A good calendar plugin is necessary for any company -- the more events and appointments your business requires, the more likely it is that you need a visual way to lay them out to avoid confusion.
But separating your calendars 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 of individual appointments, and large events.
Choosing the right calendar for your needs will make your company more productive and efficient when communicating with clients and potential customers. And, ultimately, a calendar plugin can free up your 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, and we've made a list of 13 here.
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 calendar plugins in 2019 do several things:
- 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 in 2019 to help schedule your workflow and smooth out your clients' booking experience.
1. HubSpot Meetings
Price: Tiered pricing, free to $3,200 per month, depending on your needs
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).
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.
2. The Events Calendar
Price: Tiered pricing ranging from free to $299 per year
The Events Calendar plugin is designed to help any user plan large events. Events are displayed in SEO-friendly microformats, which eliminates the need to click on the event.
You can export your events to other relevant platforms. The plugin allows calendar view and list view for events. It's compatible with iCal, Google Maps, and Google Calendar. Search functions make finding the right event easy and intuitive -- even from your 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.
3. Events Schedule
Price: $35 one-time fee
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 is optimized for SEO purposes.
You can choose from five different styles of 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 tons of integrations with outside tools too, such as other WordPress plugins and themes.
4. MotoPress Timetable and Event Schedule Plugin
Price: Free
MotoPress Timetable and Event Schedule is a wonderful 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 shortcode makes it easy to embed on your website. Calendars can be edited for size, color, time zone, label, category. Additionally, language and filters can be applied to make the calendar searchable.
Multiple calendars on a page are easy to find as they're assigned an individual ID. Upcoming events are displayed via widget, which is crucial for encouraging attendance.
5. Responsive Timetable
Price: $26
Responsive Timetable acts like many calendar plugins for WordPress in this list, but one of its main features is that it can display four events in the same time slot simultaneously, which makes this a good tool for conferences or breakout sessions where multiple events are happening at the same time.
Each event displays fields for price and reservations links, and there's no cap to the number of events you create. The calendar is visually customizable with the Live Editor tool, and shortcode is provided to embed calendars on your site. You have three design layouts to choose from and can filter as you need.
Responsive Timetable has a unique feature -- it allows a pop-up to appear on your site for your chosen upcoming event, which can help drive traffic. Alternatively, you can even customize the event pop-up for your brand's needs. Users can also download a PDF of the event details if they choose.
The plugin is optimized for SEO and mobile devices.
6. Simple Calendar – Google Calendar Plugin
Price: Free
Simple Calendar is a solid choice for users who just need basic calendar functionality without all the special effects.
It integrates smoothly with Google Calendar, and all changes from Google Calendar will be synced with the calendar on your WordPress site. Several calendars can be combined into one if needed. Calendars automatically adjust to the local time zone and date of international users. Events are easy to display in list or calendar form, and they're easy to embed directly into your website or newsletter.
There's limited individual coding needed to be done, but you can customize things including category, color, and event tags. Their event tags are one of their strongest features. For more complex features, they have add-ons worth checking out.
7. Event Calendar WD
Price: Prices range from free to $100 per year
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.
8. Event Organizer
Price: Approximately $52 for the personal plan, $105 for business, $157 for developers
Event Organizer is a strong calendar plugin option for users -- particularly, developers -- who need to create recurring and multi-day events using their calendar plugins. Paid add-ons are available as needed for extra functionality.
The software is compatible with these payment options:
- PayPal
- Stripe
- iDeal
- Pro-Offline
Users can add, edit, or delete events from the backend administrative portion and translate calendars. The software defaults to deleting past events. Event Organizer offers customizable ticket booking templates for you to design, and the plugin includes three individual widgets in addition.
It's important to note -- when searching for it, spell "Organizer" like "Organiser", as its creators used the British English spelling.
9. EventON
Price: $24
The EventON WordPress plugin helps you design calendar events but letting you select the address, time, and date. It's simple to promote your events -- this is probably the best plugin to do that.
Photos and Google Maps can be added to your events as well, and you can select the colors for your calendar to the rest of your site. EventON has different views, so if you want to see from day-to-day or month-to-month, you can.
The whole calendar is searchable, so finding the event in question shouldn't be difficult. If you want to pay more, you can buy the WooCommerce integration for ticket selling.
10. All-in-One Event Calendar
Price: Tiered pricing, ranging from free to $99 per month
All-in-One Event Calendar is a good option for people wanting to sell tickets on their website. It allows you multiple views of your calendar -- by event, day, week, or month -- all of which you can easily filter. Google Maps is integrated and the plugin is SEO-optimized.
Once you fill out the initial form, the calendar creates an event. Events can include:
- Tags
- Categories
- Contact info
- Color codes
- Dates
- Times
- Locations
All of these are gathered from the intake form. The plugin integrates with Outlook, iCal, and Google Calendar. It's worth checking out if you need to reach a large audience.
11. My Calendar
Price: Free
This calendar plugin has some truly unique features. For instance, My Calendar is a developer's dream when is comes to creating custom calendars and templates.
Creating an event triggers an email notification to be sent to the participating parties, and the settings can be set to post your new event directly to Twitter as needed.
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.
12. Modern Events Calendar
Price: Free to $39+ per month for the Pro version
The appeal of Modern Events Calendar is mostly that it doesn't require a ton of customizing to function well and look good. However, if you need a complicated ticketing support system, this may not be the one for you.
The plugin provides list and calendar views and well as a countdown. The free version lets customers book directly in your calendar for single and recurring events. There's no cap on when events have to end in the calendar. If you want to get fancy with your functionalities, invest in the Pro to get weather updates, show maps, and localize time zones.
This plugin works with Stripe and PayPal if you need to accept payment from customers.
13. Stachethemes Event Calendar
Price: $35 one-time fee
Stachethemes Event Calendar is a mobile-optimized calendar with WooCommerce integrations that offers a single-page admin feature. It allows you to directly sell merchandise related to your events from the calendar event itself.
There's a quick auto-update feature and direct customer booking based on your availability.
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 design.
Some calendar features include:
- Easy to set up recurring payments
- Easy to share on social networks
- Works across multiple sites
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.
Aside from decreasing time wasted emailing back-and-forth to find workable dates, these plugins simplify the process and smooth out the day-to-day kinks.
Whichever you choose, just make sure it works best with your project management workflow. If you want to check out a free tool that's easy to test out, try HubSpot Meetings.
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