Or rather questions no one actually asked but ones we think they might.
No, your guests can use HoneyCal as a website. If you have sent event information to them from within HoneyCal they only need to click a link in the email to book.
Short answer is "no". In more detail:
HoneyCal uses one time passwords which are sent to an email address as part of the standard login process (ie you never have to create or remember a password). This means that logging in the first time is no different to logging in at later times, it just "creates an account" automatically that first time.
If you have added someone's email address to the list of followers on one of your calendars they already "have an account" and if they book an event through an email sent from a HoneyCal event, they do not even need a one time passcode.
All emails sent to followers have an unsubscribe link to prevent receiving future emails.
No, HoneyCal is free for anyone booking onto an event. Only event organisers have to pay for a plan, and then only if they are organising things involving more than a few people.
There are several easy ways for you to get your guests to see your events on HoneyCal:
You can copy a link from your HoneyCal calendar or one of the events and paste the link into an email or any messaging app or your website.
You can import a list of your guest email addresses into HoneyCal, so it can send emails with book and follow links to them.
If you are in front of a guest, there is a QR code on the event screen so they can scan it from your phone with their phone camera.
You could put a link to your HoneyCal calendar(s) on your website for people to click.
Use the social media sharing buttons on a calendar or event
There isn't really anything to learn. If you send an event email from HoneyCal, they can book by clicking a link in the email. If they look at an event page there is a "book" button, if they look at the calendar view in HoneyCal they can click an event in the listing to go to the details screen. If they want to explore HoneyCal more then they can but it's not a requirement.
In HoneyCal as in other calendar apps, "calendar" means two things, it is both the grid of days on which events are displayed and a conceptual grouping of events. The second meaning is the one of interest: You might have one "calendar" to hold your business activities and another for personal activities. Usually events on different "calendars" are displayed in different colours so you can easily see which calendar an event belongs to.
Every calendar in HoneyCal has a list of followers, which is like a mailing list. The owner of a calendar can send out emails to all or some the followers of that calendar. Booking onto an event from a calendar automatically makes that person a follower. As with other emailing lists, people can change their settings to unsubscribe completely or simply to turn off emails.
Someone is "booked" on an event when they are added to the list of attendees for the event. For group events such as classes, performances or parties this is a pretty normal use of the word "booked". The term is also used when someone has been assigned a time slot on a rota timetable or a sessions event.
An event is an item which appears on a particular date and has a title and start and end times. It can optionally specify a location, price and have rules governing how many people can book etc. There are several different types of events with different rules to handle various things like classes, parties, timetables and so on.
No, HoneyCal does not take online payments for your events. However, you can add links to an outside payment system such as Stripe or PayPal and users are sent to your payment system when making their bookings. HoneyCal also allows you to track payments made via other methods such as cash, bank transfers and so on.
Payment systems like Stripe and PayPal allow you to create payment links which set a price. You can copy and paste these links into your HoneyCal event and when a person is booking that event, they are sent to the payment link to make a payment. As with other payment types such as cash or bank transfers, you will need to check for online payments and match them to the bookings via email address or name. -- Coming soon, for Stripe HoneyCal will do this reconciliation for you using the email address of booker and payer, if you set up a "webhook" link that Stripe provides.
Yes, Stripe. The commission rates are competitive and the service is excellent and easy to use. That's why we use it for payment of HoneyCal plans.
Part of the point of HoneyCal is that a strict "online payment with booking" isn't the way everyone operates. WHen you have a relationship with your clients or customers, payments may be made by cash in person or via other methods like bank transfer. If you are tracking payments on an event, each booking shows the amount due for the session. You can then add one or more payment entries identifying the method, amount, date and any other note you want to add. This cancels out the amount due and shows any remaining balance.
If you need to chase for payments click a button and HoneyCal generates emails for each individual with a non-zero balance with all the details they need.
Yes, if you want to make things easier for your guests you can add them to a calendar as a follower or book them onto an event. As a minimum you need to know their email address. But even that is optional if they are never going to use HoneyCal directly.
