Making the work
Growing an audience
Running the business
Bookafy's free plan covers basic scheduling for one person, holding automations, custom fields and HIPAA compliance back for Pro and Pro+ at $7 and $11 a user a month. zcal's free plan goes further: 99 percent of its features are described as free forever, so its paid tiers, also $7 and $12 a user a month, are mostly about branding and team functionality rather than event types or bookings. Both are Calendly-shaped booking pages built to be kept rather than outgrown.
Bookafy | zcal | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $7 | From $7 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Not stated |
| Free trial (they differ) | 7 days | 14 days |
| API |
Booking pages with a real free tier
Bookafy does the ordinary booking job well: a page people pick a slot on, calendar sync both ways, reminders, and a video call created for the appointment. The free plan is not a trial and covers a single person taking meetings. Paid tiers add routing across a team, custom fields and the compliance options a health or legal practice needs. Nothing here will surprise anybody who has used Calendly, which is rather the point.
Our note
Start on the free plan and only move when a specific feature blocks you, since for a single person taking calls it does the whole job. Check the monthly-billed rate before committing, because the published figures are annual and the difference is not stated anywhere on the page.
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.
Pick Bookafy if HIPAA compliance is the actual requirement: it sits on Pro+ at $11 a user a month, and zcal's listing never raises healthcare compliance. Pro itself is $7 a user a month and adds automations and custom fields the free plan does not have.
Pick zcal if you are one person and want to stay on the free plan on purpose rather than by accident: nearly everything, including event types and bookings, is free forever by zcal's own account. Paying only matters once a team, branding or business controls are the requirement, at $7 or $12 a user a month with a fourteen-day trial either way.
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.
| Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
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| Their cut | None | Not stated |
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| Runs on | Web | Web |
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| Covers | Scheduling & Booking | Scheduling & Booking |
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| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
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| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
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| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
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| Live deals | 1 | None right now |
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Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
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.