How To Add An Events Calendar In WordPress : Best Plugins

Last update: 04/10/2024
Event calendar

Add a WordPress Events Calendar It's key to letting your users know all about your upcoming events. Whether you're listing new events every day or just hosting occasional special events, a calendar can help you engage with your community and drive website traffic.

Organizations large and small can benefit from Add a Calendar to Your WordPress SitesConsider a school website, for example. Parents can visit the website and scan the calendar to see upcoming events. Or as a concert venue, use a calendar to display your upcoming shows.

No matter what type of business you have, adding an event calendar in WordPress is a great way to showcase your offerings and encourage people to attend your events. Before you get started, you’ll want to make sure you’re choosing the right calendar for your needs by identifying a few key features.

Maybe you may be interested: How To Add Cookies To WordPress Without Plugin (With And Without Plugin)

Features to look for in a WordPress event calendar plugin

This is What to look for in a plugin that you are going to use for an events calendar in WordPress:

1. Calendar views

Some WordPress event calendar plugins come with a variety of views so you can display your calendar in a full month view or display events in a list. Other views include photo view, which provides helpful images for users to explore events and see what they're all about. If having the option to choose between multiple views is important to you, be sure to find a calendar that includes this option.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The calendar plugin you are considering helps improve your SEO? so that people can more easily find your events on GoogleDoes it offer customizable options to improve SEO or integrate well with a third-party plugin that can help with this? If this is a priority, choose a calendar tool designed to optimize your site’s SEO.

3. Speed

If you plan on displaying a lot of events on your WordPress events calendar, you'll want to consider the speed of the plugin. You definitely don't want users to get impatient while waiting for events to load, so be sure to keep this in mind if you have an especially busy calendar.

These are just some of the key features we recommend considering when comparing plugins. WordPress CalendarBut ultimately, we're biased in favor of tried-and-true plugins: the Events Calendar and the Events Calendar ProAnd you don't have to take our word for it: The Events Calendar has over 800 active installs and nearly 000 five-star reviews.

Events Calendar comes with three standard views (month view, list view, and day view), fully responsive layout, and includes JSON-LD for structured data built right into the plugin to improve your SEO. Want even more features? Events Calendar Pro comes with additional premium views (photo, week, map, and summary), custom fields, and shortcodes to add your calendar anywhere on your site.

The Benefits of Using an Events Calendar Plugin in WordPress

Whether you run a music blog, a community group, or even manage a professional organization's website, being able to openly display events to your website visitors is incredibly useful. However, without a plugin, your options for doing so on a WordPress site are fairly limited.

Using a WordPress Calendar Plugin for Events and Bookings can help you increase your authority and establish a brand more reliable and attractive. They provide an easy way to showcase your events in an elegant and easy-to-understand way.

Present upcoming events and important dates in a calendar view makes them stand out and reduces the chances of visitors missing them. Plus, most calendar plugins allow you to include additional information about events so users can quickly find key details without having to search for them.

These WordPress event calendar plugins are also beneficial if you are looking to incorporate booking system features that display availability. For example, if you are in the property rental business or provide a service that requires appointments, WordPress calendar plugins can make it easier to display available time slots for clients to claim.

Another benefit of calendar plugins The beauty of WordPress events and calendars is that there are options no matter how simple or complex your needs are. If you want a basic, straightforward calendar, there are plenty of free solutions to choose from. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a complete, all-in-one tool packed with advanced features, you’ll have plenty of options as well.

Adding a Calendar to Your WordPress Site

Adding a calendar to your site is easy with the free The Events Calendar plugin. You can find the plugin by searching for it in your WordPress dashboard in Plugins > Add Plugin.

After installation, you will see a menu of Events in the sidebar of the WordPress Dashboard. From there, you can start exploring your calendar settings. In Event Settings > Display, you can choose the default view for both desktop and mobile versions of your site.

Next, you can start adding some events. Click on add event en Events or go to New > Event from the top toolbar in the WordPress Dashboard. In the Block editor, you can use the block Event Details classic or add individual blocks for each of your event details, such as location, organizer, and event website.

WordPress Events Calendar

Once you've published your event, you can go to the calendar to see all of your events in the calendar view you selected. In this case, we've used the photo view to display our events.

WordPress Events Calendar

Pro tip: Don't have a WordPress site? You can still add a calendar to any site, like Wix or Squarespace - an easy-to-customize calendar that integrates anywhere on your site with a small snippet of code.

