There are lots of reasons to use Cal.com for your scheduling needs. You might decide to use our service because it’s free for individuals, or you may have been drawn to the fact that we’re 100% customizable, open source, and white-label friendly.

You might also be here because you heard that we support opt-in bookings. In fact, we don’t just support them; we were one of the first platforms to offer this feature to our customers.

Cal.com developed options for opt-in booking because we found a noticeable gap that needed to be addressed. Before opt-in bookings, people using platforms like Calendly, for example, didn’t have a way to control the appointments added to their schedule.

Having said all this, let’s look at the top three reasons for using opt-in bookings.

1) You have complete control

One of the great things about opt-in bookings is they ensure you’re always in charge. With opt-in bookings, you don’t have to worry about anything added to your schedule without your explicit approval. 

Even after you share a calendar link, the event isn’t booked until you confirm it. You don’t have to worry if your meeting link is accidentally shared with an unknown party.

2) It keeps your calendar tidy

No one likes messy calendars; they can be confusing and stressful to navigate. When you have a public calendar link on your website or in your email signature, there’s always the chance that your calendar ends up filled with erroneous events. This sort of thing often happens by accident. They’re usually the result of a clerical error. 

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what caused the extra bookings; the issue is that once it’s happened, it turns your entire calendar into an assortment of appointments that you have to sort through manually. By activating the opt-in booking feature, you can ensure appointments are only added to your calendar after you confirm them.

3) It saves time

The final reason to use opt-in bookings is that they save time. Imagine you’re taking on a new project and forgot to update your availability schedule. Because of this, some appointments were booked that don’t actually work for you. If you don’t have opt-in bookings enabled, you’d have to cancel these appointments and reach out to the other party to clear up the misunderstanding. 

This may be easy, but that doesn’t mean you have the extra time available to do it. Enabling opt-in bookings stops these things from happening because the appointment isn’t added to your calendar until you confirm it.

Using opt-in bookings is one of the easiest ways to customize your cal.com experience, protect your time, and simplify scheduling.

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