Disclaimer: I'm a paid product evaluator for AppSumo and received this tool for free to provide a detailed review. My opinions are entirely my own, and my compensation is not tied to the rating or taco score I give.

Most scheduling tools are really good at answering one question: when are we meeting?

Yoya tries to answer two others before the call even starts: who is this person, and why do they want to meet me?

Instead of sending someone to a normal booking form, the guest has a conversation with Yoya by text or voice. They can explain what they need, answer questions, choose an available time and confirm the booking.

You can also make specific questions mandatory before they can book. For me, this is one of Yoya's best features. It means the booking process can help vet the people coming into your pipeline instead of giving anyone immediate access to your calendar. If someone isn't a fit, or isn't willing to share the information you need, the meeting doesn't get scheduled and you save yourself the time.

Yoya then turns that conversation into a brief, so when someone does make it onto your calendar, you already know who they are, what they want and what they want to discuss.

I tested the full booking process during my original evaluation. Available slots showed correctly, conflicting times were blocked, the Google Meet link was created, and the booking appeared in the dashboard with the guest brief attached.

I've since set up Yoya for myself as well. I connected my calendar, configured my meeting type, tested the MCP connection and embedded the booking experience directly on my own website. You can see how I'm using it at abechallah.com/connect/

The MCP side gives Yoya another capability that normal scheduling tools usually don't have. Someone can give your booking page to an MCP-compatible AI assistant and have the assistant check your availability and book the meeting for them. As the host, you can also connect your own assistant and manage things such as availability, meeting types and bookings through Yoya's authenticated MCP connection.

For my own use, the combination of qualification and the guest brief is the bigger benefit. If I'm taking a consulting, sales or introductory call, I'd rather know beforehand what the person wants, what they are working on and what they expect from the conversation. Otherwise the first part of the meeting often gets spent gathering information that could have been collected before they ever reached my calendar.

There are some useful additions around that. On Tier 2 and above, Yoya can add a LinkedIn profile summary to the brief when the guest shares their profile, and booking conversation history is kept without the 30-day limit on the entry tier.

I also tested embedding Yoya on my own site and removing the branding. The branding setting available on Tiers 2 and 3 does remove the main Yoya branding, but the greeting on the booking experience still mentions Yoya as the assistant name and updating the greeting message requires an upgrade.

When it comes to calendar support. Yoya currently connects to Google Calendar and can create Google Meet or Zoom meetings. Outlook and Microsoft 365 support still haven't shipped, so it's worth knowing that if your scheduling depends on Microsoft's calendar ecosystem.

The voice option is also metered. The current AppSumo tiers include 60, 180 or 400 voice minutes per month, while normal text booking doesn't consume those voice minutes.

On my wishlist is being able to change the colours of the booking page to match my branding.

What keeps Yoya on my own site is that it gives me more control over who gets onto my calendar in the first place. Someone can explain why they want to meet, answer the questions I need answered, and only then book a time. If they do book, I go into the conversation already knowing what I need to talk about and have my mental notes ready. That's much more valuable to me than another scheduling page that simply finds an empty slot.