6 solutions that are a great alternative to HubSpot Meetings and why you should evaluate them

Updated on 15/03/2024

HubSpot products have been the holy grail of GTM teams for the longest time now. And that includes us too. 

It’s one of the main reasons why HubSpot Meetings piqued the interest of all the sales, marketing, and revenue folks. 

As a meeting booking tool, HubSpot Meetings provides a great way for sales reps to book meetings by setting up basic routing rules and sharing either individual/team availability through a scheduling page. It’s perfect for smaller teams with 1-2 reps where the routing requirements are not too complex. 

Unfortunately, if you have a larger team with more than a handful of reps, HubSpot Meeting’s routing functionality is not as extensive as you need it to be - making it hard to envision it as a tool that scales with your org. 

Safe to say, you want to thoroughly explore all the options out there and make a choice that is in line with your goals, both present and future. 

So, we put together a detailed list of the best Hubspot Meeting alternatives you can explore - to make things easy for you, to make the research less strenuous, and to #MakeBuyingSimple. Right from features, strengths & weaknesses, to product pricing, this article has it all. 

Before we see who’s on the list, let’s unpack all that we know about HubSpot Meetings so far. 

The ins and outs of HubSpot Meetings (a complete breakdown of product capabilities)

HubSpot Meetings offers a convenient way for prospects to schedule meetings without all the email back and forth. It is designed to streamline communication between businesses and clients and is part of HubSpot’s Sales Hub. More on how that can affect your decision big time, a little later. 

For now, let’s take a deeper look at the capabilities and limitations of the product

What it can do:

1. Allows the business to share a personal booking link with the client, enabling them to book meeting times based on the business’ availability quickly. 
2. Lets you assign meetings via a basic round-robin and routing setup
3. Eliminates the chance of double bookings or missed appointments.
4. Has a robust sync with Gmail, G Suite, and Outlook or Office 365.
5. Allows you to embed your scheduling link on your website or use the shareable booking link via email.
6. Let prospects schedule time with multiple people with group meeting links.
7. Can book meetings on behalf of other members on the team. 
8. Automates email sequences as soon as someone schedules a meeting.
9. Can customize the meeting length and availabilities. 
10. Has simple navigation with an easy-to-use interface.
11. Easy to set up for existing HubSpot Sales Hub customers. 

That being said, there are many businesses that are either looking to switch from HubSpot Meetings or are seriously considering its alternatives in their search. But why? Let’s find out.

11 reasons why businesses want to switch from HubSpot Meetings 

Despite its popularity and offerings, Hubspot Meetings is not everyone’s cup of tea. When you get into the nitty-gritty, you’ll realize that the product is built as a smart scheduling solution for smaller teams with a few reps and a simpler routing setup. 

Be it larger teams who are considering it as an option or existing HubSpot users who want more advanced functionalities, here are a few product limitations to be aware of. (These are also the main reasons why existing HubSpot Meetings customers switch to other solutions) 

1. Existing prospects in the CRM can’t be matched to the right owner instantly
   When you have multiple campaigns run by the GTM team, there are many avenues from which a prospect can book a meeting with you. In that case, you want to make sure that if a prospect already exists in your CRM, they are matched with the account/contact/lead owner from the get-go.
   
   Unfortunately, while HubSpot Meetings lets you qualify your leads, there is no facility to look up existing contacts in the CRM based on certain properties and route them to reps accordingly. As a consequence, they either get bounced around till they are assigned to the right rep or they end up talking to a rep who does not have enough context. Either way, you risk losing out on high-intent prospects.
   
   
2. Reps don’t get assigned meetings evenly and fairly due to round-robin restrictions
   When your reps rely on getting their fair share of meetings to hit their targets of deals and revenue generated, you want to make sure your routing logic can be set up to support that.
   
   With HubSpot Meetings, you can create basic round-robin rules based on the inputs of the HubSpot Forms. But beyond that, you cannot use strict or flexible round-robin, or custom logic to distribute meetings fairly.
   
