Choosing a Web Calendar

The web calendar market is a very crowded and confusing one. It's really difficult to understand what to purchase. As a web calendar vendor, MH Software, Inc. understands the market and what features people are looking for in a calendar system. Our goal is to help you find the right calendar to meet your needs. We're going to focus on helping you select a web calendar, but before we can get there we should review the types of calendars on the market.

The Basics

Broadly speaking, the kinds of calendar programs are:

PIM

A PIM is a personal information manager application. An example of a PIM would be Outlook without Exchange, or Palm Desktop. PIM's typically include a to-do list function, contact manager, and may include Email capability. PIM's usually do not have a web publishing feature.

Meeting Scheduling/Groupware

Software designed to coordinate large numbers of people. It's usually deployed in a corporate environment. The major use of this software is to allow scheduling meetings between many people. Typically this kind of software can check free/busy schedules and tell you if a proposed meeting time will work for the selected attendees. Examples of this type of software would include Microsoft Exchange, IBM/Lotus Notes, and Novell Groupwise.

Event Publishing Software

This kind of software is designed to publicize events on a web site. Examples of people using this kind of calendar are schools, churches, universities, corporations, etc. In general if you want to put a calendar on your web site, this is what you want. Sometimes this software can be used by small groups to coordinate their activities. If your greater need is to know what people are doing rather than coordinating group interactions such as meetings, this category can be a cheaper alternative to Groupware.

Specialized Calendars

This is a kind of catchall grouping. Things that would fall into this category would include employee scheduling, and appointment scheduling software. Some event publishing software calendars may be suitable to these needs. If event publishing calendars can be used for your application, they will usually be much cheaper than specialized software.

Next: Sorting Out What You Need