Easy!Appointments vs Rallly
Both are alternatives to Calendly. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Rallly vs Easy!Appointments — same comparison, one verdict.
Easy!Appointments and Rallly are closely matched on ownership (91 vs 84) — this one comes down to pricing and to which trade-offs below you can live with.
Easy!Appointments
TOP PICKMature, self-hosted appointment booking with Google Calendar sync.
Easy!Appointments is a PHP/MySQL scheduling app that's been in active development for roughly a decade. It gives staff/service businesses a public booking page with configurable providers, services, working hours, and Google Calendar two-way sync. It's a closer match to Calendly's single-provider booking-page model than group-polling tools, and it's popular with clinics, salons, and consultants who want a no-subscription booking page.
Rallly
Open-source group scheduling and meeting-time polling.
Rallly solves a different but related problem: instead of one person publishing a booking link, it lets a group vote on the best time for a meeting across several proposed slots — the open-source answer to Doodle that also covers a chunk of Calendly's group-scheduling use case. It's actively developed and offers a hosted version (rallly.co) alongside a documented self-hosted Docker deployment.
Side by side
10 points of comparison, every one read from a verified field. Green marks the side that wins a row outright. A dash means we do not hold that fact — never that it is zero.
| Easy!Appointments | Rallly | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty ScoreOur transparent 0–100 composite for data ownership and exit cost. | 91 | 84 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first data | Yes | Yes |
| License | GPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Pricing | Free, self-hosted (own server/hosting cost only). Optional paid add-ons: SMS reminders, payment processing, custom development, and managed hosting from the maintainer. | Free, self-hosted via Docker. A hosted version exists at rallly.co with an optional paid Pro tier for extra features. |
| RAM to run it wellThe figure that actually matters, not the vendor's minimum. | 1 GB on a VPS covers PHP and MySQL for one business's booking traffic | 2 GB covers the bundled stack (Traefik, PostgreSQL, Garage object storage and the app) for a team's polls |
| Realistic running costWhat the box costs each month if you run it yourself. | $0 extra on PHP hosting you already pay for, or $5–10/mo on a 1 GB VPS | $6–12/mo on a 2 GB VPS plus a transactional email provider. Free for one registered account; a one-off $49 licence covers up to 5 (guest voters don't count) |
| Setup timeHonest first-install estimate, not the marketing quickstart. | An hour on shared hosting, plus an hour for Google Calendar sync | 30 minutes with the installer script, if DNS and SMTP are ready first |
| Ongoing maintenanceThe part nobody budgets for. | Set two cron jobs and leave them: console sync and console cleanup. Add console backup for the database. Upgrading means replacing files and running the migrate command. Read the release notes first, because settings have moved between config files in recent releases. | ./rallly.sh update pulls new 4.x images. ./rallly.sh backup dumps PostgreSQL only, so copy backups off the server and back up the garage-data volume separately if people upload files. Edit only .env, because updates overwrite the other stack files. |
Easy!Appointments is Macrostack's recommended Calendly alternative, so it's our pick here.
Weighing both against staying on Calendly? Is Calendly free? What it actually costs →
Easy!Appointments
Strengths
- +Long track record (in development since 2015) with a large, active community (4,200+ GitHub stars, commits within the last week)
- +Straightforward LAMP-stack deployment most hosts already support, no exotic infra
- +Google Calendar two-way sync and multi-language support out of the box
- +No enterprise paywall — team/multi-provider features are in the free core
Trade-offs
- −UI is functional rather than polished compared to Calendly's consumer-grade design
- −No native video-conferencing integration (Zoom/Meet) — you wire that up separately
- −SMS reminders and payment processing require paid add-ons or your own integration work
- −You own patching, backups, and uptime — there's no managed cloud fallback if self-hosting isn't for you
Rallly
Strengths
- +Simple, focused tool that's genuinely good at the group-availability-poll problem
- +Active project (5,100+ stars, commits within the last day) with a documented Docker Compose deployment
- +AGPL-3.0 keeps improvements to a hosted fork open
Trade-offs
- −Not a 1:1 booking-page replacement — no per-provider service catalog, payments, or staff management like Calendly/Easy!Appointments
- −Primary distribution is the hosted rallly.co app; self-hosting is supported but secondary in the project's own messaging
- −AGPL-3.0 requires you to publish modifications if you offer a modified version as a network service
Which one fits you
The trade-offs above, turned into a decision. Find the line that describes your team.
Choose Easy!Appointments
if a lower exit cost matters more to you than any single feature, and long track record (in development since 2015) with a large, active community (4,200+ GitHub stars, commits within the last week).
Choose Rallly
if simple, focused tool that's genuinely good at the group-availability-poll problem.
Neither, yet
if both carry a real cost you should weigh first — uI is functional rather than polished compared to Calendly's consumer-grade design, and not a 1:1 booking-page replacement — no per-provider service catalog, payments, or staff management like Calendly/Easy!Appointments. If either of those is a dealbreaker for your team, the shortlist is wrong rather than the choice.
What it takes to run these yourself
Real requirements and honest running costs, not the vendor quickstart.
Self-hosting Easy!Appointments
1 GB on a VPS covers PHP and MySQL for one business's booking traffic RAM · An hour on shared hosting, plus an hour for Google Calendar sync
$0 extra on PHP hosting you already pay for, or $5–10/mo on a 1 GB VPS
Self-hosting Rallly
2 GB covers the bundled stack (Traefik, PostgreSQL, Garage object storage and the app) for a team's polls RAM · 30 minutes with the installer script, if DNS and SMTP are ready first
$6–12/mo on a 2 GB VPS plus a transactional email provider. Free for one registered account; a one-off $49 licence covers up to 5 (guest voters don't count)
Easy!Appointments vs Rallly — common questions
Is Easy!Appointments a better fit than Rallly for scheduling & booking?
It depends on what you are optimising for, and the honest split is this: Easy!Appointments scores 91 to Rallly's 84 on data ownership and exit cost, so it is the safer choice if you care about being able to leave. Rallly earns its place on a different axis — simple, focused tool that's genuinely good at the group-availability-poll problem. Neither is a wrong answer for every team; the table above is the actual comparison.
What happens if we want to switch later?
Easy!Appointments keeps its data local or in open formats, so leaving is an export rather than a negotiation. Rallly is still self-hostable, so the files stay on your server either way — but it is not local-first by design, so check what its export produces before you rely on it.
Can I self-host Easy!Appointments or Rallly?
Both can be self-hosted. The difference is what it costs you in time rather than whether it is possible — see the setup and maintenance rows above.
Are Easy!Appointments and Rallly both alternatives to Calendly?
Yes — both appear in our Calendly comparison, which is why they are worth putting side by side. People usually arrive here already having decided to move off Calendly and now choosing between the two replacements, which is a narrower and much easier question.
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Facts verified 2026-07-09. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.