Is Cardel an alternative to Acuity Scheduling or Heartbeat?

Cardel is a home for your craft: a site of your own with a blog, newsletter, shop, community, and one inbox. It can replace Acuity Scheduling or Heartbeat when you want your work, audience, and sales in one place. The feature list on this page shows where Acuity Scheduling and Heartbeat are marked.

Can I use Cardel with Acuity Scheduling or Heartbeat?

Yes. Cardel pages can link out to other products, so you can keep Acuity Scheduling or Heartbeat for what it does best and bring the rest of your work to Cardel.

How much does Cardel cost compared with Acuity Scheduling and Heartbeat?

You don't pay for Cardel until you publish. Choose Starter, Pro, or Studio when your site goes live. Acuity Scheduling and Heartbeat set their own prices, so check their pricing pages on this page for current plans.

How do I switch from Acuity Scheduling or Heartbeat to Cardel?

Start with Build Your Site, set up your home, and bring your work over at your own pace. You do not have to move everything on day one.

Compare

Acuity SchedulingvsHeartbeat

Acuity Scheduling runs appointment businesses with intake forms, reminders, and payments. Heartbeat is a friendly home for a small paid community with chat, events, and courses.

Compare Pricing Compare Features

How Acuity Scheduling and Heartbeat compare

Acuity Scheduling is built for businesses that live by the appointment. Client self-booking, calendar sync, intake forms, automated reminders, packages and memberships, gift certificates, payments at booking, and multiple staff calendars keep a salon, clinic, or coach running. It is part of Squarespace and works with or without a Squarespace site.

Heartbeat is a friendly place to start a paid community without a big budget. For $49 a month you get channels, threads, chat, voice rooms, DMs, unlimited courses and events, a custom domain, checkout pages, five automation workflows, and Pulse, an AI that actually sets up channels, offers, and pages for you. Grow adds unlimited workflows, DM rules, an affiliate program, and white-label email; Scale adds a branded app. For a founder with a small group who wants courses and calls next to the conversation, Heartbeat covers a lot for the price.

Where they are different

Acuity Scheduling

Acuity is the appointment system.
Acuity keeps a client list with notes.
Acuity sends confirmations.

Heartbeat

Heartbeat's landing page is the door to a private space.
Heartbeat emails members through workflows and a weekly digest.
Heartbeat's events sync to members' calendars.
Heartbeat charges 5% to 1.25% on payments.

Choose Acuity Scheduling when appointments are the business and you need reminders, intake, packages, and staff calendars.

Choose Heartbeat when a small paid community with courses, calls, and member chat is the product.

Compare features

What's on Acuity Scheduling and Heartbeat

A check means that capability is available. Acuity Scheduling and Heartbeat are marked only when the offer is comparable, not the same product.

Site and brand

Workspace site
Acuity Scheduling: Not included
Heartbeat: Included
Custom domain
Acuity Scheduling: Included
Heartbeat: Included
Theme and fonts
Acuity Scheduling: Included
Heartbeat: Included

Audience and email

Audience
Acuity Scheduling: Included
Heartbeat: Included
Marketing emails
Acuity Scheduling: Not included
Heartbeat: Included

Commerce

Shop payments
Acuity Scheduling: Included
Heartbeat: Included
Scheduling and bookingsLink to external scheduling available on Starter.
Acuity Scheduling: Included
Heartbeat: Not included

Team

Admin users
Acuity Scheduling: Included
Heartbeat: Included
Per-admin permissions
Acuity Scheduling: Included
Heartbeat: Included
AI Assistant
Acuity Scheduling: Included
Heartbeat: Included

Feature comparison for Acuity Scheduling and Heartbeat
Feature	Acuity Scheduling	Heartbeat
Site and brand
Workspace site	Not included	Included
Custom domain	Included	Included
Theme and fonts	Included	Included
Audience and email
Audience	Included	Included
Marketing emails	Not included	Included
Commerce
Shop payments	Included	Included
Scheduling and bookingsLink to external scheduling available on Starter.	Included	Not included
Team
Admin users	Included	Included
Per-admin permissions	Included	Included
AI Assistant	Included	Included

* Note: This table does not capture every feature of Acuity Scheduling or Heartbeat, and is not intended as a comprehensive list. We keep this page current, but Acuity Scheduling or Heartbeat may add or remove features that are not shown here.