Top 10 Best Chili Piper Alternatives and Competitors in 2023

Chili Piper has been a popular choice for many businesses looking to streamline their inbound lead routing and scheduling processes. However, several factors, including higher subscription fees, limited trial options, slow widget load times, missing features, and less-than-ideal customer support, have led customers to seek alternatives.

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Why Look for Chili Piper Alternatives?

Before diving into the alternatives, let's briefly examine the key reasons businesses are seeking alternatives to Chili Piper:

1. Cost structure‍

ChiliPiper's higher subscription fees, tiered platform fees based on the number of form submissions per month, and the requirement to purchase minimum user licenses can make it a costly choice for many organizations. The monthly platform fee can be quite steep, especially for businesses with high volumes of leads.

Below is their pricing plan and monthly tiered platform fee.

Below is the minimum license requirement for all their products:

• Distro: 5 users (annually) / 4 users (monthly)
• Handoff: 4 users (annually) / 3 users (monthly)
• Instant Booker: 7 users (annually) / 5 users (monthly)

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2. Missing Features‍

Chili Piper is a powerful lead conversion platform, but it lacks some features that may be essential for specific businesses, such as:

• ‍Multiple-duration options - Give your invitees multiple appointment duration options to choose from when they book. This is more efficient than creating a separate meeting type for each duration.
• Real-time Email Verification - Eliminate invalid, disposable, personal, and temporary email addresses from your lead capture forms. Reduce bounce rates, improve deliverability, and prevent wasted resources on invalid leads.
• Multiple calendar support - Ability to connect multiple calendars to a user account, so they can manage their work and personal life efficiently.
• SFCRM Opportunity creation - Automatic creation of an Opportunity in SFCRM when a meeting is booked.
• HubSpot Deal creation - Ability to create Deals in HubSpot, not just Contacts.
• HubSpot meeting guest associations - Ability to associate all meeting guests with the corresponding HubSpot contact, instead of just the Assignee and Main Guest.
• Contact owner update without engagement creation - Ability to update the contact owner even when engagements are not created in HubSpot.
• Chatbots and live chat - for engaging with leads and customers to provide personalized experiences.
• Group event type availability - for webinars and training events, to direct inbound leads to those events instead of one-on-one product demos.
• WhatsApp reminders - to keep leads engaged and on track. Outside of the USA and Canada, WhatsApp reminders are preferred over SMS reminders because they have higher open rates, more features, and better security.
• Enhanced branding features - to customize the look and feel of the appointment scheduling experience to match your brand.
• Collect  payments using Stripe and PayPal: Some customer may need the payment gateway integrations to collect payments at the time of appointment booking to reduce no-shows.
• Limit the number of appointments per day - Specifying per day appointments limit at an appointment type level or at the user account level.
• Custom domain support - to create a more professional and branded experience for your leads.

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3. Implementation Challenges‍

Setting up Chili Piper and customizing it to match your brand's style often requires significant time, effort, and developer assistance.

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4. Support Issues‍

Some users have reported slower and subpar customer support experiences, which can be frustrating when you encounter technical difficulties or need assistance.

Top 10 Chili Piper Alternatives

Now that we understand the reasons for seeking alternatives to Chili Piper, let's explore the top 10 best alternatives that can address these concerns:

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1. Leadmonk

Leadmonk is an inbound lead conversion and scheduling software. It helps B2B revenue teams convert leads into meetings by qualifying, routing, and scheduling in real-time from anywhere — be it your web form, cold calls, campaigns, and more.

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We think Leadmonk is the truly versatile inbound lead conversion and scheduling software available in the market for the following reasons:

