According to Google, a lot of people are searching for an easy way to generate links that can be put into an email to share an event.
A lot of websites offer simple solutions for this case. Usually a short form, where you define your event and get some hyperlinks in return.
This is nice and convenient; but in many cases, it does not work!
In this article, we want to highlight the problems with this approach and what you can do instead (spoiler: Use our service).
🔎 What you get from those "Calendar Link Generators"
Calendar providers (at least the popular ones) provide some kind of interface (or functionality), where you can trigger the event creation process via a specific URL.
When you add relevant parameters to this URL, fields are prefilled, which makes it very convenient for users to add your event to their calendars.
InteractionDesignFoundation created a nice overview on GitHub, describing all those parameters per calendar provider.
We actually make use of this situation with our Add to Calendar Buttons in the background as well!
💔 The problem with this approach
While this works in a lot of cases, it breaks in many others.
- This starts with the user's device.
Some calendars deliver different pages on mobile and desktop. For Outlook, for example, this also leads to different URLs. When sending such a URL, you cannot be sure where the user will open it - and putting it onto the user's shoulders to pick the right one is very bad UX. - You will also face issues based on the user's operating system and browser.
For example, using Chrome on iOS comes with some pretty bad limitations for dynamically generated ics files. - Calendar services also break from time to time. Some (Yahoo) more than others (Google).
This frustrates users, when the link is simply not working. - Finally, on mobile devices, those static URLs can get easily mixed up by the device, opening links in the browser instead of the installed calendar app.
🩹 The middleware solution
The solution for those issues is to use some smart middleware instead of those static pre-generated URLs!
When working with Add to Calendar PRO and using our email link URLs, this would be the case 😉.
Those URLs then do not point to the calendar directly, but to our system.
There, we check all those cases mentioned above, generate the correct link on the fly, and send the user to the right place.
We also pre-check the availability of the service!
And if something goes wrong, we even tell the user about their options, offering alternative ways to get the event into the respective calendar.
Bottom line: We (the middleware) take care of the pain in this process and significantly improve the probability of getting your event into your users' calendars. Add to Calendar links that actually work, so to say.
💵 The downside
Doing all this work costs money - on our side 😐.
This is why we also need to charge you for it.
🚨 You should be careful about offerings by our competitors, where they limit their service by "Event Adds" or "Adds-to-Calendar". This means that if people click your link like crazy, they can easily kill your budget!
With Add to Calendar PRO, you are saved here as we believe in fair pricing and do not charge or limit per URL or button click - we simply don't.
So, despite charging some money, we are still pretty affordable (compared to our competitors).
In the end, it is up to you, whether you consider this additional service being worth anything. If you are fine with bad UX, the free solution always is the generation of those static Add to Calendar links.
🤩 Give it a try!
You can simply register on our platform and check it out without any risk.
Generally, we are here to help - not to trick you into something! 🤗
