Rallly is an open source meeting scheduling tool you can self-host — a Doodle alternative that runs group availability polls, so a team can settle on a meeting time everyone can make without the endless email thread.

What is Rallly?

Rallly is an open source scheduling tool that runs group meeting polls. You propose a handful of possible dates and times, share one link, and each participant votes yes / if-need-be / no on each option — then you finalize the slot with the most agreement and everyone gets a confirmation. No one needs an account to vote.

What is Rallly best for?

Rallly is best when you already have a shortlist of candidate times and just need a group to converge on one — team meetings, club sessions, family gatherings, interviews. It shines for organizers who want zero-friction voting: invitees click a link and respond, with no signup wall in the way.

What can Rallly do?

Create date-and-time polls with multiple options and collect votes on each
Let participants respond without an account — they just open the link
Show a clear grid of who voted yes, no, or “if need be” for every option
Send email invitations, response notifications, and final confirmations with an ICS calendar attachment
Support comments and discussion directly on a poll
Run in 10+ community-translated languages
Self-host the whole stack with Docker, or use the hosted rallly.co

Where does Rallly fall short?

It’s poll-based, not an availability grid. You vote on a fixed list of proposed slots, Doodle-style. If you want people to paint their whole week’s free time and see overlap on a heat map, that’s the When2meet model — Rallly doesn’t do it.
It isn’t a booking page. Rallly finds a time for one shared meeting; it won’t publish your calendar so clients pick and book open slots the way an appointment scheduler does. That’s a different tool.
Self-hosting hard-depends on email. Login uses magic links, and invitations and confirmations all go out by email, so a working SMTP server (Resend, Mailgun, SES, etc.) is mandatory — without it, users can’t sign in and notifications never arrive.

Is Rallly free?

Yes — Rallly is free and open source under AGPLv3, so self-hosting costs only your own server. The hosted rallly.co has a free Hobby tier (core features, but polls are auto-deleted about 30 days after they go inactive) and a Pro plan at roughly $56/year that keeps polls indefinitely, removes attribution, and unlocks early features. Self-hosting removes those limits entirely.

What does Rallly replace?

Rallly is a self-hosted stand-in for Doodle and When2meet. It covers the same “find a group meeting time” job, but without ads, without paywalled polls, and with your invitees’ data on infrastructure you control.

FAQ

Is Rallly open source? Yes. Rallly is licensed under the GNU AGPLv3, and the full source is on GitHub. You’re free to self-host, inspect, and modify it.

Can I self-host Rallly for free? Yes. The software is free; you only pay for the server it runs on. It ships with a Docker Compose setup that bundles the app, a PostgreSQL database, object storage, and TLS on a single machine — you just need to plug in an SMTP server for email.

Is Rallly a good Doodle alternative? For straightforward date polls, yes — it does the core Doodle job without ads or locked features, and you can host it yourself. If you specifically want free-form availability grids with overlap heat maps, a When2meet-style tool fits that better.

What do I need to run Rallly? A server with Docker (around 2 GB RAM), a PostgreSQL database, and an SMTP email service for magic-link logins and notifications. A domain and HTTPS complete a production setup.