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Марія БровінськаStartup
1 September 2025, 14:55
2025-09-01
"Calendly for $0." A Ukrainian developer created his own meeting planner that allows you to avoid spending money on well-known services
Senior Full-Stack Developer Andriy Furmanets was tired of paying monthly for services like Calendly or Acuity Scheduling. The subscription cost was $15–30, even though he didn’t have many meetings. As a freelance developer, he was looking for a way for clients to sign up for consultation calls. Popular solutions were too expensive (Calendly: $8–16/month per user, Acuity Scheduling: $14–50/month, Square Appointments: $29–69/month). For a few meetings per month, these prices seemed unreasonable to him.
So in two weeks he put together his own meeting planner that integrates with Google Calendar, sends notifications to Telegram, and costs nothing to use.
Senior Full-Stack Developer Andriy Furmanets was tired of paying monthly for services like Calendly or Acuity Scheduling. The subscription cost was $15–30, even though he didn’t have many meetings. As a freelance developer, he was looking for a way for clients to sign up for consultation calls. Popular solutions were too expensive (Calendly: $8–16/month per user, Acuity Scheduling: $14–50/month, Square Appointments: $29–69/month). For a few meetings per month, these prices seemed unreasonable to him.
So in two weeks he put together his own meeting planner that integrates with Google Calendar, sends notifications to Telegram, and costs nothing to use.
Yes, it works.
To avoid making too much of a fuss, Andriy made Google Calendar into a virtual «database» — it stores all reservations and checks for conflicts. The service has the following options:
Integration with Google Calendar — automatically creates events and checks for conflicts.
Smart work with time zones — the user sees the time in their local zone, but reservations are stored in Kyiv time.
Meeting types — different scenarios (30 min consultation, 45 min technical review, one hour for project discussion).
Real-time availability check — no double bookings.
Telegram notifications — instant messages about new meetings.
Modern interface — responsive design on React, with animations and convenient forms.
Free to use — all data is stored in Google Calendar, no additional database is required.
To build his own service, he used:
Frontend: Next.js 14 + React + TypeScript
Styles: Tailwind CSS with custom animations
Forms: React Hook Form + Zod
Integrations: Google Calendar API + Telegram Bot API
Hosting: Vercel (free plan)
The architecture is as simple as possible: frontend form → Next.js API → Google Calendar. No database — just the calendar and API queries.
Each booking immediately arrives at the developer’s Telegram: who signed up, when, and for which call.
Andriy made the UI «in the spirit of SaaS», with smooth animations and mobile adaptation.
The most difficult thing was to figure out the time zones. Andriy lives in Ukraine, but clients book calls from different parts of the world. «I keep the time in the Kyiv time zone, and for the client the system converts it to local time. That way everyone sees the correct time and no one gets confused,» the developer explains.
As a result, he saves up to $360 per year thanks to his own service. And the planner has already started working. Here are its features:
$ 0 instead of $30 per month. Annual savings — $240–360.
50+ meetings held without a single double booking.
100% mobile responsive — most customers book from their phones.
What’s next?
Andriy is not stopping: he is currently working on an npm package with ready-made React components, several calendar integrations, and teamwork support.
«I want to help other developers avoid „subscription slavery“ and provide a tool that is both more convenient and cheaper than SaaS,» he says.
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