How to Use SavvyCal: Setup, Links, Workflows and Paid Bookings

Before you start: what is free and what needs a plan

SavvyCal lets you create and set up an account for free, and you can configure links before you pay anything. Booking links only go live for other people once you are on a paid plan. Basic costs $12 per user a month billed monthly, or $10 billed annually, and Premium costs $20 or $17 ^[1]. Meeting polls stay free, unlimited and ad-free, and anyone can overlay their calendar on other people's SavvyCal links without paying. If the product disappoints, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. There is no time-limited trial to rush through. So the sensible order is to set everything up first, then upgrade when you are ready to share.

Most of this guide works on Basic. That plan covers unlimited links and calendar connections, collective, round robin and group modes, embeds, the browser extension, email workflows, Zapier, the API and webhooks. Premium adds custom domains, sender profiles, removal of SavvyCal branding, delegated access for an assistant and paid bookings through Stripe. Where a step below needs Premium, we say so. Note the gaps too. There is no native mobile app, no SMS reminders, no AI features and no routing forms, and booking pages come only in English, French and Dutch.

Step 1: create the account and pick your username

The setup wizard asks you to choose a URL, connect a personal calendar and connect a video conferencing app. The URL becomes your username, so savvycal.com/yourname is the address people will see. Choose it with care. When you upgrade to a paid subscription or join an organization, that username becomes tied to the organization, and its owner and admins can manage the links under it. Moving a username to a new company later means consenting to give that company administrative access to your links, including their event history. If you work for an employer today, decide early whether your personal links should live under a work account at all.

New accounts get a default availability preset called Work Hours, which is where your bookable time starts. SavvyCal encourages you to create as many lightweight links as you need rather than one link that does everything. You can mark one link as the default so that a visit to your bare username redirects to it. Alternatively, you can leave an index page at that address, where visitors pick from your links. An organization is created automatically the moment you start a paid subscription, and it represents your billing account. Teams sit inside it, and our team scheduling guide covers that side.

Step 2: connect calendars and a video tool

SavvyCal reads your calendars to find conflicts and writes new events to one of them. It connects Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook (Office 365), iCloud and Fastmail, and there is no cap on calendar connections on either plan. iCloud needs an Apple app-specific password with two-factor authentication turned on. For Google, SavvyCal requests read access to calendars and permission to create events, and for Microsoft it asks for read and write calendar access through Graph. It says these are the minimum permissions it needs. Each link can write its events to a different calendar, which helps if you keep work and personal bookings apart.

For video, the native options are Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Whereby, and SquadCast for podcasters. Zoom creates a scheduled meeting with a unique ID for each booking. SavvyCal advises disabling Zoom's personal meeting ID setting so every event really gets its own ID. Google Meet works only when the link writes to a Google Calendar with Meet enabled. A Whereby room stays private until someone books. For anything else, a custom conferencing URL is hidden from the public page and emailed only after booking. A link can also offer several locations, such as Zoom or a phone call, and let the booker choose.

Step 3: build your first scheduling link

Durations, and the one you want selected

A link can offer several durations, and the person booking picks one on the page. Since a later update you can also type an arbitrary custom duration instead of picking from presets. Mark the default with the star icon. If you share links in emails, adding a d parameter such as ?d=30 preselects a duration for that recipient. Start time increments are set per link, at 15, 30 or 60 minutes. A link can also carry extra guest email addresses that are added to every event it books, which is handy for a colleague who should always be copied.

Availability: presets, time blocks, overrides and fixed dates

Every link either uses a saved availability preset or custom availability defined in the link editor. One change to a preset updates every link using it. Time blocks are the clever option. You are bookable only where a calendar event with a matching name exists, such as one titled Calls, matched by exact title or by a word it contains. Adding [Force] to that event name lets it override other busy events, even an all-day vacation. For single days, you highlight a range on the calendar to allow or deny scheduling. An override made while editing a link can also be applied to the whole preset. Finally, a link can be limited to fixed date ranges, closed or open-ended.

Buffers, notice and frequency limits

Buffers before and after, and a minimum notice period, sit in the availability settings. One detail confuses people. Buffers apply to the new event being booked, so an after-buffer shows up before an existing busy event, not after it. Frequency limits cap bookings per day, week and month, either across all your links or on one link, and you can also cap how far ahead people can book. An override can be told to ignore conflicts, minimum notice and frequency limits for a special day. Since April 2026, whoever manages an event can also edit the buffers on that single event.

Ranked times, questions and approval

Ranked availability shows your preferred windows to the booker in order of preference, and optimized availability tries to batch meetings and favor mornings or afternoons. By default a link collects only the booker's name and email. Custom questions add long or short text, checkboxes, radio buttons, select menus, URLs and hidden fields for prefilled values. A phone field can be optional or always required. You can reject free email addresses such as Gmail on a link, useful for sales. With require approval on, the slot is held as tentative and no calendar event is created until you approve. Declines notify the booker, or you can decline silently.

