What is the best online calendar tool you use to manage your business? Which calendar tool is best suited for your business or freelance work?
So you’re looking for online calendar tools to help you with your business? The best models not only allow you to share your plans with customers, rivals, or even potential customers but also help you manage the details.
Don’t panic! This post is not going to tell you to get rid of your paper calendar and start scheduling everything online. But if you’re anything like me, then ain’t nobody got time for that. In this post, I’m going to go over my favorite free online calendar tools that help you be more productive. Paper calendars just aren’t enough for most people anymore. Even basic digital calendars can’t keep up with the growing scheduling demands of busy professionals.
What is Calendar Software?
Calendar software is intended to organize a user’s tasks, appointments, and goals in a visually simplistic way, which helps streamline the internal activities of an entire business. Calendar software facilitates the creation of electronic agendas that can be accessed, edited, and shared with employees company-wide.
Calendar software can be sold as a standalone product but is oftentimes included as part of a larger office suite. Calendars are used to streamline the internal workings of a company, with features that can include: collaborative scheduling, email appointment reminders, calendar viewing default (one day, one week, one month, or one year, workweek or work hours display, etc.), and group calendars.
To qualify for inclusion in the Calendar category, a product must: Allow scheduling from individual and/or collaborating users to provide collaborative calendar views feature customizable viewing options (e.g., day, week, month, year)
The most popular online calendars today are more like personal assistants. They let you schedule and edit events, sync your changes across devices and invite other people to your events. Many calendars even let you enhance those events with attachments, links, and automated reminders for everyone involved.
As a leader, you most likely keep a schedule. Your schedule keeps you on track and tells you what you need to accomplish each day. There may be meetings, appointments, and events listed that you don’t want to forget.
Leaders have always found that work and personal life intertwine and calendaring is the best weapon against missing the essentials in either world. With scheduling and calendaring, besides work requirements, your schedule also includes gym appointments, concerts, and your kids’ games or recitals.
So, which online calendar is right for you? It all depends on what you need your calendar to do. Here are seven of the best tools currently available.
When considering which shared calendar app to use for your business, look for one that has the following qualities and features:
- Easy to use: Shared calendar apps should be user friendly and intuitive, with minimal navigation and maintenance required. It should also make the collaboration process smooth and straightforward.
- Simple scheduling tools: The primary function of a shared calendar is to organize everyone’s schedules, but it should make scheduling simple. One great feature to look for is if the app lets you check the availability of co-workers at a glance. Some other useful tools to look for include customization features, multiple calendar availability, and time- and location-based reminders.
- Collaboration and sharing features: When using a business calendar app, you want to be able to share availability, event invitations or calendars with your team. You also want the ability to collaborate on events, calendars and any documents or projects shared within the app.
- Automatic syncing: Auto-syncing is a great timesaving tool. Ideally, any updates you make to your shared calendar sync with your account, as well as the accounts of anyone else involved. Many calendar apps feature automatic syncing and integration with other apps.
- Cross-platform availability: Not everyone has the same platform, so cross-platform availability is a huge plus. It eliminates the need for multiple apps across platforms while keeping everyone on the same page no matter what device they’re using.
If you need a calendar app you can use companywide, consider these eight options that have excellent features and are highly recommended by business owners across different industries.
Asana
Asana is more than a shared calendar app. While it has calendar features, it also makes it easy to manage team projects and tasks. The Timeline feature shows every piece of a project, how it all fits together, and helps you track changes. Asana has a mobile app and has more than 100 integrations.
Asana doesn’t have a free plan, but it offers free trials and a lite version.
“Asana isn’t just a calendar … it’s an enterprise resource planner that includes a shared calendar function, but it also provides other collaboration tools we require,” said David Alexander, designer, developer, and digital marketer at Mazepress. “The pro of this approach includes having task management, communication and reporting tools all within a single interface … put simply, it’s one of the tools I couldn’t live without.”
Calendly
Calendly is automated scheduling software that works with your calendar to automatically check your availability. It helps schedule meetings without a lot of back-and-forth emails. Other features include the ability to schedule buffer time between meetings, time zone detection, compatibility with apps like Salesforce, GoToMeeting, and Zapier, and it grows with your team.
