Why Recurring Meetings Are the Secret Weapon You’re Missing

Let’s be honest: scheduling a single meeting is a special kind of modern torture. The back-and-forth emails, the “How about Tuesday at 3?” texts, the dreaded “Sorry, something came up!” rescheduling… it’s a productivity black hole. Now, imagine doing that for the same meeting, week after week, month after month.

It’s enough to make anyone want to cancel all meetings forever.

But what if you could set up a meeting once and have it automatically populate your calendar for the next three, six, or twelve months? What if you could stop the scheduling madness and get straight to the actual work?

Welcome to the world of recurring meetings. This isn’t just a fancy calendar trick; it’s a fundamental shift in how we manage our most valuable resource: time.

In this article, we’re diving deep into what recurring meetings are, why they’re a game-changer, and the surprising truth about why the biggest player in the scheduling game, Calendly, doesn’t offer this feature. We’ll also look at how new, agile players like TinyCal are stepping up to fill this massive gap in the market.

What Exactly Are Recurring Meetings? (It’s Not Just a Repeated Event)

At its core, a recurring meeting is a single event template that repeats on a set schedule. Think of it like a subscription for your time. Instead of manually creating a “Weekly Team Sync” for every Monday at 10 AM for the next year, you create one event and tell your calendar: “Repeat this every week.”

But in the context of modern scheduling apps, it’s so much more powerful than that. A true recurring meetings feature allows you to:

• Create a Single Booking Link: You have one, permanent URL that people can use to book any instance in the series.
• Automate Invitations and Reminders: The system automatically sends out unique invitations and reminders for each occurrence, so no one forgets.
• Manage a Series, Not Just Instances: While each meeting is independent, the entire series is managed from a central hub, making it easy to adjust the schedule or pause it for a holiday.

This is the gold standard for any ongoing commitment: coaching sessions, weekly one-on-ones, monthly client check-ins, or regular team stand-ups.

The Undeniable Advantages: Why Your Business Needs Recurring Meetings

Adopting a recurring meetings system isn’t just about convenience; it’s a strategic move that pays dividends in efficiency, professionalism, and mental clarity.

1. Reclaim Your Time and Sanity

The most immediate benefit is the sheer amount of time you save. The cognitive load of constantly negotiating schedules is immense. By automating this process, you free up mental RAM for the work that actually matters. No more digging through old emails to find the original meeting link or trying to remember who was invited.

2. Project Unshakable Professionalism

When you send a client a single link for all your future sessions, you look organized and tech-savvy. It shows you value their time as much as your own. It transforms a haphazard scheduling process into a seamless, professional service. They book once, and they’re set for life (or the duration of your engagement).

3. Eliminate Scheduling Friction and “No-Shows”

The more steps involved in booking a meeting, the more likely people are to drop off. A recurring meeting link reduces the entire process to a single click. Furthermore, because each session gets its own automated reminder (email or SMS), the likelihood of someone forgetting and becoming a “no-show” plummets.

4. Create Predictable and Protected Rhythms

For teams, recurring meetings create a cadence. The weekly planning session, the daily stand-up, the monthly retrospective—these rituals are the heartbeat of a productive team. Automating their scheduling ensures they happen consistently, without fail, building a rhythm that drives projects forward.

5. Streamline Monetization for Coaches and Consultants

If you charge by the session, recurring meetings are a revenue engine. You can set up a payment link that collects fees for the entire series upfront or before each session. This creates predictable cash flow and eliminates the awkwardness of chasing payments for every single meeting.

The Calendly Conundrum: Why the Giant is Silent on This Feature

If recurring meetings are so incredible, why doesn’t the 800-pound gorilla in the scheduling space, Calendly, offer them?

It’s a question that has frustrated thousands of users for years. A quick search through Calendly’s own community forums reveals a trail of earnest requests:

• A user pleads, “Set repeat/recurring appointments,” stating it’s a “must-have” feature.
• Another asks how to “Create recurring events with Zapier,” seeking a complex and fragile workaround.
• A third simply titles their post “Recurring Meetings,” with the clear implication that the feature is missing.

The demand is loud, clear, and persistent. So, what’s the hold-up?

For a large, established company like Calendly, adding a feature isn’t as simple as writing a few lines of code. It involves complex architectural considerations, potential UI/UX overhauls, and ensuring it scales perfectly for millions of users. They may have prioritized other features or are working on a perfect implementation that has yet to see the light of day.

