Rallly

Open-source group scheduling, honestly reviewed. No marketing fluff, just what you get when you self-host it.

TL;DR

• What it is: Open-source (AGPL-3.0) group scheduling poll tool — think Doodle, but the source code lives on your server and participants don’t need to create accounts [1].
• Who it’s for: Small teams, EAs, freelancers, and community organizers who need to coordinate group meetings across multiple people without paying Doodle or fighting Calendly’s 1-on-1 booking flow [4].
• Cost savings: Doodle Pro runs ~$6.95/month per user. Rallly self-hosted runs on a $5–10/month VPS with no per-user fees and unlimited polls [3][4].
• Key strength: Frictionless for participants — no account, no login, just click a link and pick times. The organizer gets a clean result view [1][website].
• Key weakness: It’s a scheduling poll tool, not a full booking platform. No calendar sync, no automated reminders in the free cloud tier, and the AGPL-3.0 license has copyleft implications if you’re embedding it in a commercial product.

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What is Rallly

Rallly is a group scheduling poll tool. You create a poll with a set of proposed dates and times, share the link, participants vote on what works for them, and you close the poll on the winner. That’s the whole product. It does not auto-book calendar slots, it does not handle 1-on-1 scheduling pages, and it does not send reminders automatically. It finds the best time to meet. That’s it.

The project was created by Luke Vella and is built on a modern stack: Next.js, Prisma, tRPC, and TailwindCSS [README]. It has 5,009 GitHub stars and an active community with Crowdin-powered translations covering 10+ languages [website][README]. The hosted version at rallly.co has 146K+ registered users and 300K+ polls created as of the website copy [website].

The problem Rallly solves is specific: coordinating a meeting across 5–15 people who are not in the same calendar system. You’re not trying to let someone book a slot on your calendar. You’re trying to find which Thursday out of three options works for the most people without sending 20 emails. That’s a narrower scope than Calendly or Cal.com, and Rallly is deliberately better at that narrow thing.

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Why people choose it over Doodle, When2Meet, and Calendly

Versus Doodle. Doodle is the category incumbent and the clearest comparison. Both are scheduling poll tools. Rallly’s advantages: it’s open source, self-hostable, and the free tier doesn’t plaster ads on your poll or gate core functionality behind a paid plan. Doodle’s free tier has historically been aggressive about ads and feature limitations. The blackvoid.club reviewer [1] explicitly frames Rallly as “the next Doodle alternative” — less because Doodle is broken and more because Rallly offers the same core experience without the commercial overhead. The SaaSHub community lists Doodle as the top Rallly alternative, implying users genuinely see them as direct substitutes [4].

Versus When2Meet. When2Meet is free and requires no login, which sounds identical to Rallly. The difference is UX generation gap: When2Meet’s grid UI was designed in an era before mobile-first design was a concern [4]. Rallly’s interface works cleanly on mobile, handles timezones explicitly, and produces a visually clear result. When2Meet is fine for a one-off college group project. For a professional context — an EA at MIT scheduling across external attendees — Rallly is the more credible-looking option. The homepage quote from Eric Fletcher, Executive Assistant at MIT, makes exactly this argument [website].

Versus Calendly. This comparison breaks down quickly because they do different things. Calendly is for 1-on-1 booking: “here’s my link, pick any slot that’s open on my calendar.” Rallly is for group convergence: “I proposed three dates, let’s see which one most people can do.” You would use Calendly to let clients book calls with you. You would use Rallly to schedule your team’s quarterly offsite. If you’re evaluating Rallly as a Calendly replacement, you’ve probably misread what you need [4].

Versus Framadate. Framadate is another open-source, self-hostable scheduling poll tool — it’s the closest functional analog to Rallly in the open-source space [4]. The difference is polish and maintenance velocity. Framadate is a French privacy-focused project that works fine but feels utilitarian. Rallly has a more consumer-grade UI and is more actively maintained. For most people self-hosting for the first time, Rallly is the cleaner experience.

