A good calendar plugin is necessary for any growing company — the more meetings, classes, and appointments your business has, the more valuable it is to have a visual way to track events so you can avoid confusion.
But separating your calendar from the rest of your website or software is an ineffective way to run your business, especially since planning meetings through back-and-forth emails can waste a ton of your time. This is especially true for individual appointments and large events as you can lose countless hours ironing out your guest list and communicating with attendees.
Choosing the right calendar will make your company more productive and efficient when communicating with clients and potential customers. And, a calendar plugin can ultimately free up time so you can spend more of it improving your customer experience, conducting experiments, or testing other high-value activities to grow your business.
If your company uses a WordPress website, you're in luck — there are plenty of calendar plugins you can use.
But, before we dive in, let's explore the characteristics you'll want to find in any WordPress calendar plugin.
The Characteristics of the Best WordPress Calendar Plugins
The best WordPress calendar plugins perform several functions:
- Display your availability for client bookings or events.
- Allow clients or groups to self-book in those free times.
- Request and store customer data in a customer database for future use.
- Record the event in your calendar.
- Send confirmation notifications to the involved parties of the event's creation.
- Send updates in the event changes.
It's also critical your calendar plugin includes important information such as the event time and date, how many people are involved, what equipment will be needed, who needs to be present, staff required, and other relevant logistics.
Next, let's take a look at some of the best WordPress calendar plugins to help schedule your workflow and smooth out your clients' booking experience.
Best WordPress Calendar Plugins
- HubSpot Meetings
- Stachethemes Event Calendar
- Modern Events Calendar
- The Events Calendar
- All-in-One Events Calendar from Time.ly
- EventON
- My Calendar
- WordPress Pro Event Calendar
- Events Schedule
- MotoPress Timetable and Event Schedule Plugin
- Simple Calendar – Google Calendar Plugin
- Event Calendar WD
- Event Organizer
- WP Simple Booking Calendar
- Events Manager
1. HubSpot Meetings
HubSpot Meetings is a standalone meeting scheduler, although it integrates with WordPress through the HubSpot WordPress plugin.
While the freemium version allows you to create a unique meetings link with your calendar and availability, the paid version lets you set up and embed a calendar on any website (including your WordPress website). You can customize the form that users have to fill out, the dates and times they can schedule meetings, and how soon the participant will be reminded of the event after they sign up. You can also choose to forward attendees to a specific landing page after they complete the meetings form.
The real benefit of this tool is that it pipes the data and meetings into a free CRM, so you don't have to worry about stitching together data from multiple sources. When you have to wear many hats, that level of organization and seamless integration is a huge productivity benefit.
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Active Installations: 200,000+
2. Stachethemes Event Calendar
Stachethemes Event Calendar is a mobile-optimized calendar with WooCommerce integrations that are all managed through a single-page admin feature. This integration allows you to directly sell tickets or merchandise related to your events from the calendar widget. And, there are options for setting up recurring payments, so participants can attend multiple meetings without having to pay each time they show up.
Other features include a quick auto-update feature and direct customer booking based on your team's availability. Events are easy to share on social media networks and the calendar works across multiple websites in your WordPress account.
Event booking options are integrated with WooCommerce, iCal, and ICS, and calendars are available in six different types of views. Every calendar is customizable with colors, fonts, and preset designs, so you can create a look that's right for you.
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Active Installations: 5,000+
Price: $59
3. Modern Events Calendar
The primary appeal of the Modern Events Calendar plugin is that it doesn't require a ton of customization for it to function well and look good. However, if you need an advanced ticketing support system, this may not be the best solution for you.
The plugin provides list and calendar views as well as a countdown feature. The free version lets customers book directly in your calendar for single and recurring events. And, there's no cap on when events have to end. You can keep the party going all night if you want to.
If you want to get fancy with your functionalities, invest in the Pro version to get weather updates, embedded maps, and localized time zones. This plugin also works with Stripe and PayPal, in case you need to accept payment from your customers before an event.
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Active Installations: 80,000+
Price: Free, with paid plans available
4. The Events Calendar
The Events Calendar plugin is designed to help businesses plan large events. Events are displayed in SEO-friendly microformats, which eliminates the need to click on the event in the calendar view.
