I am in the process of “declogging” myself from big tech. I am tied in a little to Microsoft because of a subscription on Office 365 for my wife but looking up an alternative to OneDrive and both Sync and PCloud are in contention, as is a current subscription to Icedrive. Gmail has been pretty much replaced by Mailfence, but finding an alternative to Google Calendar was looking difficult until I fell over an old favourite company.
Many years ago I ran a Google Page 4 ranked blog called Web2 and More. I gave it up because trying to satisfy 15,000 visitors a month and maintain a senior managerial position for work was killing me. Back then I discovered an Indian company called Zoho which has grown to become a software software services company with a high rating for all their various modules. Back in the day with my communications with them, I was always impressed by their honesty and transparency.
It was while I was looking at Zoho Notes that I discovered they had a calendar service so I took a look and I think I can safely dump GCal for good.
First of all it satisfies my need for a multi-platform service working through a web browser and my Android devices. Secondly, although it has been designed for multi-team collaboration, as a stand alone calendar for my wife and I, it is perfect. Many calendars do not allow different colours for individuals, but Zoho does this, so I can easily see when mine or my wife’s events take place at a very quick glance.
If necessarily, you can link Zoho Calendar with the likes of GCal and Outlook, although from my perspective this defeats the objective of “de-techying” myself from the big beasts. ZC has the ability to import other calendars, importing my Todoist list is applied as a one-tine sync. If I add something to Todoist after the initial import new items are not included. However, I am sure a service such as If This Then That or Zapier could be bludgeoned into making this function work.
Creating an event includes pretty much everything you need. Title (no shit, Sherlock) timings, all day feature, location, which calendar, links to a specific URL, participants, a description and attachments. Events created on either on the web calendar or mobile device syncs with other devices within nanoseconds.
So, much for the solo flyer. Zoho Calendar has been developed for team work collaboration and integrates with other Zoho modules such as CRM, Recruitment, Projects, etc. Calendars can be created for teams or individual projects involving team members. Another bonus is that when arranging meetings or other events, you can link in to see the free or otherwise status of team members.
Regarding security, All of Zoho’s services are encrypted and a full explanation is given here.
All told, although I have only been playing with it for a few days, Zoho Calendar does everything I want it to. Do note, after setting up manually with fresh events, when installing on a mobile device, when it asks to access your calendar, say no, otherwise you end up with duplications.