  How To Place Menus On Every Page In WordPress

Take your calendar to the next level

Once you've set up your events calendar in WordPress, there are many ways to extend its functionality. With event tickets, you can add RSVPs and tickets to your events and track attendees directly from the backend of your site.

With Virtual Events, you can generate Zoom links, create online and hybrid events, and embed live stream links directly into WordPress. Event Aggregator is a great plugin if you want to import events from other sources such as Google Calendar, iCal or Eventbrite.

Best WordPress Event Calendar Plugins (Paid & Free)

When we talk about WordPress calendar plugins, we are referring to useful add-ons for displaying upcoming conferences, meetings or events on a website, as well as booking services.

However, choosing the right one can be difficult, especially considering the impact that WordPress event calendar plugins can have on site speed and security.

Fortunately, there are a variety of reliable options to choose from. In addition, the WordPress Event Calendar Plugins High-quality plugins come with advanced features and customizations that can help you increase your authority and credibility.

Before we go over the free options, we wanted to introduce a few premium WordPress calendar plugins that are ideal for sites that incorporate bookings of any kind:

1 HubSpot

HubSpot

HubSpot’s free WordPress plugin has all the tools you need to boost your sales and marketing efforts. It includes everything from a customer relationship management (CRM) system that centralizes all your contact data to email marketing, live chat, forms, analytics, and more!

Although it is fairly new on the market compared to other WordPress event calendar plugins, the HubSpot WordPress plugin is already in use on over 100 websites. It comes with a free HubSpot account where you can easily create a link to your event calendar. programming free meeting room that you can embed on your WordPress site.

When someone schedules a meeting on your website, their contact details will automatically be added to your Google or Outlook calendar and they will be sent to your HubSpot CRM database (the CRM is free forever, for unlimited users). You can fully access this CRM from WordPress and see all the activity each contact has with your website.

HubSpot

So in other words, HubSpot is a tool ideal if you are looking for an embedded calendar simple and you are interested in having all your contact records organized in one place. Additional features of the HubSpot WordPress plugin include:

  • Create custom meeting links to share via your site or email.
  • Integrated calendar for your website.
  • Integration with Google y Office 365.
  • Custom booking link and customizable booking page (foreground, logo, color scheme).
  • Access to HubSpot's free CRM (unlimited contacts).
  • Ability to sync and monitor CRM responses within WordPress.
  • Free form and popup builder, including integration with most major WordPress form tools.

The HubSpot WordPress plugin itself is free and includes a HubSpot account. This provides a custom meeting link, unlimited meetings, as well as integration with HubSpot’s forever-free CRM, live chat, and form tools.

Alternatively, You can purchase a starter plan for $50 per month – Includes all the features we’ve mentioned, plus 1000 personal and team meeting links and HubSpot Sales premium features.

download now.

2. Sugar Events

Sugar Events Calendar strikes the perfect balance between a simple tool that doesn't overwhelm users with configurations and a robust solution for displaying events. It has just enough features to get the job done while remaining lightweight enough that server resources can be conserved.

This WordPress event calendar plugin has been translated into several languages ​​including English, German, French, and others. It allows you to easily set event dates and start and end times.

Sugar Events

It is possible to enable Ajax calendar view for an improved user experience (UX), as well as create an events archive, listing all past events by occurrence date. Here are some of its features:

  • Shortcode to display your calendar.
  • Easy installation and configuration.
  • Custom event post type.
  • Ability to manage all your events from your dashboard.

download now.

3. EventON

EventON

EventON is another plugin for WordPress Events Calendar which we are fans of. It really stands out from some of the other options available and offers a minimalist take on calendar design that makes it easy to set up. The tile layout is really attractive to look at and interact with.

Plus, the fact that you can use the built-in shortcode generator and repeating event options to set up your events or classes makes it even better. Some features you can expect from this simple WordPress calendar include:

  • Event images.
  • Expandable details for each event.
  • Multi-day events.
  • Google Maps integration so you can add directions to each listing.
  • Event categories.
  • Custom metafields.
  • Search, sort and filter functionality.
  • Awesome Font Icons.
  • Custom time formats, colors and appearance options.
  • Featured Events Support.
  • A function of 'hide event'.
  • Support for right-to-left (RTL) text.

This plugin also has over 52,000 installs and has a 4.5 star rating. Pretty impressive, to be honest. A premium license starts at $25.

download now.

You may want to know: Ways To Add A Subscription Form In WordPress

4. Modern Events Calendar (MEC)

Modern events calendar

Modern Events Calendar (MEC) is the ideal tool if you need a event management system It’s fully customizable. With MEC, you can create any type of event, from recurring to multi-day and beyond. This plugin has a considerable amount of features, even in its Lite version, making it a solid choice even if you’re on a tight budget.

