If you have to schedule meetings, host events, or book appointments for clients through your WordPress website regularly, then you need a powerful calendar plugin. It’ll help you stay organized and manage upcoming events better.
Fortunately, WordPress offers a wide-range of premium-quality calendar plugins that take all the heavy lifting out of managing events and displaying listings.
With this in mind, in this post, we’ll take a look at some of the best calendar plugins for WordPress and highlight their standout features. But before we begin, let’s go over some scenarios where might find yourself needing a calendar plugin.
Let’s get started!
Why Do I Need a Calendar Plugin?
Whether you’re a small business owner, running a personal blog, or managing your band’s web presence, you might need a calendar plugin sooner or later. After all, it’s pretty important that your visitors are able to find and access the events calendar.
Here are some of the most common things website owners use calendars for:
- Bookings/Appointments. First and foremost, you can use a calendar plugin to display upcoming bookings, appointments, events, fundraisers, or holidays. And since they’re on your website, anyone who’s interested in the event can view it.
- Reminders. Some advanced calendars allow you to set reminders in advance. Depending on how you configure them, you can choose to receive an email or a text message a few days before the upcoming event.
- Searchable. Online calendars are searchable. And if you’re regularly hosting webinars or public events, then you want to make sure they are exceptionally easy to find.
There are, of course, many other things you could use calendars for on your website. Depending on what you intend to use it for, you should make note of the features that are important to your business so that you’re able to land on one that’s right for you.
What Are Some of the Best Calendar Plugins for WordPress?
In this section, we’ll explore some of the best, free calendar plugins for WordPress websites and focus on the features they have on offer. Each solution has its own strengths and unique features set. At the end, it all depends on what you’re looking for in a calendar plugin.
The Events Calendar
The Events Calendar by Modern Tribe is the most popular calendar plugin on this list. It’s been developed and audited by professionals who keep security and best practices in mind. The great thing about the Events Calendar plugin is that it’s designed to work right out of the box. That said, if you’d rather have a more customizable solution, then this powerful plugin is also completely extensible and fully customizable.
You also won’t have to worry about the plugin crashing under traffic spikes. It’s already been scaled to work on networks that receive over 25 million unique visitors per month. In fact, some of the biggest companies across the world (including Fortune 100 companies and major universities) use The Events Calendar plugin on their websites.
Key Features:
- Displays a searchable calendar complete with tooltips.
- Fully responsive, AJAX-based design for better user experience.
- Offers support for the WP REST API.
- Comes with extensive documentation and a library of code snippets.
The Events Calendar offers a premium version, Events Calendar PRO, for when you want to take things to the next level.
Events Manager
If you’re in the market for a powerful calendar plugin that boasts a rich feature set, then Events Manager is hard to beat. This all-in-one solution has everything you could possibly need (or want) in a calendar plugin, from event registration to a complete bookings management module.
If you’re thinking about hosting event registrations, then Events Manager has got you covered regardless of whether you want them to be open for a single day or for multiple days. In addition to this, if you’re hosting a high-end event, Events Manager also lets you add event attributes such as friendly dress code reminders. The plugin integrates seamlessly with Google Maps, making it infinitely easier to assign, view, and manage event locations.
Key Features:
- Allows both guest and member event submissions.
- Easy event registration functionality for both single day and multi-day events.
- Tons of customization options for displaying the events calendar.
- Offers support for WordPress Multisite and BuddyPress.
Events Manager comes with everything you need to get started and its premium add-on offers advanced functionality (including PayPal and offline payments, customized booking forms, coupon codes, and more).
All-in-One Event Calendar
Timely’s All-in-One Event Calendar is a powerful calendar plugin for WordPress that focuses on making event management easy. Its neat and clean design, backed by robust features, makes for a truly premium-quality calendar system for WordPress.
The standout feature on offer with the All-in-One Event Calendar plugin is that it allows you to import events from other calendars and lets your viewership subscribe to them. So even if you’ve been using a third-party calendar until now, making the switch to All-in-One Event Calendar should be a cakewalk. What’s more is that you can even import (or export) all events that you’ve organized under a specific category or tag. Talk about high-end calendar management!
Key Features:
- Allows you to add recurring events with complex patterns.
- Events are filterable by event categories and tags.
- Integrates with Google Maps.
- Allows you to color-code events, add event images, and customize themes.
The core plugin is available free for download and you can always buy premium add-ons for when you want access to advanced functionality.