• Enable Prospects to Self-Qualify - Build a qualification track in Leadmonk and let prospects self-qualify to capture all the insights you need without hurting conversion. Reduce junk meetings by 80% and increase qualified meetings by 35%. You can easily filter leads with personal or temporary email domains and unverified email addresses. Leadmonk has features to check these conditions easily.
• ‍Real-Time Lead Routing - Instantly route leads based on complex conditions and display a calendar on your website for prospects to book meetings. No more long sales cycles. Go straight to meetings with qualified leads.
• Route your leads from hidden fields - With Clearbit or ZoomInfo, you can enrich your marketing forms with industry, company size, and other data. This will help you shorten your forms and route your leads to the right sales rep.
• Ownership Routing - Create routing rules that automatically match and schedule known leads and existing customers with the right sales rep based on real-time CRM account ownership.
• ‍Scheduling Simplified - Make it easy for your customers to schedule meetings on demand without the back and forth. Add Leadmonk to your website, emails, text messages, WhatsApp, or social profiles.Watch conversion skyrocket by up to 150%.
• Real-time Email Verification - Ensure high-quality lead data with Leadmonk's real-time email verification, which eliminates invalid, disposable, personal, and temporary email addresses from your lead capture forms.
• SFCRM Opportunity creation - Automatic creation of an Opportunity in SFCRM when a meeting is booked.
• HubSpot Deal creation - Ability to create deals in HubSpot, not just Contacts.
• ‍One form: many forms - Build a routing form in Leadmonk in minutes. Easy to customize and can be embedded on your website or shared as a link. You can build one-at-a-time form, step form or all-at-once form easily. Leadmonk also works with your existing forms such as HubSpot,Pardot, and Custom web forms (coming soon).
• Booking Flexibility: Invitees can book time using mobile number or email address without the back and forth.
• It gives an option to your customers to choose between WhatsApp and SMS to receive appointment notifications.📱💬
• ‍Meeting types: Meet one-on-one or in a group or as a team (multi-host scheduling and round-robin). Meet online or in person. Leadmonk supports all meeting combinations. 🤝
• Give multiple duration options to invitees. At the time of meeting booking, the invitee can choose his/her preferred meeting duration. ⏱️
• Give multiple meeting location options to invitees. At the time of appointment booking, the invitee can choose his/her preferred location.🗺️
• Easy Repeat Business with Packages -Sell multi-appointment bundles, combine different types of appointments, and even include group classes in your packages.🎁
• ‍Multiple calendars support - Not only you can connect 6 calendars to your account but also you can take appointments to any of these calendars. This is helpful to manage your work life efficiently.🗓️
• Provision to make each appointment type behave as a standalone calendar for free-busy availability checks instead of checkingthe connected calendar. This avoids the need to have multiple Leadmonk user accounts or multiple calendars. This feature comes in handy to manage shared resources centrally (e.g.: meeting rooms, gaming devices etc).📅
• Invitees can reschedule/cancel appointments before the start of the appointment by default, but this standard behavior can be changed as per your requirements. 🔄
• Leadmonk's "no-show" feature allows hosts to mark whether an invitee attended a previously scheduled event,and if marked as a no-show, they will not receive post-appointment workflownotifications. 🚫
• Limit the number of appointments per day - You can specify per day appointments limit at an appointment type level or at the user account level.
• Leadmonk offers two types of notifications by default: calendar invitation and email confirmation, both of which provide detailed information about the booking, including date,time, location, and any additional notes or instructions. Additionally, the email confirmation includes an ICS file that can be added to the invitee'scalendar. 📩
• Automatic time zone detection, setting lead time and buffer time for appointment booking, automatic SMS/WhatsApp/Email reminders to reduce no-shows, and many more
• Collect payments using Stripe and PayPal.
• You can have a personalized booking page for the team.
• The org owner and admin have access to all team members’ bookings. 👀
• Integrate Google Analytics with Leadmonk to get valuable insights into how your clients engage with your booking page. 📈
• Add UTM parameters to your booking links to track conversions directly within Leadmonk.
• You can pre-populate the booking page form with invitee information using URL parameters. 🌐
• Promote your branding at every touch point using a custom domain, branded email notifications, and branded SMS notifications.

Pricing

• Annual plans -Essentials @ $12/seat/month and Advanced @ $24/seat/month
• No platform fees
• No minimum license requirements

See how Leadmonk compares with Chilipiper.

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2. Calendly

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Calendly needs no introduction. It’s been around for several years, and many businesses use its software. It supports one-on-one, group, round-robin, and collective meeting scheduling algorithms

You can also conduct a poll to determine the best time for a meeting and quickly convert the most popular slot into a confirmed appointment.You can also create a basic routing form or import from HubSpot or Pardot or Marketo form to route incoming leads. Calendly has a basic lead routing feature.

In addition to personal meetings, Calendly enables you to manage team meetings as well. You can create different meeting types, assign specific team members to handle group meetings and rotate incoming meetings among your team members.

