Sondu Schedule compared with Calendly
A salon is not a calendar. It is a diary with money attached.
The best alternative to Calendly depends on whether you are booking your own time or running a business with staff, deposits and rooms. Calendly is the best in the world at selling access to your own calendar, and cheaper for a solo consultant.
Sondu Schedule takes deposits at booking, refills cancellations from a waiting list, and includes your whole team, from €29 a month.
Your numbers, not ours
Work it out yourself.
Every figure below is yours to change. If the answer comes out in Calendly’s favour, the page says so.
Your week, honestly
Every stylist, therapist or practitioner clients book directly. On a per person plan, each one is a seat.
Take this from your own invoice, in euros. Calendly publishes in US dollars, so your figure depends on the day and the plan.
Booked, never arrived, never paid. Count the whole team, not just your own column.
What that empty hour would have taken, on average.
Over twelve months
On these numbers Sondu is about €2,148 a year cheaper, and the bill does not move whatever the month does.
The models, side by side
Not features. Shapes.
This is not a courtesy paragraph. Calendly is genuinely excellent, and for a large number of people reading this it is still the right answer. Calendly wins, plainly, on all of this. Sheer simplicity. You sign up, you connect a calendar, you have a link. There is nothing to configure and nothing to learn. Very few products in any category are that easy, and we are not one of them. Selling access to your own calendar. It is the best in the world at exactly that job. One person, one availability, one link, booked. If that sentence describes your whole business, you have already found your software. Deep calendar and video call integrations. Google, Outlook, iCloud and Exchange, with Zoom, Meet and Teams links generated automatically. Years of work sit behind that, and it simply never breaks. Routing forms. Ask a few questions and send the person to the right calendar, the right team or the right qualification path. It is a properly clever piece of design and we have nothing like it. Everybody already knows the link. There is no explaining to do. Your client has used one before, and familiarity is a real feature that no comparison table ever scores. So here is the honest steer. If you are a consultant, a coach or a therapist selling one to one time, working alone, and taking payment afterwards or through an invoice, Calendly is probably the right answer and it is almost certainly cheaper than us. Stay. Come back if you hire, or if the empty chairs start to hurt. The models, side by side Not features. Shapes. Calendly protects your time. Sondu protects your takings. Both are legitimate jobs. They are just not the same job, and that is what decides this.
| Feature | Sondu Schedule | Calendly |
|---|---|---|
| How they charge | One flat fee, whole team included | Per user, per month |
| Deposits at booking | Yes | Payment only, no partial deposit |
| Waiting list refills cancellations | Yes, automatically | No |
| Staff rota with services | Yes | Not built for it |
| Room and desk hire | Yes, via Sondu Reserve | No |
| Simplicity for one to one calls | Fuller product | Beautifully simple |
| Where data is hosted | EU, in Ireland | Global infrastructure |
Where they beat us
Buy Calendly if this is you.
Calendly and Acuity are excellent for selling your own time, and if that is all you do, they are lighter than Sondu. They have no deposits, no rate card by room, no off peak pricing and no member statement, so they stop working the moment money or space is involved.
Before you switch
The honest answers.
There is a genuinely usable free tier for one person with one event type. Above that, Standard is reported at 12 US dollars per person per month billed monthly, or 10 billed annually, and Teams at 20 per person per month billed monthly, or 16 billed annually. Enterprise is quoted from 15,000 US dollars a year. Sources agree on the headline figures and disagree on the volume steps, and Calendly bills in dollars rather than euros, so confirm your own rate on calendly.com rather than taking ours.
Not in the way a salon means it. Calendly can collect a payment at the point of booking through Stripe or PayPal, which is a real feature and works well for a paid consultation. What it does not do is hold a part payment against a larger bill that gets settled in the chair, applied per service, refundable on your own rules. Sondu takes that deposit at the moment of booking, which is the whole reason the no show line in the calculator above exists.
No. It is one of the most requested things in their own community forum and it has not arrived. When somebody cancels, the slot simply reappears on your link and waits to be noticed. Sondu offers that slot out automatically, to the right person on the list, in order, until somebody takes it. On a Thursday afternoon that is the difference between an empty hour and a paid one.
Quite possibly, and we would rather say so now. If you work alone, sell one to one time, and take payment afterwards or by invoice, Calendly is simpler than us and cheaper than us. The case for moving starts when there is more than one person to book, when empty slots cost you real money, or when you need rooms priced and members invoiced at month end.
Schedule is €29, €65 or €119 a month plus IVA, flat. No commission on any booking, no per staff fee, no per person fee, up to ten people included on Team at €65. Reserve, which handles rooms, desks and studios with a rate card and monthly statements, is €49, €99 or €179, tiered by how many spaces you let. Thirty days free per product, no card. Data in the EU, hosted in Ireland.
One flat fee, whatever the month does.
Thirty days free, no card at signup, and free migration from Calendly if you decide to move.