The AGPL caveat. Rallly is licensed under AGPL-3.0, not MIT. This matters if you’re a developer building a SaaS product and thinking about embedding Rallly. AGPL requires that if you run Rallly as a networked service that users access (including in your own product), you must publish your modifications under AGPL [README]. For a founder self-hosting for internal use, this is irrelevant. For someone building a commercial scheduling product on top of Rallly, it’s a real constraint.

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Features

Based on the README, official website, and third-party descriptions:

Core scheduling flow:

• Create a poll with proposed date/time options [website]
• Share a link — participants vote without creating accounts [website]
• Visual result view showing participation overlap [1]
• Close the poll and finalize a time [website]
• Polls support multiple-day and multi-slot options

Participant experience:

• No login required to vote [website]
• Mobile-responsive interface [1]
• Timezone handling built in [website]
• Comments on polls for additional coordination

Organizer features:

• Account required only for organizers (to manage polls)
• Poll management dashboard [website]
• Free plan: polls auto-deleted when all dates have passed AND poll not accessed for 30+ days [pricing page]
• Pro plan: polls kept indefinitely [pricing page]

Self-hosting:

• Official Docker image maintained by Luke Vella [1]
• Docker Compose supported [README]
• PostgreSQL required for database [1]
• SMTP required for email notifications [1]
• Detailed self-hosting docs at support.rallly.co/self-hosting [README]
• Configuration options documented (DATABASE_URL, NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL, SECRET_PASSWORD, ALLOWED_EMAILS, SMTP settings) [1]

Content moderation:

• Automated content moderation on the hosted platform [2]
• Polls flagged if content is unrelated to scheduling or violates policy [2]
• Self-hosters control their own moderation policy

What it doesn’t do:

• No automatic calendar slot booking
• No automated reminder emails in free tier
• No calendar integrations (Google Calendar, Outlook sync)
• No video call link generation
• No payment collection or ticketing
• No recurring meeting scheduling

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Pricing: SaaS vs self-hosted math

Rallly Cloud:

• Hobby: $0 forever. Core features, polls auto-deleted when inactive [pricing page].
• Pro: approximately $5/month billed annually. Keeps polls indefinitely, early access to new features, locked-in “early adopter” rate [pricing page].

The free tier is genuinely usable. Most casual users — occasional meeting organizers who don’t need poll history — will never hit a reason to pay. The main practical limitation is the inactive poll deletion, which matters for recurring meeting types where you want to reference past polls.

Managed hosting (Elestio):

• Starting at $14/month — includes automated backups, SSL, monitoring, auto-updates [3].
• This is the “I want self-hosted data ownership but someone else handles DevOps” middle option.

Self-hosted:

• Software: $0 (AGPL-3.0)
• VPS: $5–10/month on Hetzner, Contabo, or DigitalOcean
• SMTP provider: free via Gmail SMTP, Resend free tier, or Mailgun free tier for low volume
• PostgreSQL: bundled in Docker Compose or shared with existing instance

Doodle for comparison:

• Basic: free (with ads, feature limits)
• Pro: ~$6.95/month per user
• Team: custom pricing

When2Meet: free forever, no self-hosting.

Concrete math for a small team:

A 10-person consultancy scheduling client kickoffs, internal syncs, and monthly retrospectives — maybe 5–10 polls per month. Doodle Pro at $6.95/month = ~$83/year. Rallly Cloud Pro = ~$60/year. Self-hosted Rallly on Hetzner CX11 ($4/month) = $48/year, shared with other self-hosted services. If you’re already running a VPS, the marginal cost of adding Rallly is closer to zero.

This isn’t the $1,700/year Zapier savings story. Doodle isn’t that expensive. The case for Rallly self-hosting is less about cost and more about data control — your participant availability data, meeting patterns, and attendee lists not sitting in a commercial vendor’s database [1].