Calendly has extensive integration options, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Zapier, but you do need to subscribe to a paid plan to get the full benefits here.

Limited/Basic features and missing features in Calendly are:

• Basic form support. You can not create one-step-at-time (Typeform kind of form) or step form in Calendly.
• Basic lead qualification support
• Basic lead routing support. Not suitable for complex routing rules or for growing or large organizations.
• Basic Lead-to-account-matching is possible - works only for Salesforce customers and one is required to install the SF package and customize it there. This feature is part of the enterprise plan which requires you to buy a minimum of 30-seat license.
• No provision to define multiple durations for a meeting type.
• No support for mobile number-based appointment scheduling.
• No provision to send text notifications on WhatsApp. SMS notifications work only from the professional plan onwards.
• Appointments are booked only to the main calendar even though you can connect 6 calendars.
• No provision to centrally manage sharedresources booking.
• No provision to sell packages or multiple sessions at once (e.g.: 5 sessions of brand-building consulting for $500)
• Not possible to have the booking pages on yourdomain (CNAME)
• Not possible to send email and SMS notifications using your own email domain and phone number (SMTP and Twilio number integration). Having booking pages on your domain or sending branded notifications helps to promote your branding at every customer touch point.
• Only support for minimal booking page theme.

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See how Leadmonk compares with Calendly.

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Pricing

• Standard: $12 per user per month.
• Team: $20 per user per month.
• Enterprise Plan: For larger teams. Salesforce Lead routing is part of this plan. You have to buy a minimum 30-seat plan here.

3. HubSpot Scheduling

HubSpot Meeting Scheduler is a feature of the HubSpot platform that enables businesses to schedule and manage meetings directly from the HubSpot CRM. It provides a convenient and efficient way for sales and customer service teams to connect with their prospects and customers, saving time and increasing productivity.

With HubSpot Meeting Scheduler, you can send a personalized meeting link to prospects and customers, who can then select a time that works best for them based on your availability. The tool integrates with your calendar, so you can easily keep track of your schedule and avoid double bookings. Additionally, you can customize the meeting request with a personalized message, further personalizing the customer experience.

HubSpot recently launched a basic routing feature where upon form submission, you can route the inbound lead to a specific rep. This feature meets the requirement of small companies having less than 5 reps. But its not suitable for large and growing organizations. HubSpot round robin algorithm does not support weighted average scheduling.

One of the advantages of HubSpot Meeting Scheduler is that it is available as a part of the HubSpot CRM platform, which means that all your customer interactions and meeting details are stored in one place, providing a single source of truth for your team.

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Pricing

HubSpot Meeting Scheduler is available as part of the HubSpot CRM,which is free to use. Advanced scheduling features are available with any of the following subscriptions:

• Sales Hub Starter, Professional, Enterprise
• Service Hub Starter, Professional, Enterprise

See how Leadmonk compares with HubSpot Scheduling.

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4. LeanData

LeanData is a Salesforce-native revenue orchestration platform that helps companies automate their go-to-market processes and connect the right data, tools, and people at each step in thebuyer journey.

Key features of LeanData are:

• Automate lead routing and assignment to ensure that leads are quickly and efficiently distributed to the right sales reps or teams, based on predefined criteria such as territory, industry, or product interest.
• Match and deduplicate leads and accounts to create a single, unified view of their customer data in Salesforce. This helps to improve data quality and accuracy and eliminates the need for manual data entry and reconciliation.
• Instantly qualify,match, & route ALL Salesforce objects
• Route records based on campaign membership, territory, time, or account
• Automatically match leads to right accounts
• Instantly update leads with matched account data for immediate context
• Prevent duplicates with industry leading fuzzy matching algorithm
• Meeting Scheduling from Pardot forms
• SDR to AE handoffmeetings in Salesforce

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Drawbacks of LeanData

• As LeanData is built on top of Salesforce, so the routing sometimes get delayed by APEX governor limits.
• LeanData is limited to just Pardot, Hubspot, and Marketo forms. It does not work with custom webforms.
• LeanData does not support flexible round robin routing.
• No SMS/WhatsApp Reminders support.
• Its not possible to book meetings from email campaigns.