   Uneven meeting distribution amongst reps can hamper their monthly quotas and even cause tiffs within the team when reps find out someone else got assigned more meetings than them. For admins and managers, this lack of flexibility means the chaos that comes with manually reassigning leads when they are not distributed evenly.
   
   
3. Reps get unfairly penalized for no-shows, canceled meetings, and vacation days
   When it comes to equal meeting distribution, you want a tool that can take into account events such as no-shows, canceled meetings, and your reps’ PTO. And this extends to more than the ability to just mark it as such. This data needs to help adjust your meeting distribution logic. 
   
   There is no way to calibrate your round-robin logic in HubSpot Meetings to account for no-shows, canceled meetings, and vacation days. While you can create a custom property and manually mark meetings as no-shows, you cannot feed this data back to your distribution logic and make the necessary adjustments. 
   
   As a result, your reps get unfairly penalized, lose out on their meeting quotas for the month, and end up feeling extremely frustrated.  

4. Existing prospects who want to book a meeting are required to fill out a form, yet again
   If you are running any kind of retargeting/nurture/outbound campaigns, you know how crucial the meeting booking process is in these cases. These are prospects who have either already filled out a form on your website or whose details already exist in your CRM. To get these meetings on your calendar, your window is short so your process needs to be quick, easy, and seamless.
   
   In HubSpot Meetings, regardless of whether a prospect exists in your CRM or not, they will be required to fill out a form again to book a meeting.
   
   For example, a sales rep is in conversation with a prospect which started as a cold email. Now your rep already has the basic contact information of the prospect right?
   
   So when you want them to book a meeting, it becomes redundant if you send them to a booking page which requires them to fill in all their details again to book a meeting.
   
   The lack of a one-click booking experience for existing high-intent prospects puts you at high risk of not converting them.
   
   Sure, HubSpot lets you auto-populate the form for existing users, but given that cookies are going to go away, you never know how that’ll pan out. Besides, wouldn’t it be magical for your prospects if they could just click and book?
   
   
5. Communication with prospects looks and feels generic and uninteresting
   Whether it is your meeting booking page or the meeting reminder emails that you send, communication with prospects needs to stand out in today’s competitive landscape. And for that, it needs to be engaging, contextual, and tailor-made to their needs. So that they show up to every consecutive meeting and not just that first one.
   
   Your prospects want to feel like you understand them and their pain points. They want ultra-personalized experiences.
   
   HubSpot Meetings can be restrictive in terms of what you can personalize in your meeting links, booking pages, and emails. You can only send out basic boilerplate meeting links and emails which has a direct impact on getting prospects to book meetings and show up.
   
   
6. Routing logic is restrictive when you have to handoff meetings  
   Your prospects are impatient and constantly distracted. Reps who need to book meetings between prospects and an AE, get stuck playing the middleman - juggling to find out which AE is available and a time that works for both parties.  
   
   While HubSpot Meetings allows reps to book meetings on behalf of others, it does not allow you to create and use custom routing logic to determine to whom the meeting should be assigned.
   
   This means reps will have to manually keep track and choose an AE when they need to handoff meetings. All the while ensuring the AE is available at the needed time and that meetings are distributed amongst AEs fairly. In the end, it is bound to cause manual errors and confusion. 
   

7. HubSpot Meetings works best only with HubSpot Forms
   Your tech stack is unique to your business needs and what works for you may not work for others. That being said, there’s also a lot of work and effort gone into the existing form provider on your website. It’s only natural that you want it to integrate seamlessly with your meeting scheduler tool. 
   
   The catch with HubSpot Meetings is that if you use any web form apart from HubSpot Form, your prospects will be required to submit all their details twice. Once with your existing form and once in a HubSpot form that appears with the HubSpot Meetings scheduler.
   
   This repetitiveness can lead to a frustrating experience for buyers and result in an incomplete meeting booking process where they eventually drop off the funnel.
   

8. The scope of customizing the scheduling experience is very limited
   If customer is the king, then customization is the queen. Right?
   
