Best Skylight Calendar Alternatives in 2025: Hardware-Free Options for Families

Skylight Calendar has become the go-to recommendation for families who want a dedicated wall display for their schedule. The idea is compelling: a touchscreen that shows your family calendar, syncs with everyone's schedules, and even extracts events from forwarded emails.

But then you see the price. The Skylight Calendar costs $160-$600 for the hardware, plus $79/year for the Plus subscription that unlocks the best features (including the email-to-calendar "Magic Import" that makes it actually useful).

That's potentially $680+ in the first year for a single-purpose device.

We'll be upfront: we make Sense, one of the alternatives in this comparison. But we've tried to be genuinely helpful here. Some families really do want a wall display. Others just want the email automation without buying dedicated hardware. We'll cover both.

What Makes Skylight Appealing

Before looking at alternatives, it's worth understanding what Skylight does well:

• Always visible: A wall-mounted display means the schedule is always in view - no opening apps
• Family-focused design: Color-coded family members, chore assignments, meal planning
• Magic Import: Forward emails, PDFs, or photos and it extracts calendar events automatically
• Touch interface: Kids can check the schedule and mark chores complete

The Magic Import feature is genuinely useful. Forward a soccer schedule PDF and it creates all the events. That's the feature most families are actually paying for.

Quick Comparison

Option	Upfront Cost	Ongoing Cost	Email-to-Calendar
Skylight Calendar	$160-$600	$79/year	Yes (Plus only)
Sense	$0	Free tier / Premium	Yes (free)
Mango Display	$0 (use existing device)	$60/year	No
Echo Show 15	$250-$280	$0	No
Hearth Display	$599	$108/year	No

The Real Question: Do You Need the Hardware?

Here's what we've learned from talking to families: most people are drawn to Skylight for one of two reasons:

1. They want a wall display - a dedicated screen the whole family can see
2. They want the email automation - forward a schedule, get calendar events

These are different problems with different solutions. If you want a wall display, you have hardware options. If you want email automation, you can get that in software without buying anything.

Let's look at both.

Software-Only Alternatives (No Hardware Purchase)

If what you really want is to stop manually typing events into your calendar, these work on devices you already own.

Hardware Alternatives (If You Want a Dedicated Display)

If you've decided you really do want a dedicated wall-mounted display, here are alternatives to Skylight's hardware.

The Email Automation Question

Here's something important to note: of all the alternatives listed, only Sense offers the email-to-calendar automation that Skylight charges $79/year for with their Magic Import feature.

The hardware alternatives (Echo Show, DAKboard, Hearth) give you a wall display, but you're still manually entering events or syncing from calendars you manually maintain.

If the main appeal of Skylight was "forward an email and get calendar events," you can get that without buying hardware at all.

Feature	Skylight + Plus	Sense
Forward email, get events	Yes	Yes
PDF schedule extraction	Yes	Yes
Shared family calendar	Yes	Yes
Chore tracking	Yes	Yes
Meal planning	Yes	Yes
First year cost	$239-$679	$0
Dedicated wall display	Yes	No
Access from anywhere	App available	Yes

What Actually Matters When Choosing

After looking at all these options, here's how to decide:

Choose Skylight if:

• You specifically want a dedicated wall display AND email automation
• Budget isn't a major concern
• You like the Skylight aesthetic and brand
• You want one company supporting everything

Choose Sense if:

• You mainly want the email-to-calendar automation
• You don't want to spend hundreds on hardware
• You want to check your calendar from anywhere
• You'd rather start free and see if it works for you

Choose Echo Show if:

• You want a wall display plus smart home features
• Voice control is important to you
• You're already using Alexa
• You don't need email-to-calendar automation

Choose Mango Display / DIY tablet if:

• You want a wall display on a budget
• You have an old tablet you can repurpose
• You don't need email-to-calendar automation
• You're okay with a simpler feature set

Our Honest Take

Skylight makes a good product. The wall display is genuinely useful for families who want the schedule always visible in the kitchen. The Magic Import feature is clever and solves a real problem.

But for many families, $600+ for a single-purpose device is hard to justify - especially when the feature they actually want (email automation) is available without buying hardware.

If you're on the fence about Skylight, here's what we'd suggest: try the email automation first. Download Sense (or another app), forward a few school emails, and see if that solves your problem. If you find yourself still wanting a dedicated wall display after that, you can always buy the hardware later.

But you might find that having events automatically appear on your phone - accessible anywhere, not just your kitchen wall - is actually more useful than a mounted screen.