With this plugin, you can export your events to other relevant platforms. It's compatible with iCal, Google Maps, and Google Calendar, and its search functions make finding the right event easy and intuitive — even from a mobile device.
This calendar is ideal for venues that regularly host events, including bookstores, philanthropies, concert halls, cafes, and other public gathering places. It's also good for performers or artists on tour as the plugin provides a calendar view and a list view for events. Attendees can browse through all of the events at once and picks ones that they're most interested in.
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Active Installations: 800,000+
Price:Free, with paid plans available
5. All-in-One Events Calendar
Ideal for reaching a large audience, All-in-One Event Calendar is a good option for freelancers and entrepreneurs wanting to start or advance their event-related business. It provides multiple views of your calendar — by event, day, week, or month — all of which you can easily filter.
Once you fill out the initial form on the backend, the plugin creates an event on your calendar. Events can include dates, times, locations, tags, categories, and contact info as well as images, videos, tables, documents and meeting links. You can also color-code your events so you can easily track when events are being held and what campaign they're a part of.
This plugin integrates with Outlook, iCal, and Google Calendar. There's also a Google Maps integration that lets users see exactly where an event is being held. And, the plugin is SEO-optimized and responsive, so your web pages and events will rank higher on search engines.
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Active Installations: 100,000+
Price:Free, with paid plans available
6. EventON
The EventON WordPress plugin allows you to design calendar events by letting you select the address, time, and date of all your company events. You can also select the colors for your calendar so that it matches the rest of your site. EventOn is simple, easy to use and install, and an excellent option for promoting parties, functions, meetings, classes, and more.
Photos and Google Maps can be added to your events as well, so participants can see what the event will look like and where it will be located. EventON also offers different time views, so you can promote events on a day-to-day basis or by each month if you would like.
The whole calendar is searchable, so finding the event in question shouldn't be difficult. If you want to sell tickets to your event, you can buy the WooCommerce integration for ticket sales.
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Active Installations: 55,000+
Price: $25
7. My Calendar
This calendar plugin has some truly unique features. For instance, My Calendar is a developer's dream when it comes to creating custom calendars and templates. There's plenty of design options, and you can customize CSS styles and javascript behaviors.
Creating an event triggers an email notification that's sent to the participating parties, and the settings can be set to post your new event directly to Twitter as needed. That way, you can get the word out for your event as soon as you post it to your website.
This is a good option for users who need to manage multiple sites and calendars. The main appeal is that the plugin enables many sites to host the same calendar, or one site to host many calendars, all through the same WordPress page. You can also display your calendars in a miniaturized version on your website, so visitors can see upcoming events hosted by your company.
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Active Installations: 30,000+
Price: Free, with paid plans available
8. WordPress Pro Event Calendar
This is a premium event calendar plugin with a fully responsive design, making it look great on all devices. No matter which layout you choose, it will display properly regardless of the device or browser it's being loaded on.
The best part of this event calendar plugin is that it offers the option for users to submit their own events, which will keep your site active with new content all the time – thus working as a complete event management platform for your site.
This plugin also offers super flexible event settings, a shortcode generator, responsive design, a Google Maps integration, and more. You can also import events from Facebook, however you can only import from Facebook pages and not Facebook groups.
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Active Installations: 6,900+
Price: $29
9. Events Schedule
This mobile-friendly plugin is the perfect scheduling tool for people hosting conferences and other group gatherings. It's ideal if you need to translate for an international audience and it's optimized for SEO purposes.
You can choose from twelve different styles for your calendar and select how you want to filter the events you create — including custom colors and design capabilities. Those who want a more active role in event management can edit, add, or delete events as needed in the Visual Schedule builder.
Compatible with WooCommerce, this plugin offers plenty of integrations with outside tools. It's also compatible with most themes on ThemeForest, so you can trust the plugin will work and won't conflict with other elements on your site. After all, it can be very frustrating and scary to install a new plugin, only to find that all of your pages have suddenly turned blank.
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Active Installations: 7,000+
Price: $39
10. MotoPress Timetable and Event Schedule
MotoPress Timetable and Event Schedule is an effective WordPress calendar plugin for spas, gyms, or other industries that rely on client bookings and mobile website traffic.