Step 4: share the link where people already are

The plain link is only the start. Personalized links let you adjust every property of a link for one recipient and prefill their name and email, and query string parameters can prefill phone, time zone, start date and custom answers. Single-use links can be booked once and then archive themselves, which suits interviews and one-off invitations. Availability sharing works the other way round: people outside your organization can share their availability with you for free, and they can revoke it from their People page at any time. Since February 2026, everyone who has booked with you gets a contact record, and from it you can ask them to share availability.

The browser extension is in the Chrome Web Store and also works in Edge and Brave. It copies or inserts links and can generate a snippet of proposed times to paste into an email. By default it has no access to page contents and only runs code when you click Insert. On your website, the JavaScript embed runs inline, as a pop-up from a hyperlink, as a floating button or as a pop-up opened by your own code. It supports light or dark themes, week or month view and prefill. Our embed guide covers site builders and tracking in detail.

Step 5: add reminder emails with workflows

Workflows automate messages at five points in a meeting's life: after it is scheduled, before it starts, after it starts, before it ends and after it ends. The actions are emails only. There are no native text reminders, and SavvyCal suggests texting through Zapier if you collect phone numbers. Emails use Liquid templates, with filters for dates, time zones and links, and can go to extra addresses such as a colleague who should know about every booking. A workflow belongs to one person or team, can attach itself to new links automatically and can be duplicated. Calendar reminders on the event itself follow your calendar's defaults unless you override them.

There is a practical reason to set up at least one reminder. Since Google's 2023 anti-spam changes, Google adds an invitation to an attendee's calendar automatically only if the sender has communicated with them before. That affects every scheduling tool, not just this one. SavvyCal's answer is to send at least one reminder email through a workflow, so the meeting is not forgotten when the invite never lands on the guest's calendar ^[2]. Set this up before you share your first link widely.

Step 6: charge for bookings on Premium

Paid bookings need a Stripe account and SavvyCal Premium ^[3]. Basic cannot take payment. During checkout the slot is held for 10 minutes; if the booker does not finish paying, the event expires and the time is released. Accepted payment methods are chosen inside Stripe, under Payment Methods, by selecting the SavvyCal platform. Stripe products set to let the customer choose the price allow pay-what-you-want sessions. The integration can save the booker's card on file in your Stripe account. Prices of paid links appear on your index page. One warning matters here. SavvyCal does not refund canceled paid meetings automatically, so refunds are your job.

What your booker sees

Booking pages open in a week view, and the booker can switch to month view. The standout feature is the calendar overlay. Anyone can lay their own Google or Outlook calendar on top of your link to see where your free time meets theirs, without paying. A slot late at night for them triggers a warning. After booking, they can reschedule from the event page instead of canceling and rebooking. You can stop last-minute changes, too. A per-link lock blocks the booker from rescheduling or canceling anywhere from 15 minutes to a week before the start, while you as host can still change the event. Links can also send bookers to a custom confirmation page.

Booking for someone else and managing events

Since November 2025, admins and assistants have a dedicated booking interface for creating meetings on someone's behalf without sending a public link. They can pick any slot, even one not shown as available, add extra guests who all get an invite, and use a Book again button to set up a follow-up. A full assistant role, managing your settings, availability, billing and links, needs delegated access, which is a Premium feature. The delegate needs a SavvyCal account but not a paid one. Hosts can also send a reschedule request asking the booker to choose a new time, remove an attendee, or export upcoming, past and canceled events as a CSV file from the Events page.

When something goes wrong

Most problems trace back to a few settings. If an invite does not appear on a Google user's calendar, that is the anti-spam rule above, and a reminder email is the fix. If Zoom meetings share one ID, turn off the personal meeting ID setting in Zoom. Zoom waiting rooms are on by default. Turn them off in Zoom. Fastmail cannot apply its default reminders to events created by third parties, so choose a preset reminder. If notifications go to the wrong inbox, they follow the organizer email on the event unless you route them to your sign-in email. Old links can be paused, archived or deleted. Still stuck? Email support on a weekday.

The bottom line

Setting up SavvyCal is not hard. The order is simple: pick your username with an eye on who will own it, connect every calendar, build a few small links with buffers and limits, add one reminder workflow, then upgrade to Basic and share. Go to Premium only if you need paid bookings, an assistant, your own domain or no SavvyCal branding. The limits are real. Reminders are email only, booking pages speak three languages and there is no mobile app. For a professional who books meetings with other professionals, though, the overlay and the availability controls are easy to set up.