Chili Piper vs. Calendly: Which Is the Best Meeting Scheduler for You?

If you’ve landed here, chances are you’re comparing Chili Piper vs. Calendly to evaluate which can be the better scheduling tool for your team.

Buckle up then, as we’re going deep into the nitty-gritty of Chili Piper and Calendly. By the end of this blog, you’ll know the capabilities, use cases, and limitations of these 2 platforms, along with a worthy alternative.

Let’s get started.

What Is Chili Piper?

Chili Piper is a meeting scheduler that lets you qualify, route, and schedule leads from anywhere—webform, cold calls, campaigns, G2 page, and more. This helps you accelerate your speed-to-lead time, qualify leads efficiently, book more meetings, and create more pipeline.

What Is Chili Piper Best For?

Chili Piper is best for boosting your website conversion rates, especially if you’re handling large volumes of inbound leads. For sales teams, the platform helps in reducing their no-show rates and increasing the speed-to-lead.

Here are some key capabilities of Chili Piper that makes these possible:

• One-click meeting scheduling. Chili Piper’s Instant Booker automates scheduling through one-click booking through email, automated invites and reminders, and real-time updating of CRMs.
• Route and book from website forms. Its Form Concierge offering lets you instantly qualify, route, and book from your existing website form. Allow leads only from good-fit accounts, enable one-click booking from your email marketing campaigns, and create routing rules based on your team structure.
• Auto-assign records. The Distro solution helps in auto-assigning records in Salesforce to the right people on your team without any manual upkeep. It also automatically removes reps from the queue when they’re out-of-office.
• Optimize handoff across the funnel. The Handoff offering automates scheduling and lead routing—whether it’s from prospecting to sales, closed-won to implementation, or even chat to sales. Its algorithm constantly corrects to make sure every rep has the exact same number of meetings.
• Quick routing and scheduling. Chili Piper lets you route outbound leads and schedule meetings, all in less than 30 seconds.
• Automated reminders and rescheduling. Send automated reminder emails before your meeting and let guests reschedule easily. Increase show rates and spend less time on manual tasks or follow-ups.
• Salesforce CRM integration. Chili Piper ensures all meeting details are time stamped and recorded in your Salesforce to help you better manage your pipeline. Events are logged in the CRM automatically.
• Book meetings wherever you are. With Chili Piper’s Chrome extension, SDRs can book meetings for AEs from HubSpot, Salesforce, Outreach.io, Salesloft, and Gmail.

Chili Piper Pricing

Chili Piper’s meeting scheduling capabilities are spread across 4 different products, which are priced individually.

• Instant Booker: $15/user/month (billed annually) and $22.5/user/month (billed monthly).

Features included: 1-click scheduling over email, no-show and cancellation management, and integrations with Salesforce & HubSpot.

• Handoff: $25/seat/month (billed annually) and $37.5/seat/month (billed monthly).

Features included: Instant Booker features + round-robin based on CRM or custom rules, and custom routing rules including assign to owner.

• Form Concierge: $30/seat/month (billed annually) and $45/seat/month (billed monthly).

Features included: Instant Booker features + real-time lead qualification and routing, lead to account matching, and display of calendar availability on your site.

• Distro: $30/seat/month (billed annually) and $45/seat/month (billed monthly).

Features included: Instant Booker features + trigger route on field update or new record creation, manage service-level agreements and send email/Slack notifications to reps, and auto-sync with calendar for working hours/vacation.

Among the 4 products, Form Concierge includes a platform fee based on your monthly lead volume. Up to 100 leads/month costs $150, up to 1000 leads/month costs $400 and more than 1000 leads/month costs $1000.

Except for Form Concierge, the remaining 3 products have a minimum license requirement:

• Distro: 5 users (annually) or 4 users (monthly)
• Handoff: 4 users (annually) or 3 users (monthly)
• Instant Booker: 7 users (annually) or 5 users (monthly)

What Is Calendly?

Calendly helps individuals, teams, and organizations automate meeting scheduling. It removes the back-and-forth from the scheduling process, and can be scaled and standardized across your entire organization.

What Is Calendly Best For?