“I use Calendly. I like to set up my podcast interviews,” said Michelle Ngome, host of the Networking With Michelle Show. “There is a free and a paid version. The free version allows you to use one category, while [with] the paid version, you can set up multiple categories. Plus, you can customize the URL.”
Some said her favorite feature is that it syncs with Google Calendar, and she can schedule personal appointments in Google without updating her schedule on Calendly. The program integrates with Outlook, Office 365, and iCloud calendar.
Google Calendar
Google Calendar is an integrated online calendar designed for teams. This calendar integrates seamlessly with other G-Suite products, including Gmail, Drive, Contacts, Sites, and Hangouts. This app can be accessed on laptops, tablets, and phones.
“I use the Google Calendar app to book all my appointments with clients,” said Ana Santos, UX Consultant. “It’s also handy for video meetings because it syncs with Google hangouts if we assign a video conferencing option to the event.”
Santos’ favorite feature is Google Calendar’s ability to sync your calendar across all devices and browsers if you’re logged in with your Google account.
Outlook
Outlook is a common calendar app, which makes it easy to use for business because it’s familiar. If you have an Exchange, Office 365, or Outlook account, you can share your calendar with others. You can also create additional calendars for specific projects and share them with co-workers.
Teamup
Teamup offers shared calendars for groups to simplify organizing, scheduling, and communication. Businesses can choose from free and paid plans. Further, Teamup offers a live demo of its software, as well as a three-day trial, so you can see for yourself if this app is a good fit for your team.
This program was built specifically for groups, and its calendars are easy to use. Calendars are organized by color, and they can easily and securely be shared with other team members through a secure URL.
“I spent ages looking for a well-shared calendar to manage events and holidays for a spread-out team of people,” said Ben Taylor, founder of homeworkingclub.com. “I eventually opted for … Teamup. It gave me the ability to set up lots of different even categories, [it] allowed staff to pull their choice of calendars into their software using ICS feeds, and [it] even comes with an app for iOS and Android.”
Teamweek
With a lengthy list of features such as team timelines, zoom levels, project roadmaps, and a sharing timeline, Teamweek makes it easy to collaborate with your team. Its free plan works for a team with up to five people, and its mobile app lets you collaborate on the go. Paid plans start at $39 per month for up to 10 people, and include projects roadmaps, annual views, and custom colors.
“This is a visual resource for planning, managing, and scheduling our team’s projects,” said Alexis Davis, founder, and CEO of H.K. Productions. “It serves as an open calendar, so everyone knows who’s working on what, when, and how far we are from reaching our intended goals. I think the intention, communication, transparency, and everyone’s awareness of their roles and responsibilities is essential when choosing the right technology for your team’s productivity.”
iCloud
iCloud isn’t just for storage, it also features a simple-to-use calendar that integrates fully with any Apple device. The iCloud calendar app allows your team to schedule meetings, share information, and communicate with ease. You can also toggle your calendar view to “Today” to view your daily tasks and projects at a glance. Its functionality is straightforward and very similar to Google’s calendar, making it a popular choice.
The one downside of this app: Like most Apple products, it loses a lot of functionality for non-Apple computers as well as Android devices. Overall, this calendar app is best if your entire team uses Apple products.
Thunderbird Lightning Calendar
Thunderbird Lightning Calendar is regarded as one of the most powerful calendar apps for Linux users, though it also features Windows and Mac capabilities. Thunderbird’s display includes tabs for your email, calendar, and tasks, and users can easily navigate between these tabs to stay organized and in communication throughout the day.
The calendar offers several different views, including a summary of everything on your schedule for a single day, as well as a search function with time filters and preset event categories. Lightning Calendar integrates seamlessly with both Thunderbird and SeaMonkey email services. While it’s not the fanciest shared calendar app on the list, Thunderbird Lightning Calendar is a useful all-in-one tool to keep you and your team on track.
You don’t need lots of fancy productivity tools. If deployed correctly, a simple online calendar should suffice for most of your organizational needs.
There are lots of free online calendars to choose from. At one end of the scale, there are well-known apps like Google Calendar. On the other end, you’ll find several niche apps that are worth considering.
Conclusion:
There are dozens of great online calendar service providers, making it hard to choose the right one, especially for you who have many different types of interests like shopping, traveling, organizing events…etc. We try to make it easier for you by choosing the best ones out there and summarizing them together to make up your very own personalized “online calendar”.