NeetoCal, a Calendly alternative, is a commodity and is priced accordingly

Yesterday, NeetoCal had its product hunt launch. In the launch, folks asked what NeetoCal offers over Calendly. That’s a fair question, I guess. Here is how I answered it.

NeetoCal is not the first company to compete with Calendly. We are not even the second company to compete with Calendly. We are probably the 30th player in this crowded space. With so many players in the market, scheduling software seems like a commodity.

One of the basic tenets of a commodity product is that the price would be low because of the intense competition and undifferentiated products. The competition is indeed fierce to be Calendly alternative. Almost all the products offer the same features, and the switching cost isn’t much.

Here is the list of Calendly alternatives that I know of. I’m linking directly to their pricing page so that you can check out the price for yourself.

1. NeetoCal

2. Calendly

3. Savvycal

4. Acuity Scheduling

5. Youcanbookme

6. Bookafy

7. zcal

8. dotcal

9. chillipiper

10. vcita

11. cal.com

12. timetap

13. harmonizely

14. appointy

15. appoint.ly

16. tidycal

17. Boomerang

18. calendar bridge

19. simplybook.me

20. Appointment scheduling by Google Calendar

21. reclaimai

22. Book Like A Boss

23. Calendar Hero

24. HubSpot Sales Hub

25. Doodle

26. zencal

27. onecal

28. morgen

29. Trafft

30. Koalendar

31. schedule.cc

If I've missed any scheduling software, please post a comment, and I'll include it.

The pricing of the above-listed software doesn’t seem to indicate intense competition. This issue with the high price is not just an issue with the meeting scheduling software. In general, the pricing in SaaS is going out of hand, and I’m not the only one feeling this way.

David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) wrote about it in this blog titled. It’s not just cloud costs that are out of control. He mentioned that “Enterprise SaaS pricing is getting silly.”.

I’ll go further and say that “SaaS pricing is getting silly.” He ended his blog by saying, “We’re due a correction here,” I couldn’t agree more. NeetoCal is our answer to bring about price correction in the meeting scheduling software market.

It’s not like NeetoCal has taken massive funding from VCs, and NeetoCal will bring the price down to make all competition go away. On the contrary, we have not taken any VC funding. We are 100% bootstrapped and built NeetoCal while doing the consulting work on the side. By the way, BigBinary is a Ruby on Rails and React.js consulting company. Contact us if you have any Ruby on Rails or React.js work. NeetoCal is built on Ruby on Rails and React.js.

So, how can we build software at a low cost? As I mentioned earlier, BigBinary is a consulting company, and any consulting company is all about managing risks. If a consulting company has no engineer on the bench, then the company can’t take on any additional projects, which restricts the company’s profit potential. However, you don’t want too many engineers on the bench, or else you will run into cash flow issues.

Here at BigBinary, when folks are on the bench, they work on building Neeto products. It helps ensure that all developers are appropriately engaged and learn new stuff. Neeto is an internal initiative that does not require external pressure. So, we can afford to take time to ensure that our engineers not only learn the right technology, but they learn it the right way. As a consulting company, our priority is to build the engineers. These engineers, in turn, sometimes work on client projects, and sometimes they work on Neeto products.

This is another way of saying that NeetoCal is practically a by-product of BigBinary. Now that NeetoCal is primarily built, we can afford to keep the price low enough to cover the infrastructure cost and earn a bit of profit. Running a product like NeetoCal is not too resource-intensive. So, in terms of infrastructure, it won’t cost much. This allows us to keep our costs low and compete in the market.

What about marketing and Sales? Won't that cost a lot? Sure, that would cost a lot if you are looking for hypergrowth. Then, you need to spend money on ads. We are looking for sustainable growth without spending any money on ads. It means slower growth, but it also means fewer expenses for us. This makes us more sustainable.

Only time will tell if NeetoCal can make a dent in the massive industry of meeting scheduling software. You should check out NeetoCal to see it for yourself if it’s worth switching.

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