Online Meeting Scheduler Doodle Offers Ad-free Premium Accounts [Invites]

Written by Steven Walling / August 14, 2009 4:12 PM / 9 Comments

Despite the unfortunate name, Doodle is a dead-simple Web app for scheduling a meeting. In our experience, scheduling meetings is a chore, with the most common method to be just emailing around to solicit advice. That's inefficient, and this single-purpose software as a service is one solution. Recently the service, which has been around since 2006 and is normally ad-supported, started offering premium accounts with greater customization and no advertising.

Especially for enterprise customers, we don't normally recommend many apps that are so single-purpose. Relying on a growing array of SaaS services that each do one thing can be a huge impediment to productivity.

But to use most of the popular general-purpose tools available to schedule meetings with is a serious pain in the neck. Doodle, as well as competitors such as Tungle, can make this process easier by creating a one stop shop for polling coworkers.

In our test of the free version of Doodle, it took less than five minutes to set up a poll for meeting scheduling, and that seems like something worthy of being called simple. More advanced options include polling for a range of dates and exporting results to PDF or Excel. There is no limit on the number of participants, and poll creators get administration rights.

The most basic version of Doodle doesn't even require an account to use, but anyone who wants custom theming or branding for their business needs to log in. The new premium option is normally $28/year, and features custom fields, comprehensive theming and branding opportunities, and is ad-free.

~~If you'd like to try out the premium Doodle free for a year, just use the coupon code: vyhrsa2f (all lowercase) when you sign up.~~ And it looks like all the invites are gone now.

Comments

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Thanks guys!

Posted by: Tav | August 14, 2009 11:47 PM

Thanks for that mention! Hui, the coupons for Premium Doodle are going very quickly...

For the matter Doodle is reviewed here in the enterprise section of RWW: We also offer a scheduling solution for enterprises: Branded Doodle that makes every meeting request a unique brand presence on dedicated domain. There's a free and a paid version, with additional branding and security options. The name Doodle is set - whereas the service is continally emerging :)

Posted by: Tilman Eberle | August 15, 2009 1:25 AM

Oh! Doodle looks really promising. Plus its great that they let others in on the action without having to pay yet. http://AppUseful.com

Posted by: NMN | August 15, 2009 3:13 AM

The coupon does not work!!

Posted by: Id | August 15, 2009 3:33 PM

I use Timebridge to show off my calendar. I tried using it, but I think others aren't too inclined to sign up for a service just to book a meeting with me. Meebee.com will be launched soon and will be another meeting scheduling option.

Gcalendar is still the lowest common denominator.

The politest but worst way to book a meeting is to ask everyone when they are free. 10 emails later maybe you can figure out when to book it. I try and plan at least a few days ahead, throw a meeting on the schedule, list the times for the various people in their various time zones in the title, and 9 times out of 10, the 3 to 5 people I'm scheduling a 30 to 60 minute call with are all available at that time. If they're not, I just move it out to a re-proposed time and everyone gets their new invite.

Most people don't book that many meetings, that far out, so I find this method works quite well.

Posted by: Mark | August 15, 2009 5:41 PM

Thanks,but the coupon does not work!

Posted by: dude | August 16, 2009 6:31 AM

I tried to sign up for free year of Doodle using the code vyhrsa2f and I get a message that the code is invalid.

Posted by: loretta | August 16, 2009 6:00 PM

i use doodle quite frequently, and the great thing about it: everybody can handle it; it's even easier then scheduling meetings via outlook.
the dark side: it does not write the events in a calendar - that (or integrating with extisting online organizers)would be a gorgeous add on feature...

Posted by: themashazine | August 17, 2009 12:24 AM

You may have just changed my life forever. I always felt silly create Excel spreadsheets to plan meetings, but I needed something. This looks like it is the answer to many of my dreams. Thank you. Thank you. And thank Doodle.

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