How to Use TidyCal in 2026: Set Up Booking Types, Calendars, Payments and Reminders Step by Step

Before you start: the account and the link you keep

You need three things before you open TidyCal: an email address, the calendar that holds your busy time and, if you charge, a Stripe or PayPal account ^[1]. TidyCal connects Google, Microsoft 365 and Apple iCloud calendars, and the Free plan is enough to begin, with no time limit and no card at sign-up. One choice is worth making now. If you want subscriptions, recurring charges, storefront sales or cancellation fees, connect Stripe rather than PayPal, because PayPal cannot run any of those, even though it spares clients the 1% platform fee on each payment.

Passwords need at least 8 characters, and you can also sign in with Google or LinkedIn. Pick one method and stick with it, since changing the account email later disconnects Google sign-in and requires a password. Logging in from a new browser sends a 6-digit code by email, valid for 15 minutes; device verification is on by default on every plan. Keep your inbox handy.

Choose your link, language and time zone

Your booking page lives at tidycal.com/your-link, slugified to lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens. Choose the link carefully now, because changing it later breaks old links and embeds. Booker pages and emails can appear in 40 language options on every plan, set once per account. TidyCal does not translate your own titles and questions, and the app itself stays in English, so write titles in your clients' language. Visitors see times converted to their browser time zone and can pick a different one. Check your own time zone first. Wrong settings shift every slot.

Connect calendars so only real busy time blocks slots

Calendar sync is two-way: TidyCal reads events for conflicts and writes bookings to your primary calendar ^[2]. Free reads one calendar, so connect the one that holds your busy time and start there. Google and Microsoft 365 connect through OAuth, though Microsoft 365 work or school accounts may need IT admin approval, so ask IT early. Apple Calendar connects through CalDAV with an app-specific password, created in your Apple account settings first. That protects you. Your main Apple password is never handed to TidyCal.

iCloud is polled at most every two minutes while in use, so slight delays are normal. Calendar limits count reading-enabled calendars, and only those block availability. Every reading calendar is checked for every booking type. Because bookings are written to the primary calendar while conflicts are read from every reading-enabled calendar, a host with separate work and family calendars should make the work calendar primary and enable reading on both. That needs a paid plan.

What actually blocks a slot

An event blocks time only if it sits on a reading-enabled calendar and is set to Busy. Declined invitations behave differently by provider: they stop blocking on Google but still block on Microsoft and Apple. A host who declines a meeting invitation in Outlook will still see that time blocked in TidyCal until the event is removed or set to Free. When times go missing, open Troubleshoot availability, visible only to you while logged in, which labels every blocked slot with a reason. A calendar needing reconnection for over 30 days stops blocking time. Start with calendar events.

Build your first booking type

Booking types are unlimited on every plan, and each one has its own duration, price, location, questions and availability. Start with your most common session and add others later. One-to-one is the default, and presets such as Group and Round robin sit beside it. The Group preset starts with 10 seats and 60 minutes and needs a paid plan; on Free it saves with one seat. Deleting a type stops new bookings but keeps existing ones, so you can retire an offer without touching the clients already booked on it.

Duration, intervals and intake questions

The shortest time slot interval is 15 minutes, and the interval changes what clients see. A 60-minute session offered between 9am and 5pm produces eight start times with 60-minute intervals but fifteen with 30-minute intervals, by our arithmetic. Shorter intervals give clients more choice, while leaving more awkward gaps in your day. Descriptions are limited to 800 characters with basic HTML. Write what happens, how long it lasts and what to prepare.

Question types run from short text and multiple choice to date and phone number. There is no hard limit, but TidyCal recommends 3 to 5. Ask only what you need. Answers are given once per booking and, for recurring series, attached to every session. They also appear in the bookings export with a column per question, so a short, clearly named question set pays off later when you export your data.

