Why scheduling across time zones is harder than it looks

A six-hour gap between New York and Berlin sounds workable until you remember New York starts at 14:00 Berlin time. Add Bangalore and suddenly you have ninety minutes of overlap per day, half of which is lunch somewhere. Add a 60-minute meeting requirement and a 30-minute buffer and you're left with a window that doesn't always exist.

The default response is to email a long list of options, wait for replies, drop one, and iterate. With more than three participants the matrix gets too big to hold in your head. A planner that computes valid windows from the constraints is faster, and less prone to scheduling a kickoff at 22:00 for half the team.

How meetergo's planner works

1. 1. Add each participant

   Pick a city from the timezone list and set their working hours (we default to 09:00–18:00). The tool stores nothing — everything happens in your browser.

2. 2. Pick a duration and range

   Meetings of 15 minutes to 2 hours, search ranges of 3, 7, or 14 days. Weekends off by default. The planner recomputes the moment you change anything.

3. 3. See viable windows in your time zone

   Each result shows the meeting time in your local time zone with each participant's local time underneath. The best window is highlighted. One click hands the slot off to meetergo to book.

Who this is for

Distributed sales teams running prospect calls across regions. Recruiters scheduling candidate interviews across continents. Consultants coordinating with international clients. Investors meeting founders in different markets. Any team where 'when works for everyone' is a recurring email thread.

Planner vs Meeting Poll: which to use

Use the planner when you know everyone's working hours and want the tool to compute the windows that fit. Use the meeting poll when you already have a few candidate times and want the group to vote. The two are sister tools: planner computes from constraints, poll picks from proposals. We use both on our own team.