Zencal
Publish booking pages and collect optional payments through a simple workflow
The core loop is buildable, but a dependable replacement becomes a real weekend or multi-day project. For Zencal, publish booking pages and collect optional payments through a simple workflow. The hard boundary is calendar connections, payments, reminders, team access, and hosted reliability, plus calendar integrations and reliability.
Build verification: not recorded. How we judge buildability
What you give up
- calendar connections, payments, reminders, team access, and hosted reliability
- multiple calendar providers
- team routing and round-robin
- payments
- timezone edge-case maturity
Why people still pay
People still pay for Zencal because people pay because one double booking or missed invite can cost more than years of subscription fees. The recurring cost buys OAuth refresh, webhooks, timezone databases, race conditions, reminders, deliverability, privacy, and uptime, not just the visible interface.
Your build guide
The stack, security requirements, and agent rules for a focused replacement.
Before you start
- Runtime and tools: TypeScript, React, Node and PostgreSQL with a single authorized calendar adapter.
- Before starting: One calendar account with documented OAuth scopes, HTTPS callbacks, the host timezone and an always-on worker for reminders.
Use these project rules and optional skill references alongside the prompt. Review each skill before adding it to your agent; the AGENTS.md export includes the same guidance.
Project rule — domain: Store EventType, SlotHold, Booking, PaymentEvent and CalendarReceipt; define cancellation/refund policy and handle late payment without silently confirming an expired slot.
Project rule — scope and recovery: Start with free bookings before adding a hosted payment flow. Use verified payment events and calendar reconciliation; reminders and redirects cannot prove the booking succeeded.
Project rule — acceptance: A checkout completes after its slot hold expires and another guest reserves the time; do not double-book, show the conflict and route payment to an explicit refund/reschedule decision.
Project rule — delivery: document real setup commands and permissions; do not claim a build, accuracy level, performance result or security certification that has not been demonstrated.
Recommended skill: supabase-postgres-best-practices — review this PostgreSQL domain schema, uniqueness constraints, transaction boundaries and access-scoped queries; Supabase hosting is not required. Follow the maintainer's installation instructions and match its requirements to the chosen runtime.
Recommended skill: web-design-guidelines — review keyboard access, focus, validation, error recovery and the readable work/review interface or HTML report. Follow the maintainer's installation instructions and match its requirements to the chosen runtime.
Recommended skill: stripe-best-practices — design the optional hosted checkout, verified webhook and entitlement/refund state transitions using the current Stripe integration guidance. Follow the maintainer's installation instructions and match its requirements to the chosen runtime.
Implementation plan
Phase 1
Pin the working slice and create its example input: Publish one host's booking page with event lengths and optional payment, then confirm only when capacity/calendar/payment conditions are satisfied. Confirm setup: One calendar account with documented OAuth scopes, HTTPS callbacks, the host timezone and an always-on worker for reminders.
Phase 2
Implement persistence and write-time invariants before decorating the UI: Store EventType, SlotHold, Booking, PaymentEvent and CalendarReceipt; define cancellation/refund policy and handle late payment without silently confirming an expired slot.
Phase 3
Connect the working view to real saved state. Store UTC instants plus the host IANA timezone and local availability rules. Recheck external busy time before reserving; serialize overlapping local reservations, and reconcile external creation failures without silently confirming.
Phase 4
Expose the app-specific limits and recovery path in context: Start with free bookings before adding a hosted payment flow. Use verified payment events and calendar reconciliation; reminders and redirects cannot prove the booking succeeded.
Phase 5
Walk through this concrete acceptance case and preserve its exported evidence: A checkout completes after its slot hold expires and another guest reserves the time; do not double-book, show the conflict and route payment to an explicit refund/reschedule decision. Finish the README and backup/restore instructions; report unfinished capabilities explicitly.