Location and video links

TidyCal supports seven location types, including custom video link, phone and in person. Free users get one location per booking type, while paid plans let clients choose, so hybrid hosts should upgrade. Free cannot auto-create meeting links: you paste one custom Zoom or Meet link, used for every booking. That works for one-to-one sessions, but every client receives the same room, so watch overlapping sessions. Paid plans auto-create Zoom, Google Meet or Teams links. Google Meet needs a Google primary or pinned calendar, and Teams needs a Business or Education account.

Set your hours and the rules around them

All plans can create unlimited availability schedules. A new schedule starts Monday to Friday, 8:00am to 5:00pm, and you can add several windows per day for breaks. Name schedules clearly, because each booking type is assigned one. Date overrides change hours on specific days, on every plan, and suit holidays and short weeks. After saving, TidyCal checks 30 days ahead and warns if no slots appear. Read that warning.

Buffers, notice and the booking window

Buffers before and after bookings are set per booking type, on all plans, and a buffer applies only when the type it is set on is booked. Other types with no gap can still be booked next to it. Set buffers on every type. Minimum notice defaults to 2 hours and can be set in minutes, hours or days. The booking window is rolling and defaults to 60 days ahead. A client booking on March 1 sees dates until the end of April, so a host who wants to publish a summer camp in January must lengthen the window before sharing the link.

Booking limits and manual approval

Paid plans cap bookings per day, week, month or in total. Limits follow the host time zone, canceled bookings do not count and group sessions count once, which makes them a simple way to protect your energy. Manual approval is off by default and set per booking type on paid plans. Pending requests hold the slot, and a rejection emails the client and frees it. There is one catch. Paid requests are charged at request time, so when you reject one, you refund it manually.

Get paid: Stripe, PayPal and the 1% fee

Stripe connects through OAuth in Integrations, Payments ^[1], and Apple Pay and Google Pay are registered automatically. PayPal connects by entering your PayPal email, carries no TidyCal platform fee and shows Venmo to eligible US buyers, but it cannot run subscriptions, recurring charges or cancellation fees. Use it for single sessions. Each booking type can use only one payment processor at a time, and new booking types default to Stripe since March 2026, so a host who mainly uses PayPal should check the processor on every new type before publishing it.

Clients pay at booking, and the money goes straight to you. The platform fee depends on your plan ^[3]. On Free, the client always pays the 1% Stripe fee. On lifetime plans, you choose in Settings, Bookings whether you or the client covers it, and the choice applies account-wide. Pro has no fee. Decide before your first sale. A lifetime owner who switches the fee to the host side turns a $100 session into exactly $100 for the client and $99 for the host before Stripe's own fee, which keeps quoted prices honest and round.

No-show fees, packages and subscriptions

Paid plans can charge one flat fee for late cancellations and no-shows on Stripe bookings. The fee is charged at most once, and rescheduling never triggers it, so explain it on the page. Packages let clients pick a set number of dates and pay upfront, on all plans, though they cannot be rescheduled as a whole. Recurring booking types default to weekly for 8 bookings, and paid sessions are charged one by one through Stripe.

A subscription booking type can only be enabled after Stripe is connected. You set 1 to 100 credits per week, month or year, and unused credits do not roll over. A coach selling a monthly plan with 4 credits should remember that credits reset each period and that TidyCal does not email subscribers about failed renewals. A quick look at the Subscriptions page each month catches problems early.

Reminders and emails that run on their own

Every plan sends reminders 1 day and 1 hour before a booking, and paid plans set up to two reminder times from 15 minutes to 1 week before. Both reminders share one subject and message, and changes apply to existing bookings, so keep messages short. Beyond reminders, up to 3 automated before and after emails run on all plans ^[4], and after-booking emails can go out up to 14 days later, with a review request among them. On new accounts they start switched off. Turn them on today.

Paid plans can also send clients to a custom URL after booking, such as your thank-you page. They see a confirmation for about two seconds first, and the redirect also works after payments. A custom reply-to address needs no verification; the sender stays TidyCal's address, but replies reach you anyway.

