Calendly vs. GoodTime: Which Interview Scheduling Tool Is Actually Worth It?
Calendly vs. GoodTime: Which Interview Scheduling Tool Is Actually Worth It?
Interview scheduling shouldn't be complicated, but somehow recruiting teams manage to waste 10-15 hours per week playing calendar Tetris with candidates and hiring managers. That's 40-60% of a coordinator's time according to LinkedIn's Recruiting Operations Report.
The solution? Automated interview scheduling tools. The question? Which one.
The two most popular options are Calendly (the simple, self-serve tool everyone knows) and GoodTime (the enterprise-focused scheduling platform built specifically for recruiting). Let's break down which one makes sense for your team.
The Quick Summary
Calendly:
- 4.7 out of 5 stars on G2
- Best for: Small teams, simple scheduling needs, tight budgets
- Price: $10-$16 per user/month
GoodTime:
- 4.6 out of 5 stars on G2
- Best for: Large recruiting teams, complex panel interviews, enterprise needs
- Price: Custom pricing, typically $15,000-$50,000+ annually
Calendly: The Swiss Army Knife
Calendly is the scheduling tool everyone's heard of. It's simple, it works, and it's cheap.
According to user reviews on Capterra, Calendly excels at:
The Good:
- Dead simple setup: Connect your calendar, set availability, share link. Done.
- Works for everything: Candidate screens, hiring manager syncs, coffee chats, demos
- Buffer times and padding: Automatically adds breaks between meetings
- Multiple event types: Phone screens, video calls, in-person interviews
- Integrations with everything: Google Calendar, Outlook, Zoom, Teams, Slack
"We went from spending 20 minutes scheduling each phone screen to 30 seconds," reports one recruiting coordinator on G2. "Candidates book their own time, and it syncs to everyone's calendar automatically."
The Bad:
- No panel interview optimization: If you need 4 interviewers at once, you're manually checking who's available
- Limited recruiting-specific features: No interviewer load balancing or quality scoring
- Basic analytics: You can see meeting counts, but not recruiting metrics
- One-size-fits-all: Not built specifically for recruiting workflows
A talent acquisition manager on TrustRadius summarizes it well: "Calendly is great for scheduling phone screens and 1-on-1 interviews. But when we're doing onsite interviews with 5-6 panel members, it falls apart."
GoodTime: The Recruiting Specialist
GoodTime is built specifically for recruiting teams doing high-volume hiring with complex panel interviews.
User reviews on G2 and Capterra highlight several advantages:
The Good:
Intelligent Panel Scheduling: GoodTime's algorithm considers:
- Interviewer availability (obviously)
- Interviewer load balancing (prevents burnout)
- Interviewer quality scores (routes candidates to your best interviewers)
- Interview panel diversity requirements
- Candidate timezone preferences
"We reduced our average time-to-schedule from 3.2 days to 0.7 days for onsite interviews," reports a recruiting ops leader on G2. "GoodTime handles the entire panel coordination that used to take hours of back-and-forth emails."
Recruiting-Specific Features: According to GoodTime's product page:
- ATS integrations with Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, iCIMS (trigger scheduling automatically when candidates advance)
- Candidate self-scheduling with smart defaults for panel interviews
- Interview training tracking (ensure interviewers are certified before scheduling)
- No-show reduction (automated reminders, prep materials, candidate engagement)
Analytics That Matter: Unlike Calendly's basic reporting, GoodTime provides recruiting metrics:
- Interviewer utilization and load
- Time-to-schedule by role, team, and stage
- Interview completion rates
- Candidate experience scores
The Bad:
Expensive: User discussions on Reddit and PeerSpot suggest GoodTime costs $15,000-$50,000+ annually depending on team size and hiring volume. That's 10-50x more expensive than Calendly.
Overkill for small teams: If you're doing 10 interviews per month, GoodTime's complexity and cost don't make sense.
Requires implementation: Multiple reviews on TrustRadius mention that GoodTime requires 4-8 weeks of implementation, training, and ATS integration setup. Calendly takes 10 minutes.
The Price Breakdown
Let's talk real numbers.
Calendly Pricing (from Calendly's website):
- Free plan: Basic scheduling for individuals
- Standard: $10/user/month (teams, integrations, workflows)
- Teams: $16/user/month (advanced features, admin controls)
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for large organizations
Total cost for 5-person recruiting team: $600-$960 per year
GoodTime Pricing: They don't publish pricing, but user discussions on G2 and recruiting forums suggest:
- Mid-size teams (50-200 hires/year): $15,000-$25,000 annually
- Large teams (200-500 hires/year): $30,000-$50,000 annually
- Enterprise (500+ hires/year): $50,000-$100,000+ annually
The ROI argument: If GoodTime saves your coordinators 30+ hours per week through automation and your team does 200+ hires per year, the cost pays for itself in coordinator productivity and faster time-to-hire.
Feature Comparison
Here's how they stack up head-to-head, based on user reviews:
| Feature | Calendly | GoodTime | |---------|----------|----------| | 1-on-1 Scheduling | Excellent | Excellent | | Panel Interview Coordination | Manual/Difficult | Automated/Excellent | | ATS Integration | Basic/Manual | Deep/Automated | | Interviewer Load Balancing | None | Advanced | | Recruiting Analytics | Basic | Comprehensive | | Setup Time | 10 minutes | 4-8 weeks | | Candidate Experience | Good | Excellent | | Price | Very Low | Very High |
Who Should Use Which Tool?
Based on user reviews and product capabilities, here's my recommendation:
Use Calendly if:
- You're a startup or small company (under 50 employees)
- You hire fewer than 100 people per year
- Most interviews are 1-on-1 phone or video screens
- You have a limited recruiting budget (who doesn't?)
- You need scheduling for non-recruiting purposes too (sales calls, customer demos, etc.)
Use GoodTime if:
- You're a high-growth company hiring aggressively
- You hire 200+ people per year across multiple teams
- You run complex panel interviews regularly (onsite loops, multiple interviewers)
- You have dedicated recruiting operations professionals
- You care about recruiting metrics like time-to-schedule and interviewer quality
- You can justify $15K-$50K annual cost based on coordinator time savings
The Hybrid Approach
Here's what some savvy recruiting teams are doing, based on discussions on Reddit and Blind:
Use Calendly for:
- Phone screens and initial interviews (simple, 1-on-1)
- Recruiter calls and hiring manager syncs
- Informational interviews and referrals
Use GoodTime for:
- Onsite interview loops (panel coordination)
- Final round interviews with executives
- High-volume hiring programs
"We use both," explains a recruiting ops manager on G2. "Calendly for everything simple and cheap, GoodTime for complex panel interviews where the ROI is obvious. Best of both worlds."
The Verdict
Calendly: 4.6 out of 5 stars Simple, affordable, works great for basic scheduling. Not built for recruiting specifically, but gets the job done for small teams and 1-on-1 interviews.
GoodTime: 4.4 out of 5 stars Powerful, expensive, purpose-built for recruiting teams. Overkill for most companies, but absolutely worth it if you're doing high-volume hiring with complex interview loops.
The bottom line: Start with Calendly. Upgrade to GoodTime when you're hiring fast enough that coordinator time and speed-to-schedule justify the investment. For most companies, that's around 150-200 hires per year.
Don't overthink it. Just stop wasting time on email scheduling ping-pong.
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