4 Tools for Easier Participant Scheduling
Scheduling research sessions across different timezones can be a painful experience. Anyone who has experienced the back and forth emails with various participants in multiple timezones has probably had the same thought, “isn’t there a better way??”
There was once a time where I was a slave to worldtimebuddy.com and my inbox — until I discovered tools that could do all this tedious work for me. For someone who works in the future (Wellington, New Zealand to be exact) and spends 90% of their time researching people on different continents, it was a moment of pure joy.
Today I thought I’d share some tools to help you take the hassle out of scheduling your research sessions once and for all. Let’s take a quick look at four tools that promise just that — Calendly, Youcanbook.me, pow wow & Acuity Scheduling.
Calendly
User friendly, powerful, affordable.
I use Calendly in my day-to-day work and find it has all the functionality I need. It allows me to set up different event types (e.g. 30 minute interviews, 60 minute user tests) that I can easily share with customizable links. It automatically syncs with my Google Calendar and lets me to determine how far apart I want my meetings to occur, how much of a buffer I want between them and what reminders and notifications I want my participants to see.
The thing I appreciate most is the clean and simple UI. Calendly has a range of features including various integrations, automatic reminders and a range of team-based functionality. Although it doesn’t have as many styling options as some of the other options, I like the layout of the booking page and the simple, unobtrusive design.
You can use the free version for as long as you like, which allows you to create 1 event type — or upgrade to the premium plan for $8/month.
All in all, highly recommend.
Syncs with: Google, Outlook, Office 365 or iCloud
Integrations: Salesforce, GoToMeeting, join.me, Zapier, Slack, Mailchimp, & more.
Youcanbook.me
Customizable, flexible, powerful.
Youcanbook.me and Calendly both offer powerful team-based functionality and flexibility in setting up your appointments.
Youcanbook.me comes with the added benefit of being fully customizable, allowing you to fully style the booking page as you wish using CSS. You can also choose from a range of over 20 built-in themes, which is a nice bonus.
The price is comparable to that of Calendly ($10/month). While Youcanbook.me doesn’t offer as many integrations as Calendly, it does provide additional features, such as built-in SMS notifications, tentative meetings and Captcha tests for preventing spam. It also allows you to create several different booking profiles, which can be useful when working for different clients or recruiting for different projects.
The experience isn’t as streamlined as Calendly, but considering the additional features, it might be something worth getting used to.
Syncs with: Google, iCloud, Microsoft (Beta)
Integrations: Zapier, Stripe
Pow wow
Simple, minimal, fun.
Built by the creative brains behind Pointless Corp (Viget’s innovation lab), pow wow was built specifically with user research sessions in mind.
The tool is similar to Calendly in terms of ease of use and simplicity. It doesn’t offer integrations or team functionality, and only allows for synching with Google calendars at this time.
Overall the tool is minimal and thoughtfully designed. What it doesn’t offer in terms of functionality, it makes up for in it’s look and feel. The top tier, $29 plan also offers visual customization options.
For those of us not requiring any additional features or integrations, this tool is all you need. It does come at somewhat higher price point of $20/month for the basic plan, but also the bonus of knowing you’re supporting a group of smart and creative designers who saw a gap in the market and decided to do something about it. That to me is something worth putting your $ behind.
Syncs with: Google
Integrations: None
Acuity Scheduling
Powerful, effective, complex.
While Acuity can be somewhat hard to navigate at first, it’s highly customizable and offers a lot of functionality to suit a range of needs.
The tool was built with many uses cases in mind — apart from booking appointments, it also allows you to capture payments, set up classes (like yoga) and view client lists. The extensive functionality can feel a bit overwhelming at first, and many of the features Acuity offers aren’t entirely pertinent to scheduling user research sessions.
Unlike Calendly, Youcanbook.me and pow wow, Acuity doesn’t allow you to create multiple profiles and event types with unique links, meaning you can only customize one instance of your calendar at a time. While it does allow for different event types on the one page, this can be quite limiting for those of us representing different clients, or wanting to set up unique registration pages for different events.
Syncs with: Outlook, Exchange, Office 365, iCloud & Google
Integrations: GoToMeeting, Join.me, Zoom, QuickBooks, Freshbooks, Xero, MailChimp,Constant Contact, ConvertKit, Pipedrive, Zapier & more
Which one should I pick?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It depends!
If you’re happy with using a default layout and color scheme, Calendly is intuitive, easy to set up and the cheapest option of the four.
If you require advanced customization, team features and a range of integrations, I’d consider Youcanbook.me.
For a simple tool designed with user research in mind — try out pow wow.
I’d recommend giving all options a go to find which one works best for you. All four tools offer free plans and trials, and while some of them (Calendly, pow wow) are more user friendly than others (Youcanbook.me, Acuity Scheduling), they’re all relatively easy to set up and get up and running.
Whichever option you choose, rest assured that scheduling participants in different timezones is about to get a lot easier. 🚀
Use any other tools? Share your experience below!
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