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Deployment reality check

The blackvoid.club reviewer [1] says Rallly is “much easier to set up than Cal.com” — which is relevant context because Cal.com is notoriously complex to self-host. The Docker Compose path is the primary deployment method [README][1].

What you actually need:

• A Linux VPS with 1GB RAM minimum (2GB comfortable)
• Docker and docker-compose
• A PostgreSQL instance (bundled in docker-compose or external)
• SMTP credentials for email notifications
• A domain name + reverse proxy (Caddy or nginx) for HTTPS
• A random 32-character secret key for session encryption [1]

Concrete required environment variables [1]:

DATABASE_URL=postgres://username:password@host:5432/db_name
NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL=https://rallly.example.com
SECRET_PASSWORD=<32-char random string>
SUPPORT_EMAIL=me@example.com
SMTP_HOST, SMTP_PORT, SMTP_USER, SMTP_PWD, SMTP_TLS_ENABLED

One optional but useful variable: ALLOWED_EMAILS — restricts which email addresses can register as organizers. Useful if you want to limit access to your team only [1].

The blackvoid.club reviewer [1] notes that the documentation covers the docker-compose command-line path but they prefer Portainer for managing Docker deployments — and Rallly works fine through Portainer’s stack interface since it’s standard compose.

What can go sideways:

• SMTP setup is required for any email functionality. If you skip it, organizers can’t get poll notifications and participants who request email confirmation won’t get them.
• The NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL must include the protocol and no trailing slash — a common misconfiguration [1].
• No embedded database option — PostgreSQL is a hard dependency. If you’re running it on a minimal VPS without an existing Postgres instance, the provided docker-compose handles it, but it adds RAM pressure.
• Content moderation [2] is active on rallly.co cloud — self-hosters are responsible for their own. If you’re running a public-facing instance open to anyone, you’ll want to either restrict registration or monitor for abuse.

Realistic time estimate: 20–30 minutes for someone comfortable with Docker Compose. 1–2 hours for someone new to self-hosting following the official docs plus the blackvoid.club walkthrough [1]. The reverse proxy and SMTP setup are where most time gets spent.

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Pros and Cons

Pros

• No login for participants. The organizer creates an account; everyone else just clicks the link. This is the single most important UX decision and it’s right [website][1].
• Clean, modern interface. Built on current Next.js/Tailwind stack — doesn’t look like a 2012 PHP app. Works on mobile [1][README].
• Simple Docker deployment. One of the easier self-hosted tools to get running. The blackvoid.club reviewer [1] calls it “up and running in a matter of minutes.”
• Genuinely free tier. The hosted version’s free plan is functional, not crippled [pricing page].
• 10+ languages. Crowdin-powered community translations — useful for non-English teams [README][website].
• Data ownership. Participant availability data, meeting patterns, and attendee names stay on your server [1].
• Active maintenance. Regular releases, responsive GitHub, corporate sponsors including Vercel and DigitalOcean [README].
• Content moderation on hosted version protects you from sharing a platform with spam [2].

Cons

• AGPL-3.0, not MIT. Copyleft applies if you distribute or offer it as a networked service. Fine for internal use; a legal consideration for commercial embedding [README].
• Scheduling polls only. No calendar sync, no automated reminders, no booking pages. If you need any of those, this isn’t your tool [website].
• PostgreSQL required. Can’t run on SQLite. Lightweight deployment requires either bundling Postgres in compose (RAM overhead) or having an existing instance [1].
• SMTP is a hard dependency for email. Without it, the tool works but notifications are silent [1].
• No REST API. Programmatic poll management isn’t available — can’t integrate Rallly into automation workflows [merged profile].
• Poll deletion on free tier. Inactive polls get wiped after 30+ days past the last date option [pricing page]. For teams wanting audit trails or reference, this forces the Pro upgrade.
• Small feature surface. The simplicity that makes Rallly easy to use also means it won’t grow into a full scheduling platform. It’s not trying to, but don’t expect Cal.com features to appear.

