The Best Alternative to Clockwise Now That It Has Shut Down: Carly
Carly is an AI-powered scheduling assistant that works over email and SMS. Unlike traditional booking links or calendar tools, Carly reads messy email threads she is cc'd on, understands context, and sends real invites that keep the conversation natural. You can forward Carly an email, send her a text, or send screenshots and images for her to process and add to your calendar. It's built for busy professionals who want a human-like assistant that just works, handling coordination and calendaring so you don't have to. ChatGPT could never be this useful.
Update (July 2026): Clockwise has shut down. Salesforce acquired Clockwise and fully sunset the service on March 27, 2026 — the app, scheduling links, and Smart Holds stopped working and user data was removed. If you’re here because you relied on Clockwise, this page covers where to land: Carly for the external, conversational scheduling Clockwise never did, and a note below on replacing its internal focus-time features. The comparison below reflects what each tool did while both were available.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Carly | Clockwise |
|---|---|---|
| Available in 2026 | ✅ | ❌ (shut down Mar 27, 2026) |
| AI-Powered Scheduling | ✅ | ✅ |
| Human-like Conversational Assistant | ✅ | ❌ |
| Booking Links | ✅ | ❌ |
| Click-to-Book (One-Click Scheduling) | ✅ | ❌ |
| SMS Integration | ✅ | ❌ |
| Natural Language via Email | ✅ | ❌ |
| Handles Incoming Invitations | ✅ | ❌ |
| External Meeting Scheduling | ✅ | ❌ |
| Focus Time Protection | ❌ | ✅ |
| Flexible Meeting Rescheduling | ❌ | ✅ (internal only) |
| Team Analytics | ❌ | ✅ |
| Lunch Holds | ❌ | ✅ |
| Meeting Breaks | ❌ | ✅ |
| Daily/Weekly Briefings | ✅ | ❌ |
| Smart Time Zone Detection | ✅ | ✅ |
| Multiple Calendar Support | ✅ (Google, Outlook) | ✅ |
| Chrome Extension | ✅ | ✅ |
| Pricing | $35/month | Free - $11.50/user/month |
| Setup Time | 2 mins | 10-15 mins |
| Per-User Pricing | No | Yes |
| Real-Time Optimization | ✅ | ❌ (daily at 4 PM) |
Why Carly is the Better Choice
Clockwise was a popular AI calendar tool used by over 40,000 organizations including Atlassian, Asana, and Reddit before Salesforce shut it down in March 2026. It excelled at optimizing internal team calendars - protecting focus time, automatically rescheduling flexible meetings, and providing team analytics. But even at its peak it had a critical limitation: it could not schedule meetings with external contacts. It only worked with internal meetings where all attendees were from the same organization. Carly is built for exactly the job Clockwise never did.
External Scheduling: This is the key differentiator. Carly handles scheduling with anyone - clients, prospects, vendors, candidates, or anyone outside your organization. Clockwise’s flexible meeting feature only works with internal meetings. When a client emails asking to meet, Clockwise cannot help - but Carly handles it automatically.
Conversational Scheduling: Carly responds to scheduling requests via email and SMS like a human assistant. Clockwise has no external communication capabilities - it optimizes your existing calendar but doesn’t interact with other people.
SMS Integration: Clockwise has no SMS features. If someone texts you to schedule a meeting, you’re on your own. Carly manages SMS scheduling naturally.
Real-Time Responsiveness: Clockwise only optimizes calendars once daily at 4:00 PM. Carly responds to scheduling requests in about 1 minute, any time of day. If you need immediate scheduling help, Clockwise’s batch optimization model doesn’t help.
Simpler Pricing for Individuals: Clockwise’s per-user pricing ($6.75-$11.50/user/month) is designed for teams. For individuals or small teams primarily needing external scheduling help, Carly’s $35/month is often more cost-effective.
Replacing Clockwise’s Internal Focus-Time Features
Clockwise’s core job — optimizing internal team calendars, protecting focus blocks, and reshuffling flexible meetings — no longer exists, so if that’s what you relied on you need a replacement. Reclaim is the closest surviving auto-scheduler for personal task and focus-time blocking, and Google Calendar’s own focus-time settings cover some of the basics. There’s no drop-in clone of Clockwise’s team meeting-moving engine, so plan to rebuild those holds rather than migrate them.
Where Carly Fits
Carly doesn’t replace Clockwise’s internal-optimization job — it does the one Clockwise never could. Carly handles external scheduling: coordinating meetings with clients, prospects, and contacts via email and SMS, sending click-to-book links, detecting time zones, and writing the follow-ups. If your frustration is the back-and-forth of scheduling with people outside your organization, that’s where Carly takes the work off your plate. Many former Clockwise users pair Reclaim for personal focus time with Carly for the external coordination Clockwise left to them.
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See what people say
"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.
Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."
