The ideal scheduling platform for my company should be privacy protective, and meet my business criteria. As a consultant, it should be easy for my clients to meet with me, but emailing back and forth to find a good appointment time can be drudge work. A scheduling platform should allow my clients to see when I’m available for meetings and book a time with me. At the same time, both my clients and I should have the privacy protections we care about.
So, what are the best scheduling platforms for small businesses or startups that care about privacy? There is no easy answer, and much will depend on your company’s criteria. In this article, I describe criteria for scheduling platforms that privacy-concerned businesses.
Criteria for scheduling platforms
Privacy criteria
There are features I look for in all of my software as I decide how to build my privacy-friendly business. These are the main criteria I look for:
- GDPR compliant: Does the company explain how they’ve responded to GDPR? Do they offer relevant tools and features that make it easy for me to be GDPR compliant?
- Hosted in EU or Switzerland: Since I’m in Switzerland, I try to find tools that will keep my customer’s data either in Switzerland or the EU.
In addition, a scheduling platform has some additional privacy concerns. Calendars could be very sensitive, as they contain information about what we are doing, when we do it, and sometimes also where we do it.
- Calendar masking for me and my clients: Shared schedules should be “available” or “not available” without sharing any more calendar information. I don’t need to know why someone is not available.
- Forms: I do want information from my clients to make the meeting more effective, and forms allow clients to explicitly enter information to share with me in textboxes or open text.
- Unshare: Sharing should not be infinite. If I share a calendar with a client, I should be able to un-share it in the future, and similar with any information clients share with me.
- Accounts: My clients should have options for account creation if it helps them schedule ongoing meetings. Clients should to be able to choose whether to use an existing identity, like Google or Facebook, or to create a new account just for this calendar. There are privacy and security trade-offs to either way, so I want clients to be able to choose.
Business criteria
Likely, you have other business criteria, like I do. Do you want the scheduling platform to be part of a broader Customer Relationship Management offering? Do you need multiple languages? Do you want specific payment methods based on your country? Should it integrate with your existing tools? I can’t answer those questions for you, but here are some answers about privacy criteria for some scheduling platforms.
Which scheduling platform is the best for privacy-focused entrepreneurs?
So far, I haven’t found a perfect solution. I examined 6 potential tools; three Swiss companies and three US companies. If you have other calendar solutions I should look into, please contact me.
Built and hosted in Switzerland.
Unfortunately, the Swiss calendar options I found did not fit the bill. They either did not have sufficient information about GDPR (or Swiss privacy regulations), or they were not a scheduling platform.
Klara.ch: I didn’t explore Klara too deeply since I didn’t find privacy/GDPR information on their website. Also, although it is a Swiss company, I didn’t see where the data is hosted.
Agenda.ch: Agenda.ch is proud that it is hosted and built in Switzerland, but the GDPR information was a bit wonky. There seemed to be different information depending on what language the privacy page was in, and the English page hasn’t been updated since 2019. Much of the claims seemed to be more aspirational than explaining what they actually do.
Proton: Proton is built and hosted in Switzerland, and privacy-first. It is clear about GDPR compliance, but Proton is not a scheduling software. It is an encrypted calendar. Proton would be useful for me securely sharing information with trusted colleagues or family, but does not help me schedule meetings with new clients.
Built and sometimes hosted in the US
The three big names in scheduling platforms are definitely US-centric. Hubspot is the only one that allowed me to host my data in Germany. Hubspot also was the only one that allowed me to unshare my calendar. However, Hubspot is an entire CRM platform, and it was difficult to evaluate the scheduling platform as an independent tool.
|
Hubspot |
Calendly |
Acuity/Squarespace |
|
|
Notes |
Hubspot has so many options and integrations, I found it difficult to understand the privacy options are for scheduling. |
Calendly has decent options. |
One of the easiest to understand the privacy options. |
|
GDPR |
Has many GDPR options that I would need to proactively check and setup. |
Has GDPR options, but not all are automated. |
Has options to help comply with GDPR. |
|
Hosted in EU/Switzerland |
Yes,hosted in Germany for customers in EMEA |
No. Uses contracts to cover data transfers from EU-US.. |
No, US hosted. Uses contracts to cover data transfers from EU-US |
|
Calendar Masking |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes, but not the default. |
|
Forms |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Unshare |
Yes |
I could not find information |
I could not find information |
|
Account choices |
No (or could not find) |
I could not find information |
Can only create account with Acuity Scheduling (a Squarespace company) |
Summary – No perfect solution
None of the scheduling platforms I looked at met all my scheduling criteria. In the end, HubSpot comes closest to having the most privacy features. However, since Hubspot is an entire CRM platform, it provides fewer integrations with other services. Since I haven’t evaluated CRM options, I’m not ready to commit to HubSpot. I’ll stick with Calendly as it provides integrations with other tools.