Dotcal Review – What You Need To Know (June 2022)

Table Of Contents

Who Should Use DotCal?
Let's Create a New Booking Page
Product Updates
- June 2022
Around The Web
FAQs
Images
Pricing

Exclusive Promo Code: trustenablement50

Use this code for 50% off Dotcal Pro features for your first six months.

I began using DotCal about a month ago to manage my meetings. I wanted to find a Calendly alternative, so when the team at DotCal reached out, I decided to give DotCal a try.

While Calendly is a more mature product, DotCal has every capability I want, and more, I haven’t missed anything with the move.

Who Should Use DotCal?

The following people and businesses should consider DotCal.

Small Businesses
University Students
Solopreneurs
Real Estate Agents and Investors

Let’s walk through the solution.

I recommend signing up for the Free account while you follow along, you don’t need to spend a dime to do so.

Click on the green “Take Control Of Your Calendar” button on this page, and you’ll see the home screen, where you simply select your booking page URL.

Sign up, log in, and you’ll be taken to your home screen, which lists the various booking options currently set up for your account.

I’ve customized mine slightly, but you’ll see something similar to this.

Let’s Create a New Booking Page

You will want to set up various booking pages for the different types of meetings you hold. This may be one type of meeting, or multiple, depending on your business situation.

Click on the “New booking page” button to get started.

You choose from one of three booking templates, which you can then customize to better align with your branding needs.

Let’s choose Bohemian, click on the Finish Up button, and see the template customization screen.

Customizing our Booking page

As you would expect, you:

Name the type of meeting and provide a description and length.
You can adjust the color scheme to match your brand guidelines.
You select the type of meeting. Note that I previously set up the Zoom integration to allow this to show up in my account. You can too, and I’ll show you how below.

Save your booking, then click on it on the booking page to edit again.

You can now configure the advanced options.

Advanced Customization Options

On this screen, configure:

The default meeting name
A redirect URL if you want to send people to a web page with information to prepare for the meeting.
Specify buffer time between meetings to ensure you don’t get booked back-to-back.
Use custom fields to gather critical meeting information. For example, I always have a required field that says “What do you want to discuss?”. This ensures that I have a clue about what we’re talking about when I view the meeting on the calendar.
And, if this meeting requires payment, set up Stripe to collect payment prior to the meeting.
In the top right-hand corner of this screen, you can also grab an embed code, direct link to your page, or simply view it.

Let’s return to the home screen and configure our integrations.

Integrations

Click on your profile photo to expose the additional drop-down menu– choose “Calendars & Connections.”

Calendars

Choose Add Calendar from this new page to see the list of options.

As you can see, choose between Google, Apple, Microsoft, and CalDAV calendar options.

Choose the one appropriate for you and follow the prompts to simply provide access permissions.

Other Integrations -> Connections.

Now, choose Add Connection.

There are currently two options: Zoom and Stripe.

Since I already have Zoom configured in my account, I only see Stripe.

Note that either option works the same as setting up calendars. You will simply be asked to log into your account and give DotCal permissions to your account so that it can be used in your meeting booking.

Your DotCal Settings

Click back on your profile image, and this time choose Settings.

It is here that you configure your profile and upload your personal photo and company logo.

Our Take on DotCal

As already noted, we switched from Calendly to DotCal and are very happy with the decision.

Calendly is very powerful, but so is DotCal and they have been very open to feedback and eager to continue to move the product forward.

If you decide to give the paid version of the product a try, remember to use our promo code to get 50% off the price for the first six months.

Product Updates

June 2022

Several great updates were released in June, including:

A new integration with Stripe — you can now accept payments on your booking page.
Another new template type, Whimsical, is available.
Apple Calendar iCal support.
Embed support for your booking pages.
Support for Microsoft Teams has been added.