I haven’t used the free version in a while. I recall there was some feature that I quickly needed… it might have been the ability to white-label—change the branding to use the logos I wanted, etc… Or it might have been that you can’t create multiple event types. I’m using the $10/month level for PodComm and it’s absolutely worth it for wrangling podcast recording and the workbenches. Or maybe it was the sync-calendly-to-external-calender feature. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My filter is simply that if I’m expecting multiple people to be trying to schedule with me at the same time, then it’s useful. If you ask me to meet 1on1, then I just coordinate it manually via direct discussion. Calendly cannot see my entire life’s calendar, so this lets me decide exactly where to put a one-off meeting.
I have considered creating an entirely separate Calendly account (with the additional monthly cost) so that I could create “Craig office hours.” Then I’d be able to throw that Calendly link to anyone who asks me anything that I think would be better as a quick, say, half-hour meeting. However, I’ve learned that it’s easier, and wiser for me, to not volunteer so quickly for so many things. If I can’t allocate the small amount of time needed to manually coordinate a meeting, then that meeting probably isn’t worth my time.
I create larger blocks of time, as a recurring event in my personal calendar. I have these big blocks that remind me “this is the zone where Calendly might commit me.” If something comes up in my schedule in those big blocks, then I duck into Calendly and mark an “exception” to the normal availability so it doesn’t put people there.
Calendly syncs to a Google Calendar. team@podcaster.community has it’s own Google Account. I’ve subscribed to that GCal in my personal calendar. When someone grabs a spot, it appears in my calendar automatically.
Everything for this PodComm is then in that GCal. Things like Campfires—which aren’t schedule via Calendly—I go into that GCal and add them. This has the added benefit of there being a single GCal that everyone can subscribe to, to see everything that’s going on in this community. (That calendar is one of the benefits for supporting members: https://forum.podcaster.community/t/podcaster-community-calendar/123 )
The one Calendly feature that I want is for Calendly to publish a calendar feed of my scheduled availability. So rather than me having to create the faux big events reminding me about Calendly’s spaces, I want calendly to feed me that as an event. That way, Calendly would feed me those windows with the configured exceptions “punched out”.
Anyway. There’s my Calendly dump. 
