Synchro or Doodle for your FMG schedule.
Doodle is handy for polling availability. But a poll is not a schedule. In an FMG, the coordinator still spends hours transposing Doodle responses into Excel and adjusting by hand. Here's the comparison, where it breaks down, and what Synchro solves.
Before you read
This comparison is written by the Synchro team. Our bias is obvious, so we stick to verifiable facts, current as of 2026-08-14.
Spot an inaccuracy about Doodle? Write to [email protected] and we will correct it quickly.
The differences at a glance
| Synchro | Doodle | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Continuous scheduling of a medical team | One-off availability polling |
| What it produces | An assigned, published schedule | An availability list to transpose |
| Recurrence | Master schedule, 52 weeks a year | An isolated poll to recreate each period |
| Constraints and fairness | Plain-language constraints, weighted equity | Checked boxes, no calculation |
| Offices, slots, walk-ins | Assignment included | Not modeled |
| History | Log of decisions and transfers | Responses scattered across emails |
| Price | $10 CAD per user per month (annual) | Free, or Doodle Pro at about $9 a month |
What Doodle does well
- Fast for polling 5 to 15 people on a single occasion (team meeting, one-off on-call, training).
- No account required for respondents, shareable link by email.
- Free tier works for simple polls.
- Familiar interface for many professionals.
What Doodle does not do in an FMG
1. Doodle collects, it does not assign
Doodle tells you who is available when. It does not decide who takes Saturday on-call, who sits in office 4 on Tuesday, or who gets the 8 walk-in patients at 1 p.m. Assignment stays fully manual. You end up back in Excel to build the actual schedule.
2. One poll at a time, no recurring schedule
Every Doodle poll is an isolated event. An FMG running 52 weeks a year with regular slots means recreating a poll every period. There's no concept of a recurring shift, a work block, or a master schedule that evolves week after week.
3. No constraints, no equity
Doodle doesn't know that Dr. X wants no more than 2 on-call shifts per month, that Dr. Y can't work before 9 a.m. on Thursdays, or that Friday evening shifts count double in the equity ledger. You collect checkboxes, nothing more. Fairness stays a debate you handle manually.
4. No offices, no clinic slots, no walk-ins
An FMG has to assign shared offices, publish consultation slots, distribute walk-ins, manage shift transfers. Doodle models none of that. It's a generic tool built for "when can we meet on Tuesday", not for running a clinic.
5. No audit trail, no useful history
Once the poll is closed, the information lives in the coordinator's inbox. Six months later, when a physician disputes an assigned shift, there's no structured history. Who said yes, who said no, when, why, all lost.
The ROI calculation
Take a typical 30-user FMG (physicians + staff + coordinator) using Doodle to poll and Excel to build the schedule.
Current cost (Doodle + Excel + coordinator hours)
- Creating and chasing Doodle polls: ~2 h/week.
- Transposing responses into Excel and assembling the schedule: ~5.5 h/week.
- Total: 7.5 h/week × 4 = 30 h/month at ~$30/h (loaded salary) = $900/month.
- Doodle Pro subscription (if used): ~$9/month.
- + Cost of errors and email back-and-forth, hard to quantify but real.
Cost of Synchro
- Subscription: $10 CAD × 30 users = $300 CAD/month.
- Coordinator time on scheduling: about 1 h/month, or $30 of hourly cost.
- Total: $330/month.
Net gain
Difference: 29 hours and ~$570 recovered per month, or $6,840/year. That's the figure observed in our pilot FMG. Without counting the end of email chasing, equity conflicts, and last-minute schedule rebuilds.
The moment to switch
FMGs usually switch from Doodle to Synchro at these moments:
- Polls pile up, one a week, and no one answers on time.
- The coordinator realizes that Doodle saves 30 minutes on collection but costs 3 hours on transposition.
- A physician disputes a shift and there's no structured trace of who said what.
- The FMG needs to handle shared offices or walk-ins, which Doodle doesn't model at all.
Further reading
Frequently asked questions
Does Synchro replace Doodle?
For team scheduling, yes. Synchro collects availability and constraints, then assigns slots, on-call shifts and offices. For polling a one-off meeting outside the schedule, a simple poll remains useful.
Our physicians already answer Doodle polls. Is the change heavy?
No. Each physician writes their constraints once, in plain language, and the schedule gets built without email reminders. Configuring a team of 30 users takes about 45 minutes, onboarded by our team.
How much does Synchro cost compared to Doodle?
Doodle is free or about $9 a month, but manually transposing the responses costs about 30 hours of management time per month in an average FMG. Synchro costs $10 CAD per user per month billed annually and brings that time down to about one hour. Details are on the Pricing page.
Can we try Synchro without dropping our current tools?
Yes. The first month is free, with no commitment: you test on a real schedule period while your current polls keep running.
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