How We Replaced Calendly with HubSpot and Automated Our Entire Meeting Confirmation Flow
We’ve always run a lean team, which means our systems need to be tight. Every tool we use has to do double duty—save us time and create better client experiences. For years, we were using both HubSpot and Calendly—a redundant setup that made little sense financially but was necessary because of one thing: confirmation tracking.
Calendly gave us the ability to know who had booked a call and confirmed it. That second piece—confirmation—was critical for our coaching team. It allowed us to prepare accordingly and weed out the no-shows from the truly interested clients. So for a while, we paid for both Calendly and HubSpot.
Eventually, we decided to build a better system inside HubSpot, using tools we already had access to: SalesMsg (our SMS platform), Zapier, and some simple custom contact properties. And now, we’ve completely replaced Calendly—and have a better setup for it. Here's how we did it.
Step 1: Use SalesMsg to Capture a Text Confirmation
We started with a basic workflow inside SalesMsg. When someone books a meeting with us (whether that’s a remote eval or a phone consult), they receive a text message 24–48 hours before the meeting, prompting them to reply with the phrase:
“I confirm”
We built a SalesMsg workflow to scan incoming messages for that phrase. If a client replies with anything containing “I confirm”, we trigger an automated tag to be added to that contact—“Confirmed”.
Simple. One text, one trigger. But now we needed a way to push that confirmation into HubSpot where the rest of our automation lives.
Step 2: Build a Zap to Push Confirmations into HubSpot
In Zapier, we created a Zap that begins with this trigger:
App: SalesMsg Trigger: Tag added to contact Tag: Confirmed
Once that happens, we move through the next steps:
This lets our coaches log into HubSpot and quickly filter calls by who’s confirmed and who hasn’t. They’re walking into their day knowing exactly which calls are legit.
Step 3: How We Created Custom Contact Properties in HubSpot
Inside HubSpot, creating a custom property is easy:
This gives us the flexibility to use the field in workflows, filters, and logic branches in HubSpot.
Step 4: Automate Follow-Ups Based on Confirmation Status
Now that we’ve pushed the confirmation into HubSpot, we can build conditional workflows based on it.
For example:
This simple “if/then” branch reduces redundant texts and keeps our SMS clean and purposeful. It's a great example of what HubSpot does well—conditional logic that’s easy to configure and highly effective.
Step 5: Sync with Monday.com for Visual Pipeline Tracking
We use Monday.com for athlete programming, and we also track leads there. We created an additional Zap for contacts who have their Meeting 2.0 property updated to “Meeting Confirmed.”
That Zap:
This is huge for organizing athlete data. It lets us tie together the marketing/sales journey (HubSpot) with the coaching/programming workflow (Monday.com).
Why This System Works
We now run a leaner, more informed remote onboarding flow—one that works without extra software costs and improves the experience for both coaches and athletes.
Final Thoughts
This is one of the best examples of how small business operations can scale with clarity. When you automate the right things—without losing the human touch—you free up your team to do what they do best: coach and connect.
This setup didn’t come together overnight. It was dozens of hours of trial, error, testing, and building. But it was worth it. And now, our team walks into each day with confidence—because the system does the busy work, and our people do the impactful work.