Setmore vs zcal
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentSetmore compared with zcal
Zcal is a free, unbranded, visually polished booking link aimed at professionals sending meeting invitations. Setmore is a front-desk system for a business with customers, staff rotas, and payments. They barely overlap. Use Zcal for a beautiful personal scheduling link at no cost; use Setmore when the calendar has to run a business.
Choose Setmore if
Very small service businesses on tight budgets: salons, barbers, tutors, trainers, small clinics, and independent practitioners who want online booking, reminders, and card payments for either nothing or five dollars a head.
Choose zcal if
Solo founders, recruiters, creators, and small teams who want a booking page that looks designed rather than generic, who need unlimited links and calendar connections without paying, and who are happy to spend $7 per seat when team scheduling or branding removal finally becomes necessary.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Setmore | zcal |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Scheduling | Scheduling |
| Starting price | $0 (Free), then $5 per user per month billed annually ($12 month to month) (free plan available) | $0 (free forever); $7/user/mo for Pro on annual billing (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Freemium, with a capped free plan and a single per-user Pro plan. Annual billing is dramatically cheaper than monthly. Enterprise is a custom quote. | Free forever plan for individuals, plus two per-seat paid tiers billed annually or monthly. Annual billing is materially cheaper than monthly on both paid plans. |
| Free plan | Up to four staff logins and 200 appointments a month, with a public Booking Page, online and in-person payments, email confirmations and reminders, website widget, mobile apps, and Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and Zapier connectors. Setmore branding is shown. | Free forever: unlimited links, unlimited calendar accounts, meeting polls, group events, multiple durations and locations, custom questions, cover photos, welcome videos, automated email reminders, Stripe payments (with a zcal commission), Zapier, Zoom/Meet/Teams, website embeds, email support, and no advertising. |
| Free trial | The free plan serves as the evaluation path; Pro features can be trialled from within the product | 14 days on Pro and Business, cancel anytime |
| Best for | Very small service businesses on tight budgets: salons, barbers, tutors, trainers, small clinics, and independent practitioners who want online booking, reminders, and card payments for either nothing or five dollars a head. | Solo founders, recruiters, creators, and small teams who want a booking page that looks designed rather than generic, who need unlimited links and calendar connections without paying, and who are happy to spend $7 per seat when team scheduling or branding removal finally becomes necessary. |
| Setup time | An hour or two for a working booking page: add services with durations and prices, add staff and their hours, connect a payment processor, and embed the widget on your site. Most of that time is deciding your policies rather than configuring software. | Ten minutes to a live, designed booking page: connect a calendar, pick a template, add a cover photo, publish the link. Adding a welcome video, team round robin, and reminder sequences takes an hour or two. |
| Learning curve | Low. Setmore is deliberately simpler than Acuity or SimplyBook.me, which is both its main appeal and the reason businesses eventually outgrow it. Staff can be trained on the calendar in a single sitting. | Very low. The product is deliberately shallow and the design choices are template-driven, so there is little to configure incorrectly and nothing resembling an automation builder to learn. |
| Platforms | Web app, iOS, Android, Windows desktop, macOS desktop, Website widget and plugin, Branded customer app option | Web app, Hosted booking pages, Website embeds, Webhooks (Pro and above) |
| Compliance | HIPAA via the Setmore Health configuration on Pro, PCI handled through Square, Stripe, PayPal, or LawPay | GDPR (privacy and cookie policies published), No SOC 2, HIPAA, or ISO 27001 certification advertised on public pages |
| Founded | 2011 | 2020 |
| Headquarters | Portland, Oregon, United States | Sacramento, California, United States |
| Ownership | Privately held and bootstrapped; no disclosed venture funding | Privately held, no disclosed outside funding |
Strengths and limitations
Setmore
Strengths
- The most generous free plan for a real service business in this category: four staff logins, 200 appointments a month, card payments, and a website widget at zero cost.
- Pro at $5 per user per month billed annually is the cheapest serious paid tier in the entire dossier, and it removes every meaningful limit.
- Online payments are available on the free plan, which almost no competitor allows, and four processors are supported including LawPay for legal practices.
- A HIPAA-compliant configuration on the $5 Pro plan makes it the cheapest route to compliant scheduling for a small healthcare or therapy practice.
Limitations
- No commerce program: no packages, memberships, subscriptions, or gift certificates, which is exactly the layer that makes a service business predictable revenue rather than per-visit cash.