   As a brand, you have an identity that needs to be uniform and consistent across all channels, mediums, and touchpoints. That forms the base of creating connections with prospects and making sure every interaction they have with you is memorable.
   
   HubSpot Meetings offers very little flexibility when it comes to customizing the design and look of the meeting scheduler. Since it runs majorly on HubSpot branding, it does not deliver the most powerful branded experience that businesses need.
   
   And when you have to send meeting confirmation and reminder emails, HubSpot’s lack of DKIM can make it seem spammy causing it to even end up in the junk folder at times.
   
   Inconsistent branding across channels can make your brand come across as not trustworthy and impact how prospects perceive your brand.
   

9. Reps need to constantly switch tabs and windows to book meetings
   Of course, your reps are using sales engagement tools to cold call and email prospects. And even book meetings on behalf of an AE. Maybe they are having a conversation with a prospect via a chat widget or email. In all these cases, they want the ease and convenience of booking meetings from these tools directly and instantly.
   
   But with HubSpot Meetings, you can only book a meeting from within the platform and it ends up being quite a hassle for reps. They’ll have to constantly toggle between tabs and tools to see which AE should get the meeting, see if they’re available, look up their calendar, find their calendar link, and finally share it with the prospect to book a meeting.
   
   Phew! Just typing that was a nightmare. Imagine all the manual errors that could creep into this process.
   
   
10. Lead Routing is available only to HubSpot’s Sales Hub Enterprise customers
    This means if you are a HubSpot’s Marketing Hub customer but use any other CRM apart from HubSpot, you cannot use the Routing feature. Unless, of course, you’re willing to buy the Sales Hub’s Enterprise plan. But this comes at a huge cost - both in terms of price and the effort to switch your CRM.
    
    But if you are already using HubSpot’s Sales Hub and CRM, and are either on the Starter or Professional plan, you’ll still have to do a hefty upgrade to the Enterprise plan to enjoy the benefits of Routing Meetings.
    
    
11. HubSpot Meetings is very expensive, especially if you want the routing capability
    HubSpot Meeting’s pricing can be a major hurdle for smaller businesses that are looking to scale or even bigger businesses on a tight budget. Don’t get swayed by the free plan that is intended for individuals and small businesses, because HubSpot Meetings’ best offering is gated behind their highest-priced plan.
    
    Lead routing is available only under the Sales Hub Enterprise plan which starts at $150/month/seat, requires a mandatory one-time Professional Onboarding that will cost you $3,500, and can only be taken up as an annual commitment. For example, if you have 5 users it will cost you $12500/year.
    

How much does HubSpot Meetings actually cost? 

Ah, the most asked question of them all.

HubSpot Meetings offers a free 14-day trial and has 3 different pricing plans for individuals and small businesses, and 2 different pricing plans for businesses and enterprises to choose from.

For individuals and small businesses (on a monthly commitment)

• Free Tools: Can be used free, up to 5 users. 
• Starter: Starts at $15/month  
• Professional: Starts at $90/month/seat + a required, one-time Professional Onboarding for a fee of $1,500

‍‍For businesses and enterprises

1. Professional: Starts at $90/month/seat + a required, one-time Professional Onboarding fee of $1,500 (for a monthly commitment). That’s a total of $6900/year for 5 users.
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2. Enterprise: Starts at $150/month/seat + a required, one-time Enterprise Onboarding fee of $3,500, and can only be taken up as an annual commitment. That’s a total of $12500/year for 5 users. 

Now, let’s dive right into the juicy bit you’ve all been waiting for - the 6 best solutions that are in contention to be the leading HubSpot Meeting alternative.

Top 6 Alternatives to HubSpot Meetings 

1. RevenueHero

An inbound revenue acceleration platform, RevenueHero, helps businesses enhance the B2B buying experience. It helps you book more qualified meetings, connect high-intent website visitors to the right rep instantly, reduce the sales cycle, and drive more pipeline without hurting budgets. 

