Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover scheduling & booking. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Acuity Scheduling | zcal | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $16 | From $7 |
| Pricing model | Free trial, then paid | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | 7 days | 14 days |
| API | Yes | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | Not stated |
| Runs on | Web | Web |
| Covers | Scheduling & Booking | Scheduling & Booking |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
Booking pages with intake forms
Acuity handles the part of booking that Calendly leaves out: intake forms, packages, deposits and paid appointments, with the money taken before anybody shows up. Squarespace owns it now and the two share an account. There is no free plan, so it is bought by people whose calendar already earns.
Our note
No free plan at all is the clearest difference from everything else here. Setmore and Cal.com take bookings for nothing, so the $16 is worth paying only when the intake form and the payment at booking are the point.
Scheduling with most of it on the free plan
zcal is a booking page in the Calendly shape, and its argument is how much sits on the free tier: the paid plans are mostly about branding, teams and payments rather than about how many event types you may have. Booking pages carry a designed cover rather than a plain form. For one person sending a link, the free plan is usually the whole product.
Our note
Start on free and expect to stay there if you are one person, because the paid tiers are aimed at teams rather than at power users. Cal.com is the alternative worth weighing, and it is open source if self-hosting matters to you.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.