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Who should use this / who shouldn’t

Use Rallly if:

• You coordinate group meetings across people who aren’t in the same calendar system — clients, contractors, or people at different companies.
• You want Doodle’s core functionality without ads or per-user pricing.
• You’re self-hosting other services already and adding one more Docker container is trivial.
• Your participants are non-technical and you need them to vote without creating accounts.
• Data sovereignty matters — you don’t want meeting availability patterns in a commercial vendor’s database.

Skip it (use When2Meet) if:

• You need free, no-account, no-server scheduling right now and you don’t care about the UI.

Skip it (use Calendly) if:

• You want to let people book individual slots on your personal calendar. That’s not what Rallly does.

Skip it (use Cal.com) if:

• You need calendar integration, booking pages, round-robin routing, payment collection, or any booking workflow beyond “which date works for most people.”

Skip it (use Framadate) if:

• You need AGPL-free open source with an even lighter stack — though Rallly is likely the better UX.

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Alternatives worth considering

From the SaaSHub community comparisons [4] and the feature set:

• Doodle — the incumbent. Commercial SaaS, ~$6.95/month Pro, no self-hosting. Well-known brand helps if you’re sharing polls with external clients who trust recognized names [4].
• Framadate — French open-source equivalent, self-hostable, privacy-focused. Functional but less polished. Good if you need a non-AGPL open-source alternative [4].
• When2Meet — completely free, no accounts anywhere, grid-based availability. Works for informal scheduling. Not self-hostable, no modern mobile UX [4].
• Xoyondo — free, no registration, supports multiple poll types including surveys. Similar positioning to Rallly on the casual end [4].
• Crab Fit — open source, simple availability polling, minimal stack [4].
• Cal.com — if you’ve outgrown polling and need actual calendar booking infrastructure. Significantly more complex to self-host [1].
• Calendly — if you need personal booking pages for client-facing scheduling. Different use case, not a true alternative [4].

The realistic decision for self-hosters who want a Doodle replacement: Rallly vs Framadate. Rallly wins on UI and maintenance pace. Framadate wins if you want LGPL or a French-hosted cloud option for EU data residency.

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Bottom line

Rallly does one thing: finds the best meeting time for a group by letting everyone vote without creating accounts. It does that thing well, it’s easy to self-host, and the free tier is genuinely usable. The case for self-hosting isn’t primarily cost — Doodle isn’t expensive enough to generate dramatic savings math — it’s data control and SMTP-gated email on your own domain. If you’re already self-hosting anything, adding Rallly costs 20 minutes and a few megabytes of RAM. If you’re not self-hosting anything else, the managed option at rallly.co (free tier) or Elestio ($14/month with full DevOps) is the more honest starting point.

What Rallly is not: a full scheduling platform, a Calendly replacement, or a booking tool. If you need those things, look at Cal.com and accept that it’s more complex. Rallly is a scheduling poll for people who want Doodle without the commercial overhead — and it delivers exactly that.

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Sources

1. Rallly — self-hosted meeting schedule platform — blackvoid.club. https://www.blackvoid.club/rallly-self-hosted-meeting-schedule-platform/
2. Content Moderation - Rallly — support.rallly.co. https://support.rallly.co/guide/content-moderation
3. Managed Rallly as a Service | Elestio — elest.io. https://elest.io/open-source/rallly
4. Rallly Alternatives & Competitors — SaaSHub. https://www.saashub.com/rallly-alternatives

Primary sources:

• GitHub repository and README: https://github.com/lukevella/rallly (5,009 stars, AGPL-3.0 license)
• Official website: https://rallly.co
• Pricing page: https://rallly.co/pricing
• Self-hosting documentation: https://support.rallly.co/self-hosting