Pros

• Lets you connect high-intent qualified buyers with the right sales rep instantly throughout the buying journey, right from booking meetings on the website to handoffs between sales teams. 
• Prospects can book meetings directly on your website or through emails with one-click scheduling. You can instantly connect your existing prospects to the right sales rep, without them having to fill out a form.
• Enhance buyer experience by enabling targeted messaging and automatic follow-ups & reminders with personalized communications and meeting links. Plus, you can keep leads hooked with calendar invitation content that is tailor-made for them.
• Saves time on manually qualifying leads and assigning the right reps to your most valuable prospects via instant qualification. 
• Ensures qualified leads are routed to the sales rep best equipped to convert them through round-robin, lead-to-account matching, and smart meeting distribution capabilities.
• Enables reps to book meetings and handoff prospects to an AE in 1 click from anywhere on the browser using Relays.
• Helps you hit targets and stay on track with granular reports on buyer behavior, meeting outcomes, and conversion patterns. ‍
• Pricing plans that are designed to be in sync with the value provided to your sales teams in the form of booked meetings - a solution that’s better for your ROI and bottom-line metrics. 
• Allows customization to the tee; this includes adding your brand colors and choosing from 12 theme options for the scheduler, personalized greeting text, and even the thank you page redirection. All this can be done easily without any code or developer’s help.
• Lets you send meeting links from custom domains and emails using DKIM for a truly memorable brand experience.  
• Smooth, seamless, and speedy implementation to get your workflows and use cases up and running in less than a couple of days. Plus, our onboarding and support team are always just a Slack message away

‍We are always open to understanding the challenges our customers face or finding out what capabilities they would like to see. And we take it straight to the drawing board and have our team come up with solutions. 

Take it straight from our customers, who are the voice of our brand and champion our solution to the world. Seriously. You should see what they have to say about the impact RevenueHero has had on their business. 

‍Pricing

Our pricing is designed to be in sync with the value provided to your sales teams — booked meetings. We offer a free trial with a guided, risk-free proof of concept and have 3 pricing plans for you to choose from.

Yearly commitment:

• Inbound Essentials
  Starts at $25/user/month and is perfect for teams that are looking to qualify, route, and book meetings instantly from their website, in-app, email, or chat. We also charge a fixed platform fee of $79/month.
  
  
• Outbound Essentials
  Starts at $20/user/month and is perfect for teams that are looking to book and assign meetings on behalf of reps. There is no platform fee.
  
  
• GTM Enterprise
  Starts at $39/user/month and is the preferred plan for larger teams and organizations that are looking to convert visitors to meetings, move opportunities faster, and hand off meetings in 1 click. We also charge a fixed platform fee of $69/month which does not change based on the number of users or leads submitted.

2. Calendly 

Calendly is an easy-to-use scheduling automation platform that allows individuals to quickly and conveniently book meetings with each other. All you have to do is customize your scheduling link and invite your desired meeting participant via email. They can choose the most suitable time for both parties, and Calendly takes care of the rest. 

Pros

• Creates scheduling links and booking pages for one-on-one meetings 
• Send reminders and follow-ups for meetings 
• Integrates with a host of calendar, email marketing, and video conferencing platforms
• Setup and modify availability times based on user time zones
• Quick implementation with few setup requirements
• Easy-to-use branding and customization options are available
• Cost-effective pricing (starts at $16 /seat/mo for the Teams plan)

Cons

• Calendar sync and availability times can be out of sorts. 
• The booking page tends to be slow and at times unresponsive
• Since Calendly takes visitors to another page to book meetings, it causes marketing attribution to get missed a lot of times.
• Only Professional plans and higher customers can connect to HubSpot CRM, while Teams and Enterprise can integrate with Salesforce CRM. 
• Routing leads via ownership is only possible if you use Salesforce CRM, whereas only customers on the Teams and Enterprise plan can route using HubSpot forms.
• Strict round-robin is impossible on Calendly since it works on showing the entire team's calendar.
• Only customers on the Enterprise plan get a dedicated Calendly account partner, onboarding and implementation assistance, adoption guidance, and security & legal reviews.
• Getting an enterprise license requires you to do so for your entire organization, irrespective of how many people are actually going to use it. 