Calendly is best for individuals looking to book 1:1 meetings as well as for teams who schedule meetings with multiple invitees. The platform lets your invitees schedule meetings with you from several touchpoints such as website, email, social media, or Slack.

Here are some features that make Calendly work for your team:

• Flexible event types that you can choose from—one-on-one, group, round robin, and collective—based on various parameters like number of hosts and invitees, language of your booking page, meeting name and location, meeting duration, and your availability. For high-priority meetings that don’t match your regular event types, you can book a one-off meeting as well.
• Syncs with calendar apps such as Google Calendar, Office 365/Outlook, and iCloud Calendar.
• Integrates with email platforms including Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, and iCloud Mail.
• Compatible with video conferencing platforms including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and Google Meet.
• Collect payments via Stripe or PayPal at the time of booking.
• Send meeting polls to let invitees vote on dates and times to find the best meeting time for a large group.
• Integrate with CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot to autosync records, meeting info, and follow ups.
• Martech stack integration. Calendly comes with native integrations for HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot to help you instantly qualify, route, and book prospect meetings using your existing web forms.
• Analytics dashboard help you track and identify actionable insights like number of meetings created/completed/rescheduled/canceled, preferred meeting lengths, and popular days and times for meetings.

Calendly Pricing

Calendly offers 4 pricing tiers including the Free plan. Here are the pricing details:

• Free: $0

Features included: One-to-one event type with unlimited meetings, basic integrations, and access to mobile app & browser extension.

• Standard: $10/seat/month (billed annually) and $12/seat/month (billed monthly)

Features included: Free features + Unlimited event types, multiple calendars, advanced integrations, and 24/7 live chat support.

• Teams: $16/seat/month (billed annually) and $20/seat/month (billed monthly)

Features included: Standard features + Round robin events, Salesforce integration, and routing leads to the right calendar.

• Enterprise: Starts at $15k/year

Features included: Teams features + single sign-on, compliance with an audit log and data deletion API, integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365, and expedited support, onboarding and implementation.

Exploring Calendly & Chili Piper? Key Points To Consider

Both Calendly and Chili Piper are established in the appointment scheduling software market and boast a wide range of users. But they’re not without their faults. So, here are a few points based on user reviews that you should consider to make an informed decision.

If you’re considering Calendly, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Limited licensing flexibility. If you want to access all of Calendly’s routing features, you need to be on the premium plan. What’s more, the entire team has to be on the plan—not just the reps who take meetings.
• Limited owner-based routing capabilities. Calendly’s owner-based lead routing is available only for Salesforce CRM and that too only for the Enterprise plan.
• Restricted customer support. Calendly provides full-fledged customer support, including onboarding and implementation only on Enterprise plan. Its Standard and Teams plans provide round-the-clock support only through email and live chat and not through other channels like phone.
• Complex website booking embed. Embedding Calendly on your website can be challenging if you have limited technical expertise, so it requires dev assistance.

If Chili Piper is your preference, here are a few considerations:

• Pricing tactics. Chili Piper’s scheduling and routing capabilities are spread across 4 products instead of a single product, and 3 out of 4 products have a minimum license requirement. So, you’d have to purchase a combination of these products, which can strain your budget.
• Steep platform fees. Chili Piper’s Form Concierge product comes with tiered platform fees based on lead volume, which can range from $1800 to $12000 per year.
• Fixed-term contract. Chili Piper comes with an annual contract lock-in, so you can’t end or alter the contract for an entire year.
• Complex routing workflows. Configuring routing workflows in Chili Piper takes heavy admin work, making it difficult to visualize your lead routing strategy.

So, Which Scheduling Platform Should You Choose?

If your focus is website conversions and are looking for a scheduling automation platform to boost your website conversion rates, Calendly might not be the best pick.

While Calendly is exceptional for sharing meeting links to schedule 1:1 and group meetings, it falls short when it comes to routing inbound leads to the right rep and website embed, all of which is necessary for any business focusing on inbound lead generation.

Chili Piper works great for increasing your website conversion rates, but its powerful capabilities come at a cost—literally.

