Customer Story
Open Startup
Open Source
Oct 11, 2024
TL;DR: Cal.com uses Documenso’s template direct links to facilitate low-friction compliance paperwork, enhancing scalability and user experience.
Cal.com – The Most Public Private Company
Cal.com is an open source company that needs no introduction. Founded in 2021 by Bailey Pumfleet and Peer Richelsen, it quickly evolved from an open source alternative to the widespread but limited scheduling platform Calendly into the internet’s most beloved scheduling solution. Starting with just two founders, Cal.com has grown into a team of 22, facilitating millions of bookings per year for its ever-growing user and customer base.
Their commitment to transparency is evident as they follow the open startup movement, opening up not only their source code but also providing insights into their business operations. Their Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) model, combining a company and an open source project, has inspired a whole cohort of startups joining the space—not least of which is Documenso.
The Need
At this point, Cal.com serves customers of all sizes, from single users to large enterprises. To provide the best product for their customers, they are certified for SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and many other compliance regulations. One challenge that comes with this is the increasing number of waivers that need to be signed when onboarding customers. Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) and Data Processing Agreements (DPAs) are two of the more commonly known examples. To get these signed with minimal effort for both sides, they were looking for a solution to handle these at scale.
We love open source.
— Peer Richelsen, Co-Founder, Cal.com
Being an open source company, they also prefer open source in their vendors—for both the shared philosophy and the higher level of trust. The goal was to integrate signing into the checkout process as seamlessly as possible.
The Solution
Sign a DPA with Cal by clicking a link anytime.
Documenso offers exactly this solution through direct link templates, enabling Cal.com to:
Provide Immediate Access: Customers can access and sign necessary compliance documents through direct links at any time.
Enhance User Experience: Users are immediately forwarded to onboarding after signing.
Ensure Easy Access: The documents are stored within the company’s team account, allowing easy access for anyone who needs them.
Direct Link templates can also easily be embedded, using the Documenso widget. Embedding anywhere, pre-Filling the templates and notfiying the compliance team at certain point of the flow are a few of the many option the team now has in continously enhanceing their onboard and compliance UX.
Read more about our direct link templates here: Direct Link Signing.
The Journey
Initially, Cal.com’s team approached the new solution with skepticism. As Bailey reflected:
We were intrigued but skeptical at first, as we put a lot of thought into compliance and doing things right. Documenso’s documentation and support showcased how their direct link templates could meet our needs while being highly compliant.
This experience highlights Documenso’s trust philosophy. We strive to be transparent in everything we do and let people judge for themselves. It also shows that we neither want nor get trust by default. Doing things right is a conversation worth having, especially in a space as opaque as digital signatures. It goes without saying that the whole team is hyped to have Cal.com on board and yet another open source company joining the open signing movement 🚀
If you have any questions or comments, reach out on Twitter / X (DM open) or Discord.
Thinking about switching to a modern signing platform? Reach out anytime: https://documen.so/sales.
Best from Hamburg,
Timur