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Pricing

Revenue Orchestration

• Standard: $39/user/month
• Advanced: $49/user/month
• Premium: $59/user/month

Scheduling

• BookIt for forms: $25 per connected calendar per month
• HandOff: $25 per connected calendar per month

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5. Drift

Drift is a conversational marketing platform that offers chatbots and live chat for engaging with leads and customers. It offers a suite of tools to enable businesses to have real-time conversations with visitors, qualify leads, and schedule meetings.

It is also an AI-powered buyer engagement platform that automatically listens, understands, and learns from buyers to create the most personalized experiences possible.

Drift's lead routing and scheduling features are particularly powerful for sales teams. Lead routing allows businesses to automatically distribute leads to the right sales reps based on criteria such as the lead's industry, location, and interests. This helps to ensure that leads are contacted by the most qualified reps and that they are more likely to be converted into customers.

Drift's scheduling feature makes it easy for sales reps to book meetings with leads directly from within the platform. This eliminates the need for back-and-forth emails and saves repstime.

Drift offers a chat-based prompt to schedule meetings. Chat is a great way to engage with prospects and help them navigate your website to learn more about your business or product, but it's not the best way to convert sales-ready leads.

If you need chatbot functionality, Drift is a good option. But if you want to convert more bottom-of-the-funnel leads, Chili Piper and Leadmonk are the best choice.

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Pricing

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6. Qualified

Qualified is a the pipeline generation platform for your website. Powered by AI, the Pipeline Cloud helps companies maximize website conversions with live chat, automated chatbots, meeting scheduling, marketing offers, and actionable intent data. Built on the Salesforce Platform, Qualified accelerates website conversion for revenue teams worldwide.

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Features

Qualified offers a wide range of features, including:

• Website chatbots: Qualified's chatbots can be used to engage visitors to your website and qualify them as leads.
• Live chat: Instantly meet with chat, voice, and video, which allows you to have real-time conversations with leads on your website.
• Email marketing: Qualified's email marketing tools can be used to send targeted email campaigns to your leads.
• Lead scoring: Qualified scores your leads based on their engagement with your website and email marketing campaigns.
• Meeting booking: Schedule sales meetings, right on your site.
• Offers - Boost website conversions with Qualified Offers, a core tenet of the Pipeline Cloud
• Signals - Understand account-based buyer intent

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Pros

Qualified is a great tool for marketing teams focused on inbound pipeline because it:

• Lets you start chat conversations that can turn into sales conversations and eventually pipeline.
• Shows you which businesses visit your website and engage in conversations.
• Alerts sales teams when their target accounts visit the site.

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Cons

• It only works for companies on Salesforce as its built on the Salesforce Platform.
• It can be expensive for small businesses as their pricing starts at $3500 per month for their basic package. Some features are only available on higher-priced plans.
• Qualified's scheduling solution is too basic for revenue teams. It can't handle complex distribution or integrate with all the tools you need to manage the full funnel.

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Pricing

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7. SavvyCal

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SavvyCal provides a user-friendly scheduling platform with a calendar-like interface. Your guests can easily view your availability and schedule a meeting that works for both of you by overlaying their calendar with yours.

This scheduling software simplifies the process of setting up meetings with its straightforward design. You can easily sync SavvyCal with your existing Google and Outlook calendars, and integrate it with various other apps, such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Zapier, to automate your scheduling.

SavvyCal offers both single-use and multi-use meeting options.Single-use meetings are ideal for one-time events and are archived after themeeting is scheduled. Multi-use meetings, such as one-on-one meetings, team meetings, or panel meetings, can be scheduled repeatedly. Additionally, you have the option to create multiple meetings under a single scheduling page and share it with guests. You can create meeting polls to share with guests, and convert the most polled time slot into a meeting

This scheduling software puts you in complete control of your meetings. You can choose to connect different calendars for different meetings,offer guests multiple meeting durations to choose from, manually approve booked meetings, and decide whether to show all your availability or only your preferred time slots.

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Pricing

• The Basic Plan: $12/user/month
• The Premium Plan: $20/user/month

8. MixMax

Mixmax is a powerful sales acceleration tool designed as a Chrome extension specifically for Gmail. Its seamless integration with CRM and recruitment software, along with its extensive range of modules such as tasks and rules, amplifies the effectivenessof sales follow-ups. Among its many features, the meeting tool in Mixmax plays a crucial role in advancing leads through the sales pipeline. If your sales team conducts conversations using Gmail, exploring Mixmax can significantly streamline your sales processes and enhance productivity.