If you were considering Calendly right after HubSpot Meetings, we’d like to show you how it stacks up against RevenueHero.

Pricing

Calendly offers a free 14-day trial and has 5 different pricing plans for you to choose from:

• Free: Can be used free of cost 
• Standard: Starts at $10/seat/month
• Teams: Starts at $16/seat/month
• Enterprise: Starts at $15k/year 
  

If you want to evaluate Calendly’s alternatives beyond HubSpot Meetings, there are a great many options for you to choose from. Here’s a detailed guide to the top 15 Calendly alternatives that might be a good fit for you.
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3. Chili Piper

Chili Piper is a scheduling platform designed to help businesses streamline the lead-to-booking process and improve inbound conversion rates. It predominantly caters to larger revenue teams with high-volume leads who need automated lead routing and qualification. Its capabilities are unbundled and sold as separate products. (Instant Booker, Form Concierge, Handoff, Distro)

Pros

• Route leads based on account owner, geography, industry, company size, or any other custom routing rules your business requires
• Distribute warm leads to the appropriate rep based on trigger events, such as reaching the lead score threshold, and field updates in Salesforce amongst others
• Compatible with CRMs such as Salesforce or HubSpot CRM and sales engagement platforms including Outreach, SalesLoft, and High Velocity Sales
• Send customizable SMS and email reminders to increase meeting show rates

Cons

• While you have the ability to customize components to your brand’s style, the main drawback here is you require significant developer assistance, time, and effort to do so
• The booking widget load time is slow and can be anywhere from 8 to 13 seconds depending on the complexity of the rules, causing a high drop-off rate
• Since it is primarily built for Salesforce, customers who use HubSpot, or any other CRM find the integrations to be weak and frustrating
• When it comes to looking up account ownership in your CRM, Chili Piper does not let you dynamically check and match leads with the right account owner. You’ll need a lot of admin work to get it right. 
• Plus, it does not let you distribute your leads via a strict round-robin. 
• As the products are bundled and sold separately, you’ll have to buy more than 1 to accommodate your advanced routing needs. The tiered platform fees, admin licenses, and hidden costs like minimum licenses make it more expensive than it could be. You can find a detailed analysis of Chili Piper’s pricing plans here.
• And finally, we’ve heard that you might have to wait for days or even weeks for the team at Chili Piper to get back to you and resolve your implementation queries. 

Pricing

Chili Piper does not offer a free trial and has 4 different pricing plans for you to choose from.

‍Monthly commitment: 

• Instant Booker: Starts at $22.5 per user per month
• Handoff: Starts at $37.5 per user per month
• Form Concierge: Starts at $45 per user per month, plus a Tiered Platform Fee*
• Distro: Starts at $45 per user per month

*Chili Piper’s Tiered Platform Fee is calculated based on how many leads are submitted per month.

If you submit up to 100 leads, the platform fee is $150. For up to 1000 leads the fee is $400 and for more than 100 leads you are charged a fee of $1000. 

Additionally, Chili Piper also has a minimum license requirement for their products:

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

If you’d like to explore alternatives to Chili Piper beyond HubSpotMeetings, there are a ton of great options for you to choose from. We even put together the top 10 Chili Piper alternatives list for you.
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4. Zoho Bookings 

Zoho Bookings improves your schedule management by helping everyone find the perfect time to meet each other and move work forward. It works especially well for individuals who use other services by Zoho to book appointments, sales calls, support sessions, interviews, and services. The platform has a robust, user-friendly, and feature-rich toolset that interfaces with other Zoho apps such as Calendar, Meeting, CRM, Sites, Flow, and Assist.

Pros

• Sends out emails when meetings are confirmed, canceled, or rescheduled, as well as reminders and real-time updates
• Sets buffer time between appointments to allow windows for last-minute bookings, cancellations, and rescheduling
• Manages the team availability and displays the pooled availability of the team on the booking page
• The pricing structure is very reasonable and cost-effective
• Automatic language translation and time zone conversion make it easy to meet with customers across the globe

Cons

• Although it integrates with apps outside the Zoho ecosystem, the setup is complex and usage comes with it challenges
• Some bookings tend to appear outside of activities, tasks, or meetings

Pricing 

Zoho Bookings offers a free 15-day trial and has 4 different pricing plans for you to choose from.

