If one person in your firm takes one kind of meeting, the booking page you already pay for is enough. A free Gmail account or Google Workspace Business Starter gets a single booking page in Google Calendar, and Microsoft Bookings comes with Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium. Calendly earns its fee when several people share the bookings, when you offer more than one kind of meeting, or when the client pays at booking. Even then, the tier matters more than the brand, because the feature that makes a shared link worth paying for, handing each booking to whoever is free, sits on Calendly's Teams plan. A firm that books appointments for a service, such as a salon or a clinic, needs a different kind of product.
Most small service firms own a booking page and have never opened it. Whether that page does the job depends on who can be booked, how many kinds of meeting you offer, whether money changes hands, and how many people need a seat. All prices checked September 2026.
The booking page you already pay for
On the Google side, the single booking page is the thin version. More than one booking page, automatic email reminders, and checking several calendars for conflicts are premium features. In Google Workspace they start at Business Standard, and so do paid appointments and co-hosts. Google's own pricing table markets "appointment booking pages" as a Business Standard feature, while the help pages say Business Starter gets one basic page. Both are true, and the full version is one tier up.
Google Workspace Business Standard is $14 per user per month on a one-year commitment, and Business Starter is $7. Google runs introductory discounts for new customers, so check the checkout price, but the standard figures are $7, $14 and $22.
On eligible plans the Google page does most of what a small firm asks of it. It can add buffer time between appointments and cap bookings per day. You can send up to five email reminders, but you cannot edit the reminder text. Google Meet is built in. For Zoom you add the link yourself after the booking.
Microsoft Bookings has two modes, a personal booking page for one person and shared booking pages for a team. It sends email confirmations, reminders and follow-ups, and you can set more than one reminder. Text reminders need a Teams Premium licence on top of the business plan, and the client needs a United States, Canada or United Kingdom phone number to receive them. Microsoft 365 Business Basic is $7 per user per month paid yearly, or $8.40 month to month, and it includes Bookings.
Where Calendly earns its fee
Calendly's free plan gives you one event type and one connected calendar. It has no booking cap, but automated reminders start on the paid Standard plan. If you need a 20-minute intro call and a 60-minute working session as separate links, you are past Calendly's free plan.
Calendly Standard is $10 per seat per month billed yearly, or $12 billed monthly. It adds unlimited event types, automated reminders, and payment at booking through Stripe or PayPal. Standard also covers group and collective meetings, where one booking lands on several people's calendars at once. HubSpot, Mailchimp and Zapier connect on Standard. Video links for Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams work on every plan, including Free.
Calendly Teams is $16 per seat per month billed yearly, or $20 billed monthly. Round-robin, where Calendly hands each booking to whichever teammate is next or free, needs the Teams plan. Routing forms, which ask a client a few questions and send them to the right person, are also a Teams feature, and Salesforce connects there too.
If you need none of those features, you are paying for a page you already have.
Exhibit 1
The built-in pages already cover one-person booking at the right tier, so Calendly's fee pays mainly for team distribution
Sharing one link across a team
On Google Workspace Business Standard and above, you can add up to 20 co-hosts from your own domain to a Google booking page. Google does not check co-hosts' calendars for conflicts unless you switch that on. The Google help pages we read describe co-hosts, not round-robin, so for a "book whoever is free" setup we would look at Calendly Teams or Microsoft Bookings.
A shared Microsoft Bookings page can book a client with any one of several staff members, or with all of them at once when everyone is free. Each Bookings service can have its own length and buffer time. Microsoft does not describe how it picks the staff member, so treat it as "any available person" and test it before you rely on it for fair distribution.
For a firm where clients should book whoever is free, the Calendly price to compare is the Teams price. Collective meetings, where the client meets two of you together, are already on Standard.
The price per person adds up
Calendly charges per seat, and a seat is anyone who hosts meetings. The people booking with you do not need a seat or an account. That makes Calendly cheap for one owner and a real line item for a firm that gives everyone a link.
Five people on Calendly Teams is $80 a month billed yearly, or $960 a year, on top of what the firm already pays for email. Only the people who take bookings need a Calendly seat, so three hosts on Teams is $48 a month billed yearly.
Dropping Calendly does not free up the whole suite bill, because the Workspace or Microsoft 365 subscription is paid for email and documents anyway. The Calendly fee is the only scheduling line that disappears. The larger costs are the hours an owner spends working around a tool that does less than the firm needs, or the monthly payments for features nobody uses. We made the same point in choosing between Notion, Trello and a spreadsheet, where the subscription was also the small number.
When the meeting is paid
Microsoft says plainly that Bookings has no payment support. The price field on a Bookings service only displays a price. If the meeting is paid, Bookings is not the tool.
Google Calendar can take payment at booking through Stripe on an eligible Workspace plan. Google adds no platform fee, though Stripe's own fees still apply. Refunds are not automatic. If a paid appointment is cancelled, you refund it in Stripe yourself.
Calendly takes payment at booking through Stripe or PayPal from the Standard plan up. For a firm that sells a paid first session, either Google on Business Standard or Calendly Standard will do, and the choice usually follows whichever payment account you already run. A paid session is also a natural first step in a client-onboarding checklist.
Appointments for a service are a different product
A clinic, a salon or a workshop does not book meetings. It books a service, with a staff member, a length, often a deposit, and a cancellation policy. That calls for a service-booking system.
We checked one, Square Appointments. It has a free plan with an online booking site, appointment reminders and unlimited staff calendars, and you pay card processing fees when you take a payment. Square's paid plans are $49 or $149 a month per location, and add no-show fees and multi-staff booking.
We did not check other service-booking tools, or the booking features inside practice-management and invoicing apps. If your firm already runs one of those, look at what it includes before adding a subscription.
A decision by the shape of the firm
A sole owner with one kind of meeting should use the built-in page. The single Google page or a personal Bookings page covers it, and a link in the email signature does the rest.
A firm that offers several kinds of meeting and wants reminders can choose between Google Workspace Business Standard, Microsoft Bookings and Calendly Standard.
A small team where clients book any available person should look at Calendly Teams or a shared Microsoft Bookings page. Google co-hosts can share a page, but the pages we read do not describe handing each booking to one person.
A firm whose first meeting is paid should use Calendly Standard or Google on Business Standard with Stripe, and not Bookings.
Exhibit 2
The shape of the firm decides the booking tool, and only shared or paid bookings push a small firm past the page it already owns
What neither tool fixes
A booking page reads the calendar and offers whatever looks empty. If the owner keeps the day's real work in their head, or on a job sheet that never reaches the calendar, the tool will book a client call on top of a site visit. The calendar has to hold the work before it can protect it. That is a routine question more than a software one, and it is the kind of habit we covered in a steadier week.
Exhibit 3
A booking page removes the back-and-forth of finding a time, but it cannot protect hours the calendar does not show
The other half is where the link lives. It belongs in the email signature, in the reply to every enquiry, and on the website where a visitor looks for the next step, which is part of what a small-business homepage needs to say. Putting the right booking link on the site, where a visitor can find it, is part of our web design work.