  Hostpapa. What It Is, Plans, Prices, Support, Alternatives

The free version offers enough for your project if you're just getting started with basic event management. It also features a quality design out of the box, so if you don't want to do a lot of customization, you probably don't need to.

If you want access to more features, such as reminders, a reservation or ticketing system, locations, and even a weather module, you can upgrade to Modern Events Calendar Pro. These are some of its characteristics:

  • Support for unlimited events.
  • Reusable dynamic event locations and organizers.
  • Special buttons for sharing content on social networks.
  • Configuration with perfect details.
  • It is compatible with the most prominent page builders.
  • Shortcode Generator.
  • Advanced reservation system.
  • Allows sending of front-end events.
  • A fairly advanced replay system.
  • WooCommerce Integration.
  • A library of plugins to extend your customization.

Without Add-Ons, there are three different pricing tiers for this plugin, starting at $75. Each license includes one year of support and lifetime automatic updates.

download now.

The Best Free Plugins to Add to an Events Calendar in WordPress

If you are on a tight budget, at least one of these free WordPress calendar plugins will suffice. Each offers different features including upcoming events, simple layouts, and WordPress calendar widgets. Some even come with premium versions if you want to unlock additional features.

1. Events calendar

Event calendar

 The WordPress Events Calendar plugin is perfect for users looking for easy creation and management of a digital calendar. Right out of the box, this plugin gives you the opportunity for quick event creation and customization. It comes with a search feature for visitors of your site and includes two display options: a monthly view with tooltips and a list view.

Another thing we love about this tool is that it allows you to take advantage of the WordPress Google Calendar widget and iCal export features. It also offers full internationalization, event categories and tags, and a detailed day-by-day view of every event you create.

Furthermore, this freemium plugin It comes fully responsive and compatible with all mobile devices. That is, you can rest assured that it will work well with popular themes like Avada and Thesis. Here are some of the plugin's features:

  • Google Maps Integration.
  • Upcoming events widget on the site.
  • Microformats to improve SEO.
  • Ajax support for smooth navigation.
  • Storage cached to improve performance.
  • A library of free and Pro extensions.

Events Calendar was recently acquired by Liquid Web, but was originally developed and maintained by a company called Modern Tribe. Events Calendar was Modern Tribe's flagship free plugin, and is currently still free after the acquisition, but you can also check out Events Calendar Pro, which starts at $89.

download now.

2. All-in-one event calendar

Timely's all-in-one events calendar gives WordPress website owners an elegant way to create a calendar and share it with visitors of the site. It features a clean visual interface that makes posting events simple, as well as an impressive feature set.

For example, you can import and export content from your WordPress calendars and display it on other websites if you wish. This plugin also allows you to set up complex recurring events, add an upcoming events widget, and display events based on day, week, month, the agenda that is currently available, or “poster” views.

Additionally, you can customize the look of your calendar to match your website and display featured events and category images to encourage user interaction. In fact, you can color code events for easier interpretation.

The ability to customize the look of your WordPress event calendar is useful when you want to embed your calendar into WordPress posts and pages without having to deal with theme modifications. Additional features include:

  • SEO optimized events.
  • The ability to embed Google Maps.
  • Events are linked to the original calendar.
  • There is the function of filtering by category or by tag.
  • Existence of imported calendars that appear automatically.

download now.

3. Event Organizer

Event Organiser

Event Organiser is another one to consider if you want to add a free event calendar plugin in WordPress. It is specifically designed for managing events through your website. With features like recurring events, venue allocation, and easy editing of details through an intuitive interface, this plugin gives you just what you need to share your events with site visitors.

To make things even easier, this plugin allows you to add calendar widgets, event listings, and event calendars directly to your site so attendees have the information on what's happening and when it's happening. You can also use the built-in shortcodes to make embedded calendars on your site quick and easy.

True to its name, Event Organizer is also a solid choice if you’re looking to add a WordPress event calendar plugin to prioritize organization. It lets you assign event categories and tags, color-code them, create pretty permalinks, and automatically delete overdue events. Here are some of its standout features:

  • Year, month and day files.
  • Places pages.
  • Customizable reservation forms.
  • Visitor subscriptions to events.
  • Relative date queries.
  • Various translations.
  • A Pro version with additional support and features

Event Organizer It was created by Stephen Harris, a theme developer. Since its initial release, the WordPress Events Calendar plugin has remained a popular choice and has high ratings and reviews in the WordPress plugin directory.

download now.