It has a color-coding system that allows you to classify and categorize event types, and shortcodes that make it easy to embed the calendar widget on your website. Calendars can be edited for size, color, time zone, label, category, and more. Additionally, language and filters can be applied to make the calendar searchable, so users can quickly find events.
Want to add multiple calendars to one page? No problem. You can easily keep track of all of the calendars on your site using the individual IDs that are assigned to each one. That way, you can maintain the same look and feel of each calendar on the frontend, while knowing exactly where they're located on the backend.
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Active Installations: 40,000+
Price: Free
11. Simple Calendar
Simple Calendar is a solid choice for users who just need a basic calendar without all the special effects. It integrates smoothly with Google Calendar, and all changes in Google are synced with the calendar on your WordPress site. That way, you never have to schedule events in WordPress as you can do everything from Google.
You can also combine several calendars into one universal calendar if needed. Calendars automatically adjust to the local time zone and date of international users, so you never have to wonder if you're scheduling events are the right time. Events can be displayed in a list or calendar format, and they're easy to embed directly into your website or newsletter.
There's limited coding required with this plugin, but you can customize details like event categories, colors, and event tags. The event tags are one of the strongest features as you can personalize event content based on the tag an event is using.
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Active Installations: 70,000+
Price: Free
12. Event Calendar WD
Event Calendar WD is a fantastic plugin for those who need mobile-friendly and SEO-friendly calendars capable of showing recurring, multiple-day, and single-day events. The number of events created has no cap, so create as many as you need.
There are five different themes you can choose from, and each of them can be adjusted to the user's needs. Filters and headers can also be changed. More than 14 premium add-ons make this a Swiss Army knife of plugins, with various functionalities designed to tailor your website to your business.
Events Calendar WD integrates with Google Maps and lets you add categories, locations, tags, and videos to your event directly from your website. Events are easy to create and even easier to share.
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Active Installations: 20,000+
Price: Free, with paid plans available
13. Event Organizer
Event Organizer is a strong option for WordPress users — particularly, developers — who need to create recurring and multi-day events using their calendar plugins. Paid add-ons are also available as needed for extra functionality.
With this plugin, users can add, edit, or delete events from the backend administrative interface. The software defaults to deleting past events, so you'll never have old events mixing with your new ones — potentially causing confusion. Users can also translate calendars as needed making it easier to collaborate with international teams.
Event Organizer offers customizable, ticket-booking templates and the plugin includes three individual widgets as well. You can also integrate payment software like PayPal, Stripe, iDeal, and Pro-Offline.
Finally, it's important to note — when searching for this plugin, spell "Organizer" like "Organiser", as its creators used the British English spelling.
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Active Installations: 30,000+
Price: Free, with paid plans available
14. WP Simple Booking Calendar
The WP Simple Booking Calendar is exactly what it sounds like: simple and easy to use. It lets you display your availability for bookings, which is ideal for real estate rentals and other similar ventures. You can embed the calendar in any WordPress page or post, and you can also show it in the widget area, if desired.
The premium version allows you to make an unlimited number of calendars, and you can sync with Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway, and other listing sites compatible with this plugin. That way, you can manage all of your listings from one place rather than having to jump between interfaces to see when an appointment is booked.
Other features include language translations, automatic backups, and a responsive layout so your calendar will display the same on mobile devices as it does on desktop.
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Active Installations: 10,000+
Price: Free, with paid plans available
15. Events Manager
This event management plugin comes with an integrated event calendar. With it, you'll be able to handle registration, allow guest event submissions, and integrate with Zoom for webinars and online events.
Events Manager comes with all of the features required in a quality event plugin: you can manage locations, event timing, booking systems, and more. There's even a Google Map integration to make it easier for users to find the event location.
You can also sync this plugin with your iCal and RSS feeds. And, it's compatible with a variety of SEO plugins, so your attendees will have an easier time finding them when looking on search engines.
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Active Installations: 100,000+
Price: Free, with paid plans available
Ultimately, any one of the WordPress calendar plugins above would be a solid choice for your WordPress site — although some are better than others depending on your context and specific needs.
Whichever you choose, just make sure it works best with your project management workflow. The best tools will help you accomplish all your goals in a scalable way so that you can continue to grow your business.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