Build the following focused alternative to Zencal. This is a deliberately limited personal or small-team substitute, not parity with the paid service. WORKING SLICE Publish one host's booking page with event lengths and optional payment, then confirm only when capacity/calendar/payment conditions are satisfied. SETUP AND ARCHITECTURE Use TypeScript, React, Node and PostgreSQL with a single authorized calendar adapter. Prerequisites: One calendar account with documented OAuth scopes, HTTPS callbacks, the host timezone and an always-on worker for reminders. Before integrating anything, record actual versions and permissions, plus model files or provider limits only where used, in the README; make unavailable dependencies visible rather than simulating success. DOMAIN MODEL AND INVARIANTS Store EventType, SlotHold, Booking, PaymentEvent and CalendarReceipt; define cancellation/refund policy and handle late payment without silently confirming an expired slot. IMPLEMENTATION CONTRACT Store UTC instants plus the host IANA timezone and local availability rules. Recheck external busy time before reserving; serialize overlapping local reservations, and reconcile external creation failures without silently confirming. Provide an input/setup view, the main work view, and a review/export view appropriate to this workflow. Preserve the last saved state if a job or save fails. Include empty, loading, permission-denied, partial and retryable-error states. Log identifiers and error categories without secret values or unnecessary private content. APP-SPECIFIC BOUNDARY AND RECOVERY Start with free bookings before adding a hosted payment flow. Use verified payment events and calendar reconciliation; reminders and redirects cannot prove the booking succeeded. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIO A checkout completes after its slot hold expires and another guest reserves the time; do not double-book, show the conflict and route payment to an explicit refund/reschedule decision. Also reopen the app after an interrupted operation, confirm the saved record/export remains inspectable, and document the recovery action. These are implementation acceptance requirements, not a claim that this guide has been tested. DELIVERY Deliver a runnable repository with migrations or project-format versioning, a non-sensitive example, environment/permission setup, the exact manual acceptance steps, and a backup/export-and-restore walkthrough. Implement the working slice before optional integrations; list any deferred paid-product capabilities honestly. Do not add capabilities outside the working slice just to resemble the original product. PROJECT RULES FOR AGENTS.md Keep the domain invariants above executable at the write boundary. Propose scope changes before adding providers or permissions. Never fabricate source evidence, publish results, identity matches or successful delivery. Preserve user originals and require an explicit confirmation for destructive changes or external publication.
$ open in your agent (prompt prefilled, you press enter), copy the prompt or copy or download AGENTS.md · generated from this app's build plan
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Alternatives to building your own
all 4 free alternatives to Zencal →· no votes, no pay-to-list · just what's real
Zencal pricing
| plan | monthly | annual (per mo) | what you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| light | $10/user | $8.33/user | Maximum 1 user; unlimited meetings, topics, and calendars.Annual plan gives 2 months free; Clients module is +$10/month. |
| pro | $28/user | $23.33/user | Unlimited meetings, topics, and calendars; 1 user included.Annual plan gives 2 months free. |
| team | $349 | $290.83 | Up to 20 users; unlimited meetings, topics, and calendars.Annual plan gives 2 months free. |
| enterprise | — | — | 20+ users; custom limits and onboarding.Custom quote. |
free tierno free tier
billingmonthly + annual (2 months free); 14-day trial; Enterprise custom
hidden costsOptional modules are separately priced: Events +$10/month, Bundles +$10, Analytics +$10, Clients +$10, Client Portal +$28, Conversions +$8; SMS costs $0.08 each outside Enterprise; displayed prices are gross.
pricing sources checked 2026-08-14 · pricing source ↗
Questions about Zencal
Can you build your own Zencal with AI?
Partly. The core loop is buildable, but a dependable replacement becomes a real weekend or multi-day project. For Zencal, publish booking pages and collect optional payments through a simple workflow. The hard boundary is calendar connections, payments, reminders, team access, and hosted reliability, plus calendar integrations and reliability.
What does the Zencal build prompt cover?
The prompt starts with this scope: Publish one host's booking page with event lengths and optional payment, then confirm only when capacity/calendar/payment conditions are satisfied. Full-product capabilities excluded from the comparison include: calendar connections, payments, reminders, team access, and hosted reliability; multiple calendar providers; team routing and round-robin. Follow the implementation plan and its prerequisites before expanding the build.
How do I use the prompt, AGENTS.md and agent skills?
Start with the Zencal prerequisites and stack, then copy the prompt into your coding agent. Save the project rules as AGENTS.md in the project root. Linked skills are optional packages or source instructions for specific tasks; review their current contents and install only those matching the chosen stack. A skill does not supply API credentials or verify the finished app.
How long will this Zencal project take?
The catalogue estimate is multi-day for the limited scope. Setup, integration approvals, debugging, deployment and ongoing maintenance can add time. This is an estimate, not a delivery guarantee.
What would I give up by replacing Zencal?
calendar connections, payments, reminders, team access, and hosted reliability; multiple calendar providers; team routing and round-robin; payments; timezone edge-case maturity. People still pay for Zencal because people pay because one double booking or missed invite can cost more than years of subscription fees. The recurring cost buys OAuth refresh, webhooks, timezone databases, race conditions, reminders, deliverability, privacy, and uptime, not just the visible interface.
What price is this guide comparing against?
The recorded Pro plan is $28/mo per seat (monthly per user), checked 2026-08-14. Check the linked pricing source before buying. Building your own also has hosting, API and maintenance costs; the recorded amount is not a guaranteed saving.
What can I use instead of building Zencal?
Cal.com Free: Unlimited solo event types, calendars and bookings, with payments and notifications; team routing costs money. TidyCal Free: Unlimited one-person booking types and paid bookings on one calendar; group meetings and fancy emails cost extra. YouCanBookMe Free: One booking page, but it keeps forms, payments, confirmations, polls and the calendar-overlay trick. Compare all listed options at https://howtovibecodeit.dev/zencal/alternatives. Check each option's license, hosting needs and feature limits.