Coronavirus has impacted pretty much every business large and small, and has resulted in a massive surge in online events. Companies that previous provided solely physical services are switching to webinars and online courses, so the demand for tech in this area has spiked.
In the last few months, I've had multiple different clients come to me with requests to help them schedule events online. There's some existing services that allow you to create add to calendar links out there, such as AddEvent, but they are expensive for what they do - essentially just generating a few links in a certain format (for different calendar software).
After integrating a simple version into one of my client's applications, I decided to create Calndr.link. It's a super simple service that allows you to generate calendar links for all the major providers in a couple of clicks. Enter the event details (title, location/meeting link, date, etc) and hit generate and you'll be provided with some HTML to copy/paste directly into your newsletter, website, email signature, etc. You can also copy/paste the direct links as well, if you prefer.
The Tech
I decided to have some fun when building this, using Interia.js (totally overkill for moment, but fun!). On the back end, it's running Laravel 7.
It's deployed on Google Cloud using Cloud Run, so it's running completely serverless. I love the flexibility and ease of use, just whip up a simple docker container, push it to the image registry and hit deploy!
Since you're only charged for requests that actually hit the server, it's extremely cheap. It's basically Lambda, but you can run anything (since it runs custom docker containers).
I'm planning on writing a guide on how to deploy Laravel on GCR serverless, so keep an eye out for that!
Feel free to leave a comment if you've got any questions or suggestions for Calndr.link!
Top comments (10)
Looking forward to your article on deploying Laravel based app on Cloud Run. I have used AWS however, running Laravel on AWS serverless is something which I have not been able to do. And, I fell your article can help.
Really, you are a life savior! All those services are very expensive for small businesses like me that only run small events occasionally, but your solution is really helpful! Thanks!
(I'm joining Dev just to leave this comment haha)
This truly is a life savior! It's exactly what our non-profit was looking for - thank you!!
Just one glitch that I found. When opening the Google Calendar link, the event will always shows the time zone as "(GMT+00:00) Coordinated Universal Time" regardless of what time zone was used to generate the event, however the start/end times are adjusted...so it ends up in your calendar with the right times...although if you open the event you will still see the wrong time zone and adjusted hours, which could cause some confusion. I'm not sure if this is something you can fix with how you pass in the time zone or not. It works perfectly for Apple, Outlook, and Yahoo! however.
Thanks again!
Looking great and super easy to use, however can't figure out how to change the time of the meeting. Any help welcome!
Every event that you create has an edit link above the event title. Use that to make all kinds of changes to the event.
Goodness. THANK YOU. I was looking at spending $1188/year with AddEvent and as a solo entrepreneur that was really going to hurt. Definitely buying you (many) coffees via your link on the site.
Ahhh... would there be an option to allow it to be a reoccurring event that happens at the same time every week? I'll keep this filed for one-off events for now but I need something that will allow students to add a reoccurring class time to their calendars. Thank you!
Is there an option to allow it to be a reoccurring event that happens at the same time every week? Thank you!
Perfect tool and API.
Thanks!
Thanks a lot for your dev! Is there any chance to add Office 365 Calendar option?