Simple Calendar
If you’ve been using Google Calendar Events and are looking for an easy, hassle-free way to integrate them into your WordPress website, then Simple Calendar is the way to go. The Simple Calendar plugin is just that – a simple way to get the job done without having to mess around with confusing settings pages.
Simple Calendar allows you to display events from publicly viewable Google Calendars. The best part is that once you have it set up on your website, you can continue managing it from Google Calendars without having to switch entirely to WordPress. The plugin comes with a wide-range of professionally-crafted designs that’ll look great on just about every website.
Key Features:
- Fully responsive, mobile-friendly calendar grid and list views.
- Allows you to combine multiple calendars into a single display.
- Offers advanced options for configuring time zones, date and time formats, and first day of the week.
- Integrates with Event Calendar Newsletter to convert calendar displays into newsletter-friendly formats.
Simple Calendar gives you everything you need to get started with managing events in WordPress. It’s also got some premium add-ons on stock for when you’re ready to take things up a notch.
My Calendar
My Calendar is the go-to calendar plugin for those of you who are looking for a customizable solution. It offers a variety of customization options to fine-tune your calendar’s display on your WordPress website. In addition to this, My Calendar features an intuitive user interface and is incredibly easy to use. That said, it’s equally as good of an option for designers and developers who’d like to use nothing less than a custom calendar on their website.
My Calendar offers functionality for setting permissions to restrict access to certain parts of your calendar. If you have a team of users managing the events calendar, then this feature is a must-have. In addition to restricting who can modify the calendar, My Calendar also lets you limit who views it by letting you add filters based on user location, host, author, or categories.
Key Features:
- Fully customizable through custom templates, editable CSS styles, widgets, and more.
- Built-in location manager for frequently used venues.
- Integrates with WP to Twitter to share events with your Twitter following.
- Sends out an email notification to the admin for when events are scheduled and reserved.
My Calendar also comes with a premium extension that lets you leverage advanced features such as importing events from external calendars and allowing visitors to submit events.
Booking Calendar
As the name suggests, Booking Calendar is a calendar plugin for WordPress that allows you to integrate online booking services functionality into your website. Its intuitive interface makes it easy to use and its versatile range of features makes it a great fit for just about any business.
Once you’ve got the plugin installed and configured, the user simply has to check for an available slot and make a booking from the front-end – it’s that simple! From a user’s perspective, they’ll be able to select days, fill out booking forms, and submit the booking. Once a booking has been made, both the user and the administrator will receive an email notification. From there, they can choose to Accept or Decline a reservation through the powerful Admin Booking Panel.
Key Features:
- Admin Booking Panel lets you manage bookings easily and import from Google Calendar Events.
- Offers customizable calendar display designs.
- Stores all of the information in your website’s database.
- Fully responsive, AJAX-based design built with jQuery.
Appointment Booking and Online Scheduling
The Appointment Booking and Online Scheduling Plugin is an all-round calendar plugin for businesses that regularly manage one-on-one appointment, group events, and classes. The plugin’s self-service scheduling system was designed to automate the appointment booking process by eliminating back-and-forth communication.
The plugin is great for online business owners, allowing them to manage appointments and schedules even when they’re on the go. It reports client activity and makes it easy for you to start interactions, respond to queries, and assign staff members to clients. In addition to all of this, it also lets you automate booking confirmations and reminders sent to clients. The Appointment Booking and Online Scheduling Plugin is definitely one of the best calendar management plugins out there.
Key Features:
- Integrates credit card and PayPal payment gateways into your website.
- Offers one-on-one appointment booking and registration for group events and classes.
- Comes with built-in, customizable booking forms.
- Allows you to configure time zones to stay in sync with clients.
Conclusion
Calendar plugins can help you streamline appointments, keep your team organized, and stay on top of things. The plugin you end up going with ultimately depends on the factors that are important to you and which aspects of your online business need to be managed.
- If you’re looking for a powerful event management plugin then we recommend going with the Events Manager plugin.
- Simple Calendar is a good place to start if you’re currently using Google Calendar Events and simply need a plugin to integrate a calendar display on your WordPress website.
- For managing appointments and bookings, Appointment Booking and Online Scheduling Plugin is hands down the best calendar plugin that’ll help you deliver exceptional user experience to clients.
Which calendar plugin are you leaning towards and why? Let us know by commenting below!
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