Its pricing tactics force you to buy multiple licenses to cover essential scheduling features like lead routing, qualification, syncing records with CRM, and handoffs. To top it all, there’s the platform fees: you’re charged proportionate to the number of people who fill out your website forms, irrespective of whether those leads are qualified or unqualified.

Another thing to bear in mind is users have reported less-than-desirable customer support for both Calendly and Chili Piper. For scheduling automation, round-the-clock customer support is non-negotiable—even a few hours of downtime can result in loss of valuable inbound leads.

So, you need a scheduling platform that’s budget-friendly, provides flexible routing options, doesn’t come with excessive platform fees, and excellent customer support. This is what Schedule IQ was built for.

What Is Schedule IQ?

Schedule IQ by Klenty is a meeting scheduling automation platform designed to convert your website visitors into booked meetings. It automates the entire process of meeting scheduling, from qualifying leads based on your website form to automatically routing leads to the right team member.

Whether you’re in sales, marketing, or customer success, Schedule IQ helps you organize, plan, and distribute every last lead generated, ensuring you don’t miss any opportunity to build your sales pipeline.

What Is Schedule IQ Best For?

With Schedule IQ, you can automate the entire meeting scheduling process end-to-end. You can book meetings by displaying a calendar once high-intent leads fill your form, improve speed-to-lead by scheduling time with prospects as soon as they complete the form, qualify inbound leads, and route them to the right reps.

Let’s zoom in a bit into how Schedule IQ stands out from Calendly and Chili Piper:

• Drag-and-drop routing builder. Schedule IQ is the only lead routing platform with a workflow builder that lets you quickly review and edit your routing strategy. Make changes to your routing logic in seconds, and visualize your routing strategy easily.
• Leverage deep integrations with CRMs. Unlike Calendly and Chili Piper, Schedule IQ lets you have bidirectional sync with the top CRMs in the market: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Zoho CRM. When visitors book a meeting, fail to, or cancel, Schedule IQ immediately creates a contact and associated activity in your CRM. It also updates existing contacts, ownership, and specific fields so your CRM stays up-to-date always.
• Website calendar embed. Embed your calendar on your website without any hassle or dev assistance by just copy-pasting an embed code. Calendar embed lets visitors to book meetings directly, and improves your website's functionality by allowing visitors to schedule meetings without leaving your site.
• Access 4 different lead routing options—owner-based, form-based, CRM-based, and IP-based—to assign leads to reps best suited to take them to closed-won.
• Have full control over lead distribution by distributing based on rep availability, equal distribution or weight-based distribution. Use round-robin or custom logic to decide meeting volume for every rep.
• Seamless calendar integration. Connect your Google or Outlook calendar to Schedule IQ to let prospects book a meeting during your available hours.
• Meeting drop-off workflows. Capture prospects who partially submit the form and automatically set up workflows to remind your prospect to finish booking the meeting.
• Conversion funnel reports lets you pinpoint exactly where you’re losing pipeline. Slice meeting volume down by rep by meeting completion rate and cancel rate and analyze drop-offs by traffic-to-form fill, form fill to calendar visit and calendar visit to meeting booked.
• Top-tier customer support + migration. With Schedule IQ, you’ll get 24/5 free support access across email, chat, and phone. Experience free hand-held migration, onboarding, and implementation. Post-implementation, you’ll also get product training and workshops for new team members.

Schedule IQ Pricing

Schedule IQ helps you qualify leads quickly, route them to the right sales rep, and 3x your inbound pipeline—all without ballooning your budget. Here are the pricing plans tailored to your scheduling needs:

• Free: $0

Features included: 2 one-on-one meeting links.

• Meeting Booker: $12/seat/month (billed annually) and $15/seat/month (billed monthly)

Features included: Unlimited one-to-one meeting links and integrations with 5 CRMs—Salesforce, Pipedrive, MS Dynamics 365, Zoho CRM, HubSpot.

• Lead Router: $20/seat/month (billed annually) and $25/seat/month (billed monthly)

Features included: Advanced routing, website tracking, advanced CRM integration, and workflows.

Book a demo now to see how Schedule IQ can cater to your scheduling requirements!