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Pricing

• Growth + Salesforce: $69/user/month
• Growth: $49/user/month
• SMB: $29/user/month

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9. Acuity Scheduling [Squarespace Scheduling]

Acuity Scheduling is a cloud-based appointment-scheduling software solution that enables business owners to manage their appointments online. The product caters to the needs of small and midsize businesses as well as individual professionals. Acuity Scheduling is feature-rich scheduling software that offers automatic rescheduling, payment integration, and the ability to book multiple appointments at once. It also allows you to customize your booking forms and create custom booking pages. Plus, it has a calendar sync function to help you manage your schedule easily.

• Offer more than just appointments like gift certificates, packages, memberships, or group classes.
• You can accept online payments via integrations with Stripe, Square, or PayPal.
• Manage multiple locations and employees to show your clients the calendar you want them to see.
• It does not support mobile number-based appointment scheduling.
• Also, it does not have WhatsApp integration to send appointment notifications.

Supported payment systems: PayPal, Square, or Stripe; also works with in-person payments

Supported calendars: Google Calendar, iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Outlook.com; with the option to choose between 2-way and 1-way syncing

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Features missing in Acuity Scheduling

• Not possible to qualify inbound leads.
• Not possible to setup routing rules to route to the right sales rep.
• Does not support HubSpot, Marketo and Pardot forms integrations.
• No provision to send text notifications on WhatsApp.
• Only one calendar you can connect to your account.
• No provision to define multiple durations for an event type.
• Not possible to have the booking pages on your domain (CNAME)
• Not possible to send email and SMS notifications using your own email domain or phone number (SMTP and Twilio number integration). Having booking pages on your domain or sending branded notifications helps to promote your branding at every customer touch point.
  

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Who is it for?

Acuity Scheduling is suitable for service-based businesses such as training and tutoring centers, coaching and consulting, photography and video production companies, fitness studios, salons and spa centers, and health and dental clinics.

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Pricing

• Acuity Scheduling’s plans start at $20 a month. Number of staff/locations: 1.
• The Growing plan costs $34 a month. Number of staff/locations: 6.
• Finally, the Powerhouse plan costs $61 a month. Number of staff/locations: 36.
• You can try these plans for free for a maximum of one week.

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10. SimplyBook.me

SimplyBook.me is an online appointment booking system for small and mid-size businesses.  It simplifies the booking process and enables businesses to market their services. SimplyBook.me provides a centralized platform that automates online booking and client communication. It does not support mobile number-based appointment scheduling. Also, it does not have WhatsApp integration to send meeting notifications.

The setup process is user-friendly, with clear instructions and the ability to customize appointment types and add-on services. The app also offers Facebook and Instagram integrations, a dashboard with reports to monitor your business, and Zapier integrations to connect to other apps.

If you conduct frequent Zoom meetings, SimplyBook.me may not be the ideal scheduling app for you as it offers limited video conferencing options. While Microsoft Teams is the only built-in video conferencing integration for remote appointments, you can use Zapier to create specific links for other platforms such as Zoom and Google Meet.

It does not have any features required for inbound lead qualification and routing to right sales rep in real time.

Supported payment systems: 38 options, including Square, Stripe, PayPal, TapPay, Virtual Card Services, 2Checkout, Alipay, Asiapay, Authorize.net, Bitcoin, and more.

Supported calendars: Google Calendar, Outlook.

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Who is it for?

SimplyBook.me is suitable for service-based businesses such as training and tutoring centers, coaching and consulting, photography and video production companies, fitness studios, salons and spa centers, and health and dental clinics.

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Pricing

• $8.25/month for 100 bookings/15 providers
• $24.9/month for 500 bookings/25 providers
• $49.9/month for 2000 bookings/50 providers

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Conclusion

While Chili Piper has been a popular choice for sales scheduling and appointment booking, its pricing structure, limitations, slow load times, missing features, and support issues have led many businesses to explore alternative solutions. The alternatives mentioned above offer a range of features, pricing options, and integrations, making it easier for you to find the right fit for your business needs. Before making a decision, consider your specific requirements and budget to choose the best Chili Piper alternative that will enhance your sales and scheduling processes.