4. WP Simple Booking

WP Simple Booking

When we talk about WP Simple Booking Calendar, we are referring to a different kind of WordPress calendar plugin, one that helps website owners display the availability of a service, rental, or other time slot. For example, you can display a vacation home that is vacant for the holidays, an office space for rent, or even available work shifts.

  Siteground. Plans, Prices, Alternatives

The free version is easy to use, which is perfect if you're not looking for a lot of bells and whistles. It's a simple solution to inform your visitors about booking availability. WP Simple Booking Calendar features include:

  • Language translations using .po files.
  • Easy to define availabilities.
  • Easy to use interface with responsive calendar layouts.
  • Color coding for easy understanding of events available on the site.
  • It has a shortcode generator.
  • Booking calendar widget.

There is also a premium version of WP Simple Booking Calendar that offers advanced features. These include unlimited calendar creation, Custom captions, iCal font sync for third-party platform integration (Airbnb, HomeAway, etc.). It also gives you the opportunity to highlight events so users can easily see them when they arrive at your site.

download now.

5. My Calendar

My Calendar

My Calendar is an advanced freemium plugin that offers a wealth of customization options for displaying an events calendar in WordPress. It supports multiple WordPress sites, multiple calendars displayed by category, locations, and authors. There is also a simple list view screen if you prefer.

With this plugin, You can display monthly events, weekly or daily so that visitors can see them when they arrive. You can also add a widget to highlight upcoming events, present a compact calendar view, or provide access to the event search function.

Additionally, you can configure settings to receive email notifications whenever new events are created or bookings are made. It is also possible to integrate the My Calendar plugin with WP to Twitter so you can easily share tweets about new events. Additional features include:

  • Ability to schedule and edit recurring events.
  • Shortcode generator to easily customize calendars to match your website.
  • Built-in help for shortcodes and tags.
  • Calendar grid.
  • Access restrictions for using the calendar.
  • Event output templates (fully customized).
  • Location manager feature for frequently used places.
  • Ability to obtain events from databases remote.

My Calendar It was developed by Joseph C. Dolson, who is a web designer. If you are looking for more advanced features than the free version offers, you can also check out their My Calendar Pro plugin, available for $49.

download now.

6.Booking Calendar

Booking Calendar

Booking Calendar, like WP Simple Booking Calendar, is also a nice plugin to add to an events calendar in WordPress. It has been created with a special design to help site visitors check the availability of properties (such as apartments, hotels or holiday homes) or services (such as massage or hairdressing appointments).

It is a flexible and all-in-one solution for adding a booking system to your WordPress site. With this plugin installed on your site, Your visitors can select between the days and times that are available, then simply fill out a booking form and submit. From there, you can approve or reject the booking and notify the customer accordingly.

This easy-to-use plugin allows you to Customize the style and layout of your calendar WordPress Events widget and give site visitors a calendar overview or list view. You can modify their skin and use shortcodes to insert them into posts and pages. You can even add a widget to your site’s sidebar.

Beyond the aesthetics, there are also a handful of functional features. For example, it prevents the inconvenience of double booking, sends email notifications to managers and clients, and even lets you import your Google Calendar directly into the admin panel. Additional features include:

  • Multilingual support.
  • CAPTCHA support.
  • Ability to assign user roles.
  • Fully responsive design.
  • Managing reservations in the control panel.
  • Easy installation and configuration.
  • Time slot reservations.
  • Option to import events from Google Calendar.

It was developed in 2009 (its first release) and was the first with more than a million users. downloads, Pretty impressive to be honest! You can visit the plugin’s official website to try out the demo or check out some of the premium versions available.

download now.

Final thoughts

Many of the WordPress event calendar plugins we've discussed include widgets. To avoid confusion, let's take a moment to discuss them separately. WordPress Calendar Widgets These are usually the result of shortcodes included in calendar plugins. This feature makes it possible to insert calendars into areas of your site other than a post or page.

Take a look at: How to Change, Edit and Remove Copyright in WordPress Footer

We might be talking about a sidebar, header, or footer. However, many widgets can also be inside pages or posts, and can be inserted via a shortcode right in the middle of your content. How (or if) you end up using them is going to directly depend on your site's needs and how you prefer to display information related to your events.

Check your features and don't forget to complement your WordPress event calendar to catch all the users. Also, don't forget to tell us how your process went. You can express yourself through the comments section. Also, you can visit our website to see more tutorials related to the topic, we are waiting for you.