When a host goes to one of their own events, there is an extra section showing who has booked onto the event. The list may also contains people who have been invited but who have not yet booked or people who were booked but have cancelled. if you are tracking payments, payments can be added on these entries and outstanding amounts are shown. You can change the booking status of anyone on the list and add new attendees if you need to.
When someone is booked onto an event, you can click the envelope icon next to their name and type a message directly in the app. This sends them an email (as long as they have not unsubscribed) and the message appears in your HoneyCal outbox and their HoneyCal inbox.
If you want to send messages to multiple people, you can go to an event or a calendar and click one of the email buttons to choose to send to all followers or some subset. You can choose the recipients by hand but also have options such as sending a message to those who still need to pay for an event.
Whenever a message is sent from HoneyCal it includes links to the calendar and event if relevant and often buttons to take actions relating to the event such as "book".
When you are sent a message this will be sent as an email to you unless you have turned this off in the calendar settings. ANy message sent to you will appear in the HoneyCal inbox on the messages tab of the app.
If a message was sent from an event, the message in the inbox will have a link to the event. The message may also have action buttons if there are standard things that need to be done. One of the standard buttons is "Reply" so you can reply to the specific message.
Messages sent from an event will appear on the event details page if the viewer is a host for the event.
Yes, you can sync entries from other online calendars into HoneyCal. You can sync from several different calendars and can toggle them on and off in the calendar view of HoneyCal. That helps you plan events and avoid making conflicts with other commitments you might have.
Yes, each of your calendars has two links which can be pasted into your other calendar apps. One link shows them only the events that they are booked on to attend. The other link shows all events, but highlights the ones they are booked on. Calendar apps may only synchronise every few hours so there may be a delay in showing updates made within HoneyCal.
To import contacts into HoneyCal each contact must have an email address. Import can also import the person's name and one phone number, it just ignores other info or columns. HoneyCal understands vCard, XML, CSV and text file formats. Exporting and importing is usually easier on a laptop or desktop computer than on a phone but it should be possible on any device as long as you can find the file containing the data. Gmail and other contact list apps usually have an export that will produce a file in one or more of the supported formats.
Contacts are imported as followers to one of you calendars. You can then copy selections of contacts to your other calendars within HoneyCal. You can also create contacts directly in HoneyCal by typing the details.
The owner of a calendar can export any selection of followers from that calendar.
You can export a list of bookings or attendance from an event if you are the host. You can export a contact with all the attendance history from the follower screen if you are the host of the calendar the follower is in.
HoneyCal is not a personal organiser calendar for your meetings and appointments. HoneyCal does not have alarms or reminders on events. Events you add to HoneyCal are intended for public viewing and may allow viewers to make bookings according to rules you set. HoneyCal's strength is facilitating arrangements for events among groups of people, it is not intended to manage personal events for an individual.
You could create events and then allow the general public to make bookings. However, HoneyCal is not intended to be a ticketing system for music venues, theatres or cinemas. There are other solutions better suited to ticketing and taking online payments.
HoneyCal was designed for situations where you have a smaller audience, such as a list of clients or students who you probably mostly already know by name and for whom you have contact information.
HoneyCal allows you to inform them of your upcoming events or availability and lets them reserve spaces or time slots. In the case of rota events you can assign staff to shifts.
HoneyCal does not take payments on your behalf, but HoneyCal can track payments for you. You can also add a link to whatever external payment system you use, for making online payments.
HoneyCal is intended to send emails to your followers. However, this is not a general purpose email marketing platform like Mailchimp, Constant Contact or Brevo.
HoneyCal mailings do not offer any control over the design and include links and buttons to automate tasks associated with your events. You can add short messages on the mailings but not longer things like news letters.
HoneyCal mailings are intended to promote particular events or send small amounts of news to people who follow your calendars.
If you need to know something else about HoneyCal?
We have a forum for you to ask us questions and see previous discussions.
Try it online, for free. That might be the easiest way to see what it can do.
Try HoneyCalWeb apps have the best of both worlds: websites and installed apps.
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