How to Use LettuceMeet (and When to Switch to Something Better)

LettuceMeet is one of the best free scheduling tools available — cleaner than When2Meet, genuinely good on mobile, and completely free with no accounts required. Here’s exactly how it works, and — importantly — when it’s not the right tool.

How to create a LettuceMeet poll

Step 1: Go to lettucemeet.com. No account needed. The site loads straight into the creation flow.

Step 2: Click “New Meeting” at the top. This opens the event setup form.

Step 3: Name your meeting. Type a clear name — “Weekly run planning” or “Team catch-up”. This is what respondents will see when they open your link.

Step 4: Select the date range. Click individual days or drag across a range on the calendar. You can toggle between “Specific dates” and “Days of the week” — if you’re trying to find a recurring slot rather than a single date, “Days of the week” mode is the one to use. It presents a generic weekly grid rather than tying responses to specific calendar dates.

Step 5: Set the time range. Use “No earlier than” and “No later than” to narrow the grid to the hours you’re realistically considering. A smaller grid is easier to fill in and produces higher response rates.

Step 6: Click “Create”. LettuceMeet generates a shareable URL for your poll. Copy it — this is everything you need.

How to share it and collect responses

Paste the link into wherever your group communicates — WhatsApp, Slack, a group chat, email. Add a clear deadline when you share: “fill in by Thursday” works significantly better than “whenever you get a chance.”

When respondents open the link, they enter their name and drag to paint the times they’re free — green means available. No account required from them. LettuceMeet shows a live heatmap as responses come in, so you can see the overlap building in real time. The “Best Times” section at the top automatically highlights the highest-overlap slots as they emerge.

How to read the results

The colour intensity across the grid shows how many people are free at each slot. Darker green means more availability; lighter means fewer people. Click any slot to see exactly who is and isn’t available at that time.

LettuceMeet’s “Best Times” panel surfaces the top candidates automatically — a genuine improvement over When2Meet, which makes you interpret the raw heatmap yourself. You still need to pick the final winner and communicate it to your group separately, but the shortlist is done for you.

When LettuceMeet is the right tool

LettuceMeet is genuinely one of the best options available for a specific scenario: one-off events with a variable set of attendees. Project kickoffs, group dinners, catch-ups, anything that happens once and then you’re done. For these cases it’s hard to beat — fast, free, no accounts, clean on mobile, and the “Best Times” feature saves you from squinting at a heatmap.

• A one-off team meeting where you need to find the best slot this week
• A group dinner with friends across different schedules
• Any event where the attendees may change from one occurrence to the next
• Situations where some participants aren’t tech-savvy — LettuceMeet is easy enough for anyone

When it’s not the right tool

LettuceMeet shares the same structural limitation as all grid-based schedulers: it has no memory. Every poll is a standalone object. For a group that meets every week, you start from scratch every single cycle:

• Create a new poll
• Generate a new link
• Share it to the group again
• Wait for responses
• Chase the people who haven’t filled it in
• Interpret the results and make a decision
• Communicate the outcome separately

That’s the same seven-step manual loop as When2Meet, every single week. LettuceMeet has no concept of a persistent group, no minimum headcount, and no automatic rollover to the next cycle. The tool is better-designed than its competitors — but it’s solving the same problem for the same use case.

After thirty cycles, the person running it every week gets tired. And the group quietly stops meeting.

What to use instead for recurring groups

If your group meets regularly, the right tool is one that models the group rather than the individual event. Toss-up is built for this.

You set up the group once. Members join with just an email. Each week, everyone taps their free days in about ten seconds — no new link, no new poll, no grid to drag. Toss-up identifies the best overlap, checks whether you’ve hit your minimum headcount, and the organiser confirms with one tap. Everyone gets notified.

The weekly loop that LettuceMeet forces you to run manually happens automatically. The organiser stops being a coordinator and becomes someone who presses one button.