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Calendso: An open source Calendly alternative

calendso.com

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Re: Calendso: An open source Calendly alternative

#51

Post by indymike »

ckwalsh wrote: post #22

I have to echo everyone else here that the homepage could be much more effective. My first impressions without scrolling: * Calendso has something to do with calendars, based on the name. * It has a popular paid competitor called Calendly. * It's open source, and there is a hosted version as well. I do not yet know what problem it is solving for me or its existing customers. Scrolling down slightly further, I see the…

I think their home page is just fine given Calendly's market position and level of stagnation. Will be trying Calendoso today as it will not only save my company money, but will enable some very powerful new workflows.

Re: Calendso: An open source Calendly alternative

#52

Post by z77dj3kl »

Looking very promising, I'll definitely try this once it develops a bit more. Some things echoed by others as well:

- Need clarity/support for timezones (this is critical)

- Months need to be laid out correctly

- I looked around for a bit and didn't at first find any demo, until then I realized it was embedded in the page! Add a link in the navbar that says "Demo" that takes you to that page, and a big demo above the one on the front page saying "Demo:"

- "Open source Calendly alternative" might be a good start as long as you're still piggy-backing off Calendly's hard work in popularizing this kind of idea, but eventually you want to start defining your own product and stand on your own two legs

- I love the pretty design!

Re: Calendso: An open source Calendly alternative

#54

Post by michaelbuckbee »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #45

Am I the only person who hates receiving calend.ly links? I know it's unreasonble, but I find it somehow rude when someone asks me to go hunting around in their calendar, even though it's more efficient than agreeing on meeting slots. I have even passed on some good opportunities simply because I have an aversion to calend.ly!

I have an aversion to sending them and always say: "Hey, I'm happy to work a time out over email, or if it's easier for you here's my [link]"

Re: Calendso: An open source Calendly alternative

#55

Post by notahacker »

scottfr wrote: post #37
ckwalsh wrote: post #22

I have to echo everyone else here that the homepage could be much more effective. My first impressions without scrolling: * Calendso has something to do with calendars, based on the name. * It has a popular paid competitor called Calendly. * It's open source, and there is a hosted version as well. I do not yet know what problem it is solving for me or its existing customers. Scrolling down slightly further, I see the…

I think you and others on this thread are being much too harsh on their messaging. Most people who have the need this product is meeting will have already encountered Calendly as it is ubiquitous in the space. It's basically a generic term like "Zoom" at this point. "I'll send you my Calendly link" is something people will understand to mean send you a meeting scheduling link. So "An open source Calendly alternative"…

yeah, it's pretty much how "Twitter clone" tells you as much about the expected feature set as half a page on microblogging, follow and share protocols, tagging and push notifications.

I think they could improve the below-the-fold description quite a bit, but the two words "Calendly alternative" convey the important bit about it being a customer-facing time-slot picker that connects to all your calendars, CRMs and webconferencing tools more precisely than "appointment scheduler" which might miss these features and lock you into various others, and probably gets more relevant search traffic too.

Re: Calendso: An open source Calendly alternative

#56

Post by yowlingcat »

As this is HN, to the authors, if they're reading this -- I know you may be getting some pretty critical feedback here (hopefully it's useful!) but I will say this would have handily solved an 8 figure problem for me at a previous company. There are a lot of companies where scheduling appointments in many ways /is/ the product -- being able to have good open source tooling for appointment scheduling is worth its weight in gold. I would definitely have sprung for something like this if it was available in, oh, 2017. Keep going!

Re: Calendso: An open source Calendly alternative

#57

Post by ivan_gammel »

Radim wrote: post #46
pferde wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This describes also my "journey" within the homepage, to the letter. I see this often on similar small product homepages. Many of them describe the product for someone already familiar with it, and could do with taking a step back and trying to describe it for someone who, figuratively speaking, accidentally stumbled onto it and has no idea what's going on.

Have you considered that in some cases (though probably not Calendso's), that may be on purpose? The VC crowd would have you believe that every product must disrupt the whole world – for the casual visitor, their gradma and their dog. But niche products have to ward off tyre-kickers and what-if time-wasters, as much as entice their target audience. Using industry-specific jargon kills both flies at once. If you "don'…

Exactly. Home page belongs to the marketing team, not to engineering, and those wizards of target audiences quite often find counter-intuitive ways to reach their goals. If message „we are like X, but better“ gets visits and reaches the expected conversion rates, then who we are to challenge that work?

Re: Calendso: An open source Calendly alternative

#59

Post by Taurenking »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #39
j4yav wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tangent, but is there somewhere you can get this sort of feedback for your own apps/landing pages?

Have a look at https://www.roastmylandingpage.com/ and https://www.usertesting.com/

>https://www.roastmylandingpage.com/

150 pounds for a 20 minute roast seems a tiny bit much

Re: Calendso: An open source Calendly alternative

#60

Post by yunohn »

mfkp wrote: post #36
kenrick95 wrote: post #20

When I try the product by clicking on to booking your time [1], my first question that pops up in my head is: What is the time zone? I couldn't find this information anywhere. Thanks [1] https://app.calendso.com/bailey/1

Also, what an odd calendar layout. Starting with the first day of the month at the top left means all the days are off for most months. Why would Thursday be at the very left side (as is the case in April)?? (I was initially trying to find out if the layout was Sunday or Monday starting, but apparently it's neither)

I have never in my life used a calendar with such an annoying layout. Why would they omit the Day and then misalign the Dates for the month.
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