Whatever the reason, the result is the same: a gaping hole in the market. This void has created an opportunity for more nimble and focused alternatives to thrive by listening directly to what users are asking for.

The Alternatives: Where Can You Find Recurring Meetings?

While Calendly users wait, several other excellent tools have stepped in to provide robust recurring meeting features.

• Setmore: This platform has built recurring appointments right into its core features, allowing you to set daily, weekly, monthly, or even custom patterns with ease.
• Cal.com: As an open-source alternative, Cal.com prides itself on its flexibility, including a powerful recurring events feature that handles complex schedules.
• Zoom: Even Zoom itself allows you to create a recurring meeting from within its platform, generating a single link for all occurrences—a testament to how fundamental this feature is for modern collaboration.

These tools prove that the technology is not only possible but is already being implemented successfully. They are serving the exact audience that Calendly is currently leaving behind.

A Glimpse into the Future: TinyCal is Building the Solution

This is where the story gets exciting for those of us tired of waiting. At TinyCal, we’ve been listening. We hear the frustration in those community forum posts, and we’re building the recurring meetings feature you’ve been dreaming of.

As a new player, we have the advantage of agility. We can focus on what users are desperately asking for, without the legacy code or corporate inertia that can slow down larger companies. We’re building this feature from the ground up to be powerful, intuitive, and seamlessly integrated into the TinyCal experience.

Here’s a sneak peek at what you can expect when TinyCal’s recurring meetings feature launches in the near future:

Powerful and Flexible Scheduling:

• Set up recurring meetings with weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly frequencies right out of the gate. We’re starting with the most requested cadences to get you up and running instantly.

Seamless Monetization:

• Collect payments for recurring meetings effortlessly. Whether you’re a coach running a 12-session program or a consultant with monthly retainers, you can connect your Stripe account and have payments processed automatically for each session or the entire series.

And All the TinyCal Features You Love:

Crucially, every part of the TinyCal ecosystem will work in harmony with your new recurring meetings:

• Custom Fields: Need a client to provide a progress update before each session? No problem. Your custom fields will be presented during every booking in the series.
• Automated Meeting Reminders: Rest assured, every single occurrence will trigger its own email reminder to both you and your invitee, drastically reducing no-shows.
• One-Click Conferencing: Each meeting in the series will have its own unique Google Meet or Zoom link generated automatically. No more sharing the same static link with security concerns.
• Flawless Calendar Sync: Every booked appointment will sync directly to your connected Google Calendar, keeping your single source of truth up-to-date without any manual work.

We’re building this not as a tacked-on feature, but as a core component of what makes TinyCal a smarter, more efficient way to manage your scheduled time.

Real-World Use Cases: How Will You Use Recurring Meetings?

To make this concrete, let’s imagine a few scenarios:

• The Startup Founder: You have bi-weekly one-on-ones with your five team leads. Instead of managing ten separate meeting links and calendars, you create two recurring links: one for “Marketing 1:1” and one for “Engineering 1:1.” Your leads book their slots, and your calendar is perfectly organized for the next six months without another minute of effort.
• The Fitness Coach: You offer weekly personal training sessions. You create a recurring meeting link, set it to collect payment via Stripe before each session, and send it to your client. They book their first slot, and they’re automatically enrolled for every week. You get paid on time, and they get a consistent, scheduled commitment.
• The Freelance Designer: You have a monthly website maintenance retainer with three key clients. You set up three separate monthly recurring meetings, each with a custom field to list their priorities for the month. The meeting is automatically scheduled, the agenda is collected, and the video call link is ready to go.

The Bottom Line: Stop Scheduling, Start Doing

The era of manual, repetitive scheduling is over. Recurring meetings are no longer a “nice-to-have” feature; they are an essential tool for anyone who values their time and wants to operate at peak efficiency.

The fact that Calendly, despite its market dominance, has yet to implement this feature is a telling sign of the opportunity for innovation. It’s a clear invitation for new, user-focused apps to step in and solve a real-world problem.

At TinyCal, we’re excited to accept that invitation. We are committed to building a scheduling tool that doesn’t just mimic the competition but actively solves the pain points you experience every day.

We’re putting the final touches on our recurring meetings feature now. If you’re as excited as we are about a future with less scheduling and more doing, keep an eye on TinyCal. We’re building the future of scheduling, one recurring meeting at a time.

Image by Ronald Carreño from Pixabay

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