I write this as an early paying customer of zcal, having supported the original lifetime deal that promised Tier‑1 access and Pro Plan functionality for a one‑time fee of $49. What follows is not a rant. It’s a sober professional assessment, written for the AppSumo audience, grounded in recent facts and lived experience.

zcal, at its core, is a clean and visually pleasing scheduling tool. The product positioning on zcal.co still emphasizes simplicity, brand customization, smart scheduling links, integrations with major calendar systems, and a modern alternative to incumbents like Calendly. On paper, that positioning remains sound. The interface is friendly, the booking pages look good, and for basic scheduling needs the platform does what it says it does. If you’re discovering zcal today with no historical context, it may look like a reasonable option in a crowded market.

My issue is not with the idea of zcal. It’s with the execution and, more importantly, with the company’s treatment of its earliest believers. With this new offering, zcal has started pushing a $99 Business Plan add‑on. This add‑on gates features that were implicitly, and in some cases explicitly, positioned as part of the original value proposition for LTD backers. That is not a small pricing tweak. It is a fundamental rewriting of the original deal. When a company asks early adopters to pay again to access what they believed they already bought into, trust erodes fast. In advisory work, I often say that pricing is strategy made visible. In this case, the strategy signals short‑term cash extraction rather than long‑term relationship building.
What makes this harder to justify is the platform’s development velocity. Since January 2025, meaningful innovation has been limited. The core experience today feels largely similar to what I used a year ago, with incremental polish rather than substantive expansion. Meanwhile, competitors have moved faster, shipping deeper integrations, better team workflows, and more flexible routing logic. In my own workflow, this stagnation pushed me to switch to Luncal, not out of excitement but out of necessity. I needed momentum from a tool vendor, not silence punctuated by an invoice.

On AppSumo, context matters. The entire ecosystem is built on trust between founders and early adopters. Lifetime deals are not just transactions; they are early partnerships. Introducing a $99 add‑on that effectively re‑sells promised value sends a clear message to that community, and it’s not a flattering one. From a governance and brand stewardship perspective, this is a textbook example of how to weaken your most vocal advocates.
My professional advice is simple and intentionally blunt. If you are a new user evaluating zcal today, go in with your eyes open, read the fine print carefully, and assume that future functionality may sit behind additional paywalls. If you are an LTD backer from the early days, I would urge caution before putting more money into this platform. Past behavior is often the best predictor of future behavior, and the recent signals are not reassuring.

From where I stand, the $99 Business Plan add‑on is less about delivering new value and more about monetizing goodwill that has already been spent. Caveat emptor.