Open source Calendly rival Cal.com raises $25M

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Cal.com, the company behind an open source scheduling platform (and Calendly alternative), has raised $25 million in a series A round of funding and launched what it calls an “app store for time” so developers can build their own apps on top of Cal.com’s scheduling infrastructure.

Created initially last year as Calendso, the company rebranded as Cal.com in September alongside its full product launch, as it set out to challenge the well-funded Calendly which now claims a lofty valuation of $3 billion. Late last year, Cal.com raised a $7.4 million seed funding round from a slew of notable backers including YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley.

The problem that Cal.com and its ilk are setting out to solve is one that is familiar to millions across the globe — endless emails, messages and phone calls to find a suitable time for multiple people to meet (online or IRL). And the more stakeholders that are involved across regions and time zones, the more difficult it is to find a slot where everyone can meet to discuss that critical project update.

To address this problem, Cal.com offers what it calls “scheduling infrastructure for absolutely everyone,” targeting anyone from fitness instructors to companies such as Klarna and Deel. At its most basic level, meeting organizers use Cal.com to share a scheduling link with invitees, who can then choose from multiple time slots — and the time slot that everyone can make is added to each participant’s calendar.

The platform includes a suite of prebuilt integrations for the likes of Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, Zoom and Stripe, while an open API enables users to integrate Cal.com with their own systems. And among its various pricing plans is an enterprise tier, which includes features such as single sign-on (SSO), audit logs and an admin console.

Control and customization

While there are clear similarities with the likes of Calendly, Cal.com’s main differentiator is its open-source credentials — it promises companies full data sovereignty and digital autonomy. Available on GitHub, Cal.com gives companies control of all their data through self-hosting, which may be particularly important for highly-regulated industries such as healthcare or government bodies. Through a white-label offering, companies can also manage the “look and feel” of their Cal.com deployment.

On top of that, if companies don’t want the hassle of self-hosting, then they can tap Cal.com’s fully-hosted service.

Alongside its series A raise, Cal.com has also introduced a bunch of new features, including the release of its new API, dynamic booking links, native video conferencing functionality, and — arguably the biggest update of all — a new app store.

With the app store, the company has essentially revamped how apps work within the Cal.com platform — it now follows a more “modular and extensible architecture,” the company said, making it easier for developers to build apps for Cal.com that anyone else can also use.

With another $25 million in the bank, Cal.com said it will use its fresh cash injection to help developers launch new apps for its app store, and become “the best developer platform for building anything and everything time related” — this could be telehealth apps, productivity apps, marketplaces and everything in between.

Cal.com’s series A round was led by Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, with participation from OSS Capital, Obvious Ventures, Daily.co, and myriad angel investors.