Show HN: Google Calendar Appointment Scheduling | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Google Calendar Appointment Scheduling

bespeak.io

25 pointssloppycee33 comments

No freaking way this is worth $10/mo, especially when creating your own by embedding your Google Calendar in a web page (or in the case of my example, a Google Site page) and sharing the link is free.

https://sites.google.com/site/elliottally/

I've included a link to that in my email signature for the last couple of years to solve specifically this problem and it works great. It's not particularly beautiful, but it solved the problem. There are a plethora of other apps providing the same service (here's one: http://www.scheduleonce.com/pricing), so you're going to have to differentiate yourself somehow.

You really need a free tier.

No freaking way this is worth $10/mo, especially when creating your own by embedding your Google Calendar in a web page (or in the case of my example, a Google Site page) and sharing the link is free.

The link you provided doesn't accomplish the same thing as their product.

Your link is just a read-only view of your calendar (unless I've missed something). The real utility comes when people can actually schedule something on your calendar without your help.

I've been wishing for exactly this recently, and am excited to try the app.

Also, since I'd use this for work (saving me real time) on a company credit card, $10/month is without question a completely negligible amount.

In summary: I disagree with everything you've said. :)

> The real utility comes when people can actually schedule something on your calendar without your help.

Sounds like a nightmare.

No kidding. Besides that, the people scheduling the appointment will probably want to schedule it from their calendar, not some third party app. The most valuable use case is determining when someone is available, not creating the appointment.

Would $5/mo be more reasonable?

All the competitors charge $10/mo or more at their starter price, and their free tier is all but unusable (some include ads).

I understand that $10/mo might seem unreasonable for some use cases.

I think $10 a month is fine. Those who value this service wont change their mind because of a few bucks.

Remember - people who will use this service will probably do it for business, they wont be teenagers, and a $10 will be nothing if the service provides any type of value at all.

This is my first product release. The whole thing took about a week to design, develop, and release. I'd love some feedback.

I'd have liked to see some sort of screenshot tour (or a product video as there is presumably a real-time component) before signing in - there's very little detail available, which might be good for conversion, but it meant I didn't click the button.

(When I did, I was given a "sign in with Google" chooser - did you consider telling people what is going to happen before they do that? It might seem obvious, but it might put people off too.)

Also, have you considered per-domain pricing? With the demise of Appointment Slots, this could be something you could sell to a Google Apps for Business customer for all their users.

My first priority is working on a better marketing site, which means a product tour; I realize this is lacking.

Per-domain pricing seems very interesting, I will look in to it, thank you!

I'd suggest dropping the requirement for payment info in order to start the free trial.

I was going to try it out on my calendar - with a colleague in mind. I don't schedule enough appointments to make it worth it to me, and I'm not really interested in giving you my CC details just to test it for someone else.

At the very least, you should make the demo link easier to find.

$10 a month seems a little steep. I don't pay that much for a VPS. Did you beta test this?

Another data point: A single Google Apps mailbox costs $50/year - ~$4.20/mo.

Can I restrict available times? For instance, I only like to schedule meetings late in the day or first thing in the morning.

Just because I have availability doesn't mean I am available...

Yes, absolutely.

Awesome, thanks! As I get close to signing up, $10/mo still feels high. $5/month does not.

We are still determining pricing, thanks for the input.

I had this idea in my mind as well.

Could you support a feature that hides all information on the calendar except times? I don't want my appointment makers to know my life story.

This is not clear from the marketing materials, but it does do this currently. That is something I should change.

You can see an example here: https://www.bespeak.io/book/demo

yeah, I see it now.

is there some way to designate blocks of time as open?

if I can only take appointments between 10am and 1pm, is there some way to indicate that with this system?

Yes, you can specify which hours you are available.

Also, we are working on a duty calendar feature where you can create appointment slots.

As a Google Calendar user, I'm used to being able to drag down on a time period to book an event, and then enter event details. I can't do that on your demo.

Yes but we found that the calendar owner want's to restrict the length of appointment, rather than let the contact select an arbitrary length.

That seems really interesting, however a working demo would be great, especially because you are asking the credit card before anything else (not saying it's bad, just that I'm not comfortable with giving my payment information after one screenshot only)

As another commenter noted, your site doesn't really give much away, I too would need to see screenshots or a product video.

Also when I click on the Pricing link at the top it's not immediately obvious I just jumped past your product feature blurb to a #anchor. It says "All this for only $10 a month. Checkmate." and I thought, "All what?", then realised I needed to scroll up.

I have added a smooth scroll effect that should fix this, thank you.

I have this pain point. I was hoping for API docs and a live chat or contact us section...

In my case, I'd like to allow customer service candidates who have passed initial skills test screeners to be prompted to select a primary and secondary scheduling slot and have those selections pushed to gcal.

I think we could help you with that, there is nothing preventing you from embedding your booking page in an iframe.

Is this just a replacement for the gap left when Tungle.Me was bought by blackberry? http://www.crunchbase.com/company/tungle Am I missing a key difference?

The confirmation email went to Junk w/ outlook.

Just letting you know.

Looks great! Simple, clean, and highly usable.

Keep getting 500 after a few tries.

Yeah, I see that. I will fix that asap.

BTW it is because your email is > 30 characters long.

edit: fixed.

Passive income hack...rising

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