMS notifications on the free plan; custom workflows on Teams	One reminder per appointment free; two, plus SMS credits, on Pro
Several staff	Round-robin and routing on Teams (shown as $16 per seat a month)	Round-robin and team scheduling on Teams	Staff calendars from the free plan
Removing the tool's branding	Listed as a paid feature	Teams and above	Pro

Plans change, so read the current pricing page before you commit. The details that tend to matter most are payment, reminders and calendar sync, rather than the headline price.

Calendly: strong for meetings, limited on the free plan

Calendly's strength is how little the person booking has to do: open the link, pick a time, done. It handles time zones for you, which matters if you take calls from clients in Perth and Brisbane on the same day. Its paid plans connect to tools such as HubSpot and Mailchimp, and Teams adds round-robin scheduling and forms that route people to the right person based on their answers.

The free plan is narrow. One event type means you can't offer, say, a 15-minute intro call and a 60-minute session side by side without upgrading, and taking payment through Stripe or PayPal starts on Standard. For a consultant, coach or accountant who books calls and invoices separately, that may not matter. For anyone who wants to take payment at the time of booking, it does.

Best for: professional services, coaching and B2B businesses booking calls or video meetings, especially if clients already know Calendly links.

Cal.com: the most on the free plan for one person

For a single practitioner, Cal.com's free plan covers a lot: unlimited booking links and calendars, Stripe and PayPal payments, email and SMS notifications, and a long list of app integrations. A solo massage therapist or tutor could take paid bookings with several session types without a subscription.

The trade-offs show up when you grow or want polish. Team scheduling, custom workflows, routing forms and removing Cal.com's branding all sit on Teams. The self-hosted community version appeals to people with technical help on hand, but someone has to run, secure and update that server, it leaves out team features and workflows, and the project itself recommends it for personal, non-production use, so it isn't a practical route for most businesses.

Best for: sole operators who want paid bookings and multiple session types on a free plan, and teams that want Calendly-style scheduling with more control.

Setmore: built for appointments with staff

Setmore looks most like a salon or clinic's front desk. Customers choose a service, a staff member and a time; each staff member has their own calendar; and the free plan covers up to four of them and takes payments through Square, Stripe or PayPal. Setmore also lists 24/7 support by chat, email and phone on both plans.

Two limits on the free plan are worth noticing. There's no two-way calendar sync, so if you also keep appointments in Google or Outlook, a booking made there won't block the slot in Setmore, and double bookings become possible. And SMS reminders, which many appointment businesses rely on to cut no-shows, are a Pro feature, with 500 SMS credits per team member each month. Pro also adds deposits, recurring appointments and the option to remove Setmore's branding.

Best for: hair and beauty, personal trainers, tutors and small service teams who want a shared appointment book without paying per meeting seat.

When none of the three is the right tool

General booking tools don't try to do everything an industry system does. Some businesses are better served by software built for their field:

Health and allied health. Practice software such as Cliniko, or a booking network such as HotDoc, handles clinical notes, patient records and practitioner schedules alongside bookings. The OAIC says a business that provides a health service and holds health information is covered by the Privacy Act even if it's a small business, so it's worth checking how any booking tool handles the health information it collects.
Salons and spas. Fresha and similar platforms combine bookings with point of sale and client history.
Restaurants. Table booking systems such as OpenTable manage covers and table layouts rather than one-to-one appointments.

If you already use one of these, keep it. A website doesn't need its own booking tool when the one you run your day on works; it needs a clear button that sends people to it.

Putting a booking tool on your website

There are three ways to connect booking to a site, and the choice affects how it looks and how quickly the page loads:

A link. A 'Book now' button opens the tool's own booking page. It's the simplest and fastest option, and works with almost every tool.
An embed. The tool's booking widget appears inside your page. It keeps visitors on your site, but loads the provider's code, which can slow the page and limit how far the widget matches your design.
Built into the site. The booking and payment steps are designed as part of the website itself, fitted to how your business takes bookings.

We do all three. We link or embed the booking tool you already use, whether that's Calendly, Cal.com, Setmore, Cliniko, Fresha or another, as part of the site build. Booking and payment systems built into a site are quoted per job, because they depend on how you take bookings.

Two examples from our own work: Resolve Forward, a Sydney family dispute resolution practice, has priced packages linked to online booking, and Dr Tabara Dione Coaching in Melbourne has online discovery-call booking linked from every page.

Questions to answer before you choose

Do customers book a meeting with you, or a service with a staff member?
How many people need their own calendar, now and in a year?
Do you need to take full payment or a deposit at the time of booking?
Will SMS reminders cut your no-shows enough to justify a paid plan?
Do you keep appointments in Google or Outlook too, and does the plan sync both ways?
Are you collecting health or other sensitive information on the booking form?
Can you export your bookings and customer list if you move to another tool?

Most businesses can trial all three free plans in an afternoon. Book a test appointment on your phone in each, the way a customer would, and keep the one that felt simplest.

Online booking tools: common questions

Which is cheapest: Cal.com, Calendly or Setmore?

All three have a free plan. For one person taking paid bookings, Cal.com's free plan includes Stripe and PayPal payments, which Calendly reserves for paid plans. For a small team, Setmore's free plan covers up to four staff calendars. Check each pricing page, as plans change.

Can customers pay when they book?

Yes, with all three, on different plans. Cal.com takes Stripe or PayPal on its free plan, Setmore takes Square, Stripe or PayPal on its free plan with deposits on Pro, and Calendly connects Stripe or PayPal from its Standard plan.

Do these tools send SMS reminders?

Cal.com lists SMS notifications on its free plan. Setmore includes SMS reminders on Pro, with 500 credits per team member each month. Calendly's pricing page lists automated reminders on paid plans without saying whether SMS is included, so check before relying on it.

Can you add my booking tool to my website?

Yes. When we build your site, we link or embed the booking tool you already use, such as Calendly, Cal.com, Setmore, Cliniko or Fresha. If you want booking and payment built into the site itself, we quote that per job.

Is a general booking tool fine for a health practice?

It can work for simple appointments, but practice software built for health usually suits better because it handles records and practitioner schedules. The OAIC says health service providers that hold health information are covered by the Privacy Act even if they're a small business, so check how any tool stores health information.

Want online booking on your website?

Tell us which booking tool you use, or how you'd like bookings to work. We'll send a fixed quote for the site, and quote any built-in booking separately before we start.