Is Rise Calendar worth it in 2024?

Top Features, Pricing & User Reviews

Rise Calendar is trying to do a lot of things. It’s not just a calendar app; it’s also a tool for planning tasks and projects all in one place, acting like a hub for productivity.

It also aims to improve team collaboration, helping people work better together on key areas of their work—whether it’s managing meetings, tasks, or important deadlines. When we tested it, we were impressed with its build quality and various features.

However, we also felt that it was trying to do quite a lot in terms of functionality, though it handled it well. Let’s take a look at our thoughts on Rise Calendar and whether it should still be called Rise Calendar in our final verdict.

What is Rise Calendar?

Rise Calendar is a calendar app that allows individuals and teams to manage their schedules. It will enable users to access projects and tasks and schedule meetings.

Rise is available on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and webOS. It also works with Google and Outlook Calendar.

Who is Rise Calendar best suited for?

Rise Calendar combines several unique combo features.

It’s a solid choice for a free calendar app. It’s available on various devices and includes integrations with Google Calendar and Outlook, plus scheduling links, which users often appreciate.

We typically recommend it for individuals seeking a reliable calendar tool. However, its main focus is on helping teams manage tasks and projects in one place. It’s especially suited for smaller teams, likely under 25 members, who need a lightweight platform to organize their work. It also offers some helpful focus management features, which can prevent distractions. Overall, we see smaller teams benefiting from these abilities.

Who would use it?

• Busy professionals who want a free calendar app with task management
• Small teams looking for a calendar-focused way to organize

How does Rise work?

Rise Calendar wants to be your base for managing your time.

They want to help you better manage your focus with a few features that focus on this. The first is something called FocusGuard. This helps people in the background block out time to focus. Instead of having your calendar experience bombarded by other people, it will block out suitable deep work time for you to get into the weeds.

This is partly done by the introduction of flexible meetings that are movable and help to avoid double bookings. These meetings can be moved to best suit your work schedule and the other person's using Rise. Rise has scheduling links that allow for planning with team members and external parties using a Calendly-like feature.

Rise Calendar is designed for individuals and teams. You can add up to 5 team members to a free Rise account, but after that, you'll be pushed into the team pricing.

Rise Calendar Main Features Reviewed

Here are the most powerful features in Rise Calendar, ranked:

Calendar Management (A+)

Managing your calendar in Rise Calendar is a smooth and efficient experience.

During our testing, we found it fast and easy to use. You can quickly create events by dragging and dropping, and it integrates seamlessly with popular video tools like Google Meet and Zoom. A notable feature is the ability to add custom links, unlike Zoom Calendar, which restricts you to Zoom links. Adding participants is simple, and you can even share your working location, such as whether you're at home or in the office, which helps others know where you are.

There's also a dedicated out-of-office option, making it easy to indicate when you're unavailable. The "Reschedule" feature is particularly useful for postponing meetings, offering recommended times for the event to be moved to, which is a big plus for many users.

The overall build quality of the calendar is excellent. You can add multiple calendars, including Outlook, which is often underrated. It offers various views like day, week, and month, though we felt more options could be included.

Scheduling meetings with others is also simple, allowing you to recommend specific times or connect with team members in real-time.

One standout feature is "My Focus," which gives you an overview of your day and lets you plan tasks in one place. It's clear that calendar management was a priority in the app’s design, as they describe themselves as "calendar-first project management." There are also many hidden features, like Focus Guard and Working Hours, which help protect your time more effectively. These are worth exploring further as we dive deeper into the review.

Task Management (B-)

When it comes to task management in Rise Calendar, while it’s not on the same level as apps like Todoist, it’s not trying to be. It does offer a good range of views, including list, board, and timeline views, which many other apps don’t have.

This makes it easier to plot tasks on a calendar and see them in a more visual way. There are also options for grouping, ordering, and customizing the display, which helps in filtering and organizing tasks to fit your needs.

Adding tasks is simple, and the task view allows you to manage subtasks, track activity, and add details like priority levels, project labels, and more. The task management is basic in some areas, but it works well, especially when managing projects. One helpful feature is the ability to drag tasks into the calendar to time block, using the "My Focus" feature. This feature, which integrates both calendar and task management, can be a game changer for organizing work. You can also add files to tasks, which is another useful feature.

Project Management (B-)

Using the project management feature in Rise Calendar was a good experience, though not particularly standout. It's similar to the task management feature, where you can add tasks and organize them into folders.

For team collaboration, it's helpful because you can view tasks in different formats, like broad view, list view, and timeline view.

Assigning tasks to others worked smoothly, and the ability to organize tasks by priority levels is useful for teams that need a clear visual of what’s most important, with markers like "urgent."

The activity bar is handy for managing comments, and the unsubscribe feature prevents team members from getting overwhelmed with unnecessary details. One feature we found especially useful was the "mark as blocked by" or "blocked to" option, which helps you see how tasks affect each other. This trickle-down effect is clear in timeline view, helping you understand what might be hindering your productivity.

The updates section is also a nice addition, giving a dedicated space to track all the ongoing project updates. Overall, the project and task management features are quite similar, and while they do the job, they aren't exceptional. However, we expect these features to improve over time, especially since Rise Calendar's focus started with calendar management.

Pros:

• Comes with task & project management
• Designed very well on all devices available on
• Comes as a cross-platform experience
• Well designed "My Focus" mode for focus

Cons:

• It is an expensive subscription if you upgrade

How much is Rise Calendar per month?

Here's how to get started with Rise Calendar:

Is Rise Calendar free?

Rise Calendar is free to use for unlimited events but limited tasks.

Should you get Rise Calendar or not?

Rise Calendar is likely best suited for individuals looking to manage their personal productivity, though it also extends into team collaboration.

It’s a well-built app, but it feels like it has almost too many features packed in. We think it works best for smaller teams since the project and task management features don’t seem scalable beyond 25 people. However, if you consider it a tool for smaller teams, its strengths become clearer. The calendar-first design makes it powerful for organizing meetings and tasks, allowing everyone on the team to see each other’s schedules and plan effectively.

This focus on the calendar makes Rise Calendar an effective solution for teams looking to improve time management and collaboration. Though it started as a simple calendar app, it’s evolving into a project management tool. While it’s doing a good job of combining these elements, it still needs time to fully establish itself in the productivity space.

Given the app’s evolution, the name “Rise Calendar” might feel outdated. A name like “Rise Planner” could be more fitting since the app is now geared toward busy professionals who need both a strong calendar experience and project management features. This shift makes it feel more like a planner than just a calendar tool.