Open source alternatives to Doodle

What Doodle does

Doodle is a hosted scheduling service best known for group polls. The organizer proposes dates and times, participants mark through a link which ones they can attend, and the organizer picks the winning slot. Doodle has since added booking pages for appointments, 1:1 scheduling where one person chooses from a set of offered times, and sign-up sheets for workshops and events, along with payment collection for bookings. The Pro plan adds advanced poll settings such as deadlines, reminders and hidden participants, plus Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Webex integration.

Why people look for an alternative

• Free plan limits. The free plan includes one group poll, one booking page, one 1:1 and three basic sign-up sheets. Unlimited polls and the advanced settings require Pro.
• Advertising. Doodle’s privacy policy lists advertising as one of its revenue sources and says ads can be targeted using language, IP address and poll content, with some ads delivered through Google’s ad services. Removing ads is listed as a Pro plan feature.
• Per-seat pricing for the Pro and Team plans.
• Data handling and retention. The privacy policy says production data is stored in Ireland and pre-production data in Germany. Outdated polls are deleted automatically, no earlier than 30 days after their last date unless they belong to an active premium account; deleted polls may be archived for internal analytics; and inactive accounts can be deleted after a year.
• No self-hosted option. Doodle runs only as a hosted service.

What to compare in an alternative

1. Participation without an account. Whether people can answer from a link without signing up.
2. Poll format. A list of proposed slots to vote on, or a grid where people paint their free hours across a week.
3. Answer types and time zones. “If need be” answers, and times shown in each participant’s own zone.
4. Privacy controls. Hidden results, anonymous polls, deadlines, reminders and limits on votes.
5. After the vote. Whether the tool sends calendar invites and creates a video link once a date is chosen, or leaves that to you.
6. Hosting. A hosted service without ads, or self-hosting on your own server or inside a platform you already run.

Which one to choose

Rallly is the closest match to a Doodle group poll. Participants vote without an account using yes, if need be and no answers, times appear in each person’s time zone, and when the organizer finalizes a date Rallly sends calendar invites and can create a Google Meet, Zoom, Teams or Webex link. It has a hosted service with a free plan and a Docker-based self-hosted edition; multi-user self-hosted instances are asked to buy a license key on an honor system.

Timeful takes the When2meet approach: instead of voting on a few proposed slots, participants mark their free time on a grid, optionally filled in from Google, Outlook, Apple or ICS calendars, and the overlap shows the best time. Its hosted service at timeful.app is free with no ads, and it can be self-hosted with Docker Compose.

If your organization already runs Nextcloud, Nextcloud Polls adds date and text polls to it with no extra service. It offers the finest access control of the three, using Nextcloud users, groups and circles, plus hidden results, anonymous modes, vote limits and automatic reminders.

None of these covers Doodle’s booking pages or 1:1 scheduling. For those, see the Calendly alternatives and the scheduling guide.