Meetly vs When2Meet
Meetly wins this one on almost every axis. When2Meet cannot read a single calendar, so all eleven people retype their week from memory, and it shows your invitees ads while doing it. Meetly imports busy time from Google, Outlook, Apple and any .ics feed, keeps it refreshed, ranks the best slots, chases non-responders and emails the invite. When2Meet's one remaining advantage is that people recognise the name.
When2Meet has survived nearly two decades without changing, which is a genuine compliment to the original idea. It is also why it lost. The tool cannot read a single calendar, so every poll asks your whole group to reconstruct their week from memory, and it monetises that page with advertising. Meetly does the same job and does the remembering for them.
What is the actual difference?
When2Meet is a free availability-grid poll where participants drag across a time grid and the organizer reads the overlap as a heatmap. Meetly is a group scheduling poll that connects Google, Outlook, Apple and any .ics calendar feed, fills the availability grid for you, and ranks the best times for the whole group. Both produce the same artifact, a heatmap of overlapping free time. They differ almost entirely in how that grid gets filled.
With When2Meet, every participant reconstructs their own week from memory. They open their calendar in another tab, look at Tuesday, switch back, drag Tuesday, and repeat. With Meetly, they connect a calendar once and the busy blocks paint themselves. The difference compounds with group size: eleven people times five minutes of retyping is roughly an hour of collective work that nobody sees on any invoice.
| Meetly | When2Meet | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. | Free, funded by display ads |
| Account to create | No account needed. An optional account syncs your polls across devices. | No account needed. |
| Account to respond | No account needed | No account needed |
| Calendar import | Google, Outlook, Apple iCloud, any .ics link | None. Manual entry only |
| Keeps syncing after you respond | Yes, refreshes in the background | Not applicable |
| Ads shown to participants | No | Yes |
| Time zones | Poll anchored to organizer, rendered in each viewer's local time | Per-participant selector, weaker in days-of-week mode |
| Ranked time suggestions | Yes, weighted by attendance and preference | No, you read the heatmap |
| Mark a slot as preferred | Yes, weighted above plain free | No |
| Finalize and notify | Pick a slot, emails everyone with a calendar invite | No |
| Meeting link on finalize | Google Meet, Zoom or Teams | No |
| Chase non-responders | Invitee list with reminders | No |
| Whole-day voting | Yes, all-day polls | No, time grid only |
How much time does calendar import actually save?
Filling a When2Meet grid honestly, for a two-week window, takes most people three to six minutes. They have to remember standing meetings, check the ones they are not sure about, and drag carefully around them. Most people do not do this. They paint a rough approximation, and the poll ends up scheduling over a real conflict.
- Connect a calendar in Meetly and the grid fills itself
- 1 tapConnect a calendar in Meetly and the grid fills itself
- Calendars When2Meet can read
- 0Calendars When2Meet can read
- Providers Meetly imports from, plus any .ics feed
- 4Providers Meetly imports from, plus any .ics feed
The accuracy difference matters more than the minutes. An imported grid reflects what is actually on the calendar, including the 8:30 standup someone forgot about. A hand-drawn grid reflects what someone remembered at the moment they filled it in.
Does When2Meet handle time zones correctly?
Mostly. When2Meet asks each participant for a time zone and converts the grid, which works well for the specific-dates mode. The days-of-the-week mode is where it gets shaky, because a recurring Tuesday does not have a fixed UTC offset and daylight saving shifts land differently for different participants.
What does When2Meet do better?
Three things, honestly. It is faster to create, because there is genuinely nothing to configure. It stores almost nothing about you, which some groups actively want. And its grid interaction, after nineteen years of not being redesigned, is muscle memory for a lot of students and organizers.
Use Meetly when
- Anyone in your group is on Google, Outlook or Apple, which is everyone
- You would rather import busy time once than have eleven people retype their week
- You want the best slots named for you instead of squinting at a heatmap
- You need to see who has not responded and remind exactly those people
- You want the invite and the video link sent when it is decided
- Showing your invitees advertising would be embarrassing
Use When2Meet when
- Your group will only click a link they already recognise
- It is a one-off with four people and calendar accuracy genuinely does not matter
Is Meetly free?
Yes. There is no paid tier, no seat count, no cap on participants, and no ads shown to the people you invite. An account is optional and does one thing: it syncs the list of your polls across your devices. Polls you create without an account work identically, they are just tied to the browser you made them in.
Why is Meetly faster to fill in than When2Meet?
Because Meetly reads the calendar instead of asking people to remember it. Connecting Google, Outlook, Apple or any .ics feed paints your busy time onto the grid in one tap. When2Meet has no calendar integration of any kind, so every participant reconstructs two weeks from memory, which is both slower and less accurate.
Can participants use Meetly without an account?
Yes. They open the link, connect a calendar or drag the grid, and submit. No sign-up, no email required, and no ads on the page you sent them to. An email is optional and used only to send the invite once a time is picked.
Does Meetly work if I use Outlook at work?
Yes, and it handles the case most tools do not. Many Microsoft 365 tenants block third-party calendar apps at the admin level, so Meetly falls back to a published calendar link or an .ics upload, which no consent policy can block. When2Meet has no path here at all.
What does Meetly do after everyone votes?
It ranks the slots by attendance and by how many people marked them preferred, then finalizing emails everyone a calendar invite with an optional Google Meet, Zoom or Teams link. It also shows you exactly who has not responded so you can remind only those people. When2Meet stops at the heatmap.
Can Meetly poll whole days instead of time slots?
Yes. All-day polls answer which weekend works without forcing the question through an hourly grid. When2Meet is always a time grid, so a date question has to be faked with arbitrary hours.
Try it on your next group meeting
Create a poll, share one link, and let everyone import their calendar instead of retyping their week.
Create a free poll