SMS reminders, and why emoji cost more

SMS reminders need Agency Lifetime or Pro. The form has no built-in phone field, so add a Phone number question first. Enabling SMS adds one reminder 1 hour before, limited to 160 characters, and only US and Canadian mobiles receive them. Characters matter here. A message written with emoji or Chinese characters counts one segment for every 70 characters instead of 160, so a 160-character reminder with a single emoji can use three of the ten segments a new Agency license gets each month.

Make the page yours and put it in front of clients

The theme editor works on every plan, with 20 Google Fonts and a color system that checks WCAG AA contrast, and embedded pages show the same theme. Preview on a phone. Every account can also publish a landing page with 10 sections and 4 themes. Changes are not saved automatically, so save often. Embedding works on every plan as an auto-resizing inline iframe, with no popup option, and payments work inside it. Because the embed sends a booking-complete message to the page that hosts it, a site owner can fire a conversion tag in Google Tag Manager at the moment of booking, which is more reliable than counting visits to a thank-you page.

Since September 2026 TidyCal no longer emails links for you, so share booking types via your own email app, X or LinkedIn, or connect SendFox for mailing lists. Hosts can also create a booking on behalf of a guest on every plan; the guest confirms through an emailed link while the slot is held. Date polls let invitees vote on dates, on all plans, but booking a date creates one booking per voter, including voters who did not pick that date. A host running a workshop poll should cancel the bookings of voters who cannot attend, or warn them in the poll description beforehand.

Three extras round out the page. Listing booking types in the public directory is available on all plans, and private types stay hidden. Clients can rate bookings 1 to 5 stars, and reviews publish immediately. The storefront sells PDF, EPUB or ZIP files up to 64 MB, with up to 3 products added to Stripe booking types.

Tracking, Zapier and teams

Paid plans support GA4, Tag Manager and the TikTok Events API, and tags run on booking and confirmation pages, including embeds. Zapier also needs a paid plan. It offers three triggers: booking created, updated and canceled, with all question answers arriving in one field. There are no webhooks. Build simple flows first. Our TidyCal integrations guide covers the rest of the connections.

Creating a team needs Pro or Agency Lifetime, though members can be on any plan, and new Agency licenses seat 4 including the owner. Pending invitations count toward that cap. A studio owner who invites three instructors to a new Agency license uses all four seats, so a fourth cannot be invited until an earlier invitation is withdrawn or a member leaves. Collective team types show slots when every host is free, round robin assigns by priority, and Managed gives each member a copy.

Moving from Calendly and running bookings day to day

The Calendly importer works on every plan and only reads from Calendly. It brings over event types, bookings and invitees, but prices and reminders must be set again. Day to day, bookings appear on your primary calendar, but the calendar is not where you manage them. Deleting a calendar event does not cancel the booking, so cancel inside TidyCal instead, and handle refunds in Stripe or PayPal. CSV export of bookings and contacts needs a paid plan. There is no CSV contact import, and deleting a contact also deletes its bookings. Export before cleaning up.

Test everything before you share the link

Before anyone else sees the page, check it for the four setup mistakes that cause the most trouble later:

• Leaving the automated emails switched off.
• Enabling reading on a calendar full of non-blocking events.
• Changing the booking link after sharing it, which breaks embeds.
• Forgetting the 1% fee, which surprises clients.

Then make one test booking as a client, from a phone and paid with a real card. Check the checkout total, including the 1% line, and the confirmation email. Confirm the event landed on your calendar, test a reschedule and look at the reminder schedule. Finally, refund the test payment in Stripe. In a few minutes it shows exactly what clients will see. Then share your link.

Where to get help

Email support answers in about 8 hours on every plan, and Pro gets priority. The in-app AI assistant hands off to email, the help center covers each feature, and feature requests go to a public board. If you are still deciding which plan unlocks the paid settings in this guide, our TidyCal pricing guide sets the plans side by side.