Monthly Commitment: 

• Forever Free: Can be used free of cost for 1 user 
• Basic: Starts at $480/staff/month
• Premium: Starts at $720/staff/month  
• Flex: Custom plan for which you’ll have to get in touch with their sales team

5. YouCanBookMe

With YouCanBookMe, you can control your booking availability, automate your workflows, create personalized notifications and give customers an effortless way to schedule time with you. It streamlines appointment-related communication, such as cancellations, rescheduling, reminders, and confirmations. The platform is simple and easy to use with a user-friendly navigation and design. 

Pros

• Syncs with either Microsoft or Google Calendar to define your availabilities for meetings 
• Can share your booking page via email, text, and social, or also embed it directly on your website 
• Every step of the booking journey is customizable - calendar content, confirmations, reminders, and more 
• Supports 44 languages and easily translates all communication
• Integrates with Zapier, Zoom, Google Meet, Stripe, and Gmail 

Cons

• Setup and configuration can be complicated and time-confusing 
• Upgrading to higher plans with premium features is expensive 
• It does not recognize previous bookings

Pricing 

YouCanBookMe offers a free 14-day trial and has 2 different plans for you to choose from. 

Monthly Commitment:

• Free Forever: Can be used free of cost 
• Paid Plan: Starts at $12/calendar/month  
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6. OnceHub

Formerly known as ScheduleOnce, OnceHub is a meeting journey builder that makes managing your schedule and lead generation processes easier. It is an ideal solution for small teams and businesses to book meetings. Beyond this, it also lets you design unique meeting journeys, manage engagements with a no-code digital assistant, and help build interactive landing pages to boost your ROI.  

Pros : 

• Can define daily or weekly limits for meetings to manage the team’s workload
• The session package feature lets customers schedule a series of meetings
• Enables you to reserve equipment and meeting rooms for scheduled meetings
• Integrates easily with video conferencing, calendar, and CRM solutions
• Has flexible widget publishing options: standalone, pop-up, and embedded

Cons: 

• Integrations available are limited
• The UI is not user friendly and it can be slightly complex to set things up
• Re-scheduling calendar availability is a tedious process
• Customer support is slow and is available only for those on the paid plans
• All the advanced capabilities are only available in the high-end paid plans

Pricing: 

OnceHub offers a free trial and has 3 different pricing plans for you to choose from.

Monthly commitment: 

• Starter: Can be used free of cost for up to 3 booking pages, forms, and chatbots
• Growth: Starts at $24/user/month  
• Enterprise: Custom plan for which you’ll have to get in touch with their sales team

It all comes down to this

Whether you are a small company or a large enterprise, you should be evaluating a solution that makes your life easier. And not the other way around.

HubSpot Meetings has its own place in sales/support workflows and can be used as a simple scheduling page, but it may not be the right one for your use case and business needs.

Especially if you are looking to: 

• Qualify & route leads based on form values, enriched data, or any custom logic of your choice 
• Match and assign prospects to existing owners based on CRM properties
• Book meetings instantly from your website, outbound emails, chat, or in-app
• Let existing leads enter your sales pipeline faster through a form-free one-click booking experience.
• Book meetings and handoff prospects to other teams in 2 clicks from anywhere on your browser 
• Send personalized and contextual communication to prospects that reinforces your brand style, design, tone, and messaging
• Provide all the visibility and insights required for marketers to understand which assets and campaigns convert into meetings
• Get a solution with great ROI and even greater customer support

Then we highly recommend you give RevenueHero a try. 

Book a demo with our team and get a complete walkthrough of the solution that is personalized to your use case and explore how RevenueHero can increase conversions and meetings held for your business as well as accelerate revenue growth. 
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