- SMS reminders are Pro-only, which means the free plan lacks the single most effective no-show tool for the businesses most likely to use it.
- The 200-appointment monthly cap on free arrives faster than owners expect and is easy to hit in a busy month with two staff.
- Pro's headline $5 price is annual-only; month to month costs $12, so flexibility carries a very large premium.
zcal
Strengths
- The free plan is the most generous in the category for a single user, with unlimited links, unlimited calendar connections, meeting polls, group events, and embeds at zero cost.
- Unlimited calendar connections on the free tier is a specific and underrated advantage; competitors that allow one free calendar will silently double-book against a personal calendar.
- Genuinely design-led booking pages with cover photos, templates, custom fonts, and welcome videos, which makes the link a brand touchpoint rather than a utility.
- Pro at $7 per user per month is the cheapest credible team-scheduling tier among the mainstream tools, and it includes SMS reminders and branding removal.
Limitations
- Free-plan payments carry a zcal commission that only a paid upgrade removes, which is the least visible and most consequential asterisk on the free-forever claim.
- No native CRM integration; Salesforce and HubSpot reach zcal only through Zapier or webhooks, which rules it out as a sales-operations tool without glue code.
- No routing forms or conditional lead assignment, so inbound demo qualification has to happen somewhere else.
- No published compliance certifications, no SSO, and little public security documentation, which will stall any formal vendor review.
Pricing compared
Setmore
Freemium, with a capped free plan and a single per-user Pro plan. Annual billing is dramatically cheaper than monthly. Enterprise is a custom quote.
- Free$0
- Pro$5
- EnterpriseCustom quote
On price per capability, nothing else here comes close. A six-person business pays $30 a month on Pro for unlimited appointments, SMS reminders, recurring bookings, branding removal, API access, and a HIPAA option. The equivalent in per-seat sales scheduling software would be $60 to $100, and Acuity reserves HIPAA and API access for a $49 tier. The catch is scope: Setmore covers appointments, payments, and reminders competently and stops there, with no packages, memberships, subscriptions, or gift certificates, and no inbound routing at all. Judged as the value floor of the appointment-business category, it is exceptional. Judged as a growth path, you will eventually outgrow it.
zcal
Free forever plan for individuals, plus two per-seat paid tiers billed annually or monthly. Annual billing is materially cheaper than monthly on both paid plans.
- Free$0
- Pro$7
- Business$12
zcal is priced to win comparisons and it does. The free plan is genuinely the strongest in the category for an individual who does not take payments, and $7 per seat for round robin, collective events, SMS reminders, and branding removal undercuts every mainstream competitor for the same job. The honest counterweight is that the price buys a narrower product: no CRM sync, no routing forms, no API platform, no compliance certifications. If your scheduling problem is exactly booking pages, zcal is the best value per dollar here. If it is going to become a revenue-operations problem, you are buying something you will replace.
Editorial verdict on each
Setmore
Setmore is the value floor of appointment scheduling, and that is a compliment. The free plan is a working business system rather than a demonstration: four staff, 200 appointments a month, card payments, a website widget, and email reminders at zero cost. Pro at $5 per user per month billed annually then removes every cap and throws in SMS reminders, recurring appointments, branding removal, API access, and a HIPAA-compliant configuration, which collectively undercut every competitor in this dossier, several of them by a factor of five. The limits are equally clear. There is no commerce program, so packages, memberships, and gift certificates need Acuity or SimplyBook.me, and there is no routing or CRM layer, so sales teams should not be here at all. Buy it if you run a small service business and want the fundamentals done well for almost nothing, and revisit the decision the day you want to sell a ten-session bundle.
Read the full Setmore profilezcal
Best Valuezcal wins the spreadsheet comparison for anyone whose scheduling problem is genuinely just scheduling. Unlimited links and calendar connections for free, booking pages that look designed rather than default, and $7 per seat for round robin and branding removal make it the cheapest credible answer in the category, and the free tier is the only one that will not silently double-book you against a second calendar. Read the payment commission clause carefully before assuming free means free, and go in knowing the ceiling is low: no CRM sync, no routing, no compliance certifications, and a small unfunded team behind it. For a founder, a recruiter, or a five-person team, that ceiling is far away. For a company building a revenue stack, it is not.
Read the full zcal profileSetmore profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; zcal last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.