Top 5 Free Event Calendars for WordPress Websites in 2022
Are you looking for an easy way to add events to your website? Event calendars are great tools for showcasing upcoming events on your website. WordPress has several built in calendar plugins that allow users to create events, and showcase upcoming events online. In this post, we’ve listed the top 5 free event calendars for wordpress that will let you create a calendar that looks just right on your website!
Why Use Calendar Plugins for WordPress Websites?
If you use WordPress, then you probably already know how powerful it is as a content management system (CMS). However, there are some other features that make it even more useful. One of those features is its ability to display calendars with events.
Event calendars WordPress plugins help you manage events on your website. They are important to any business that needs to manage events, whether they’re related to notifying clients of seminars and conferences or collecting event registrations.
Having a free event calendar in wordpress allows you to add a simple event management functionality to your website. You will be able to add events, edit, import, delete, and even schedule them. This makes it easier for website visitors to find out what events are happening near them.
The Top Free Event Calendars for WordPress in 2022
If you're looking for free event calendar plugins for wordpress that are easy to set up and feature rich, we recommend you check our list of the top 5 event calendars for WordPress below. Each one has their unique features, but all will let you build a website calendar and publish events online.
1. Timely All in One Events Calendar
All in One Events Calendar by Timely is a great choice if you're looking for an events calendar for WordPress that's both easy to use and packed with features.
Timely free events calendar comes with a search function by date and keywords, as well as a variety of views, including Month, Week, and Agenda Views. The design customization tools allow you to personalize your calendar as you please. All calendar and page details options are responsive, so everything looks great on any device.
Moreover, Timely event calendar WordPress plugin allows you to create, clone, edit, schedule, publish and unpublish events with ease. It also includes support for recurring events, so you can easily create events that happen on a regular basis. And, organizing events in the calendar is a breeze with filters by categories, tags, venues and organizers.
Timely free calendar also has event engagement tools to keep your audience engaged during their event discovery experience. Those interactive features include calendar subscription for Google, Apple and Outlook calendars, social share buttons for all the major social networks, and calendar print ready version.
The free version of this calendar is made for freelancers and solo entrepreneurs, but Timely also offers more advanced plans for growing businesses and large enterprises.
2. The Events Calendar
The Events Calendar is one of the most popular free event calendars WordPress plugins among bloggers and freelancers. It has all the basic features for those who just want a simple calendar of events on their website.
It allows users to easily create and publish events such as community events and street festivals. You can also use it to display upcoming events on your site with their Month, List and Day Views. Nevertheless, the free version does not allow you to create recurring events.
The free version comes with date and keyword search tools, but no filtering options. It only allows the audience to subscribe using all major calendars, but offers no social share buttons.
You can personalize this calendar by using a skeleton stylesheet to start your customization. However, the design is not mobile-friendly and requires some web designer skills to make it more responsive.
3. WP Event Manager
WP Event Manager is a free WordPress calendar events plugin that lets you manage your events with ease. It has a clean interface and is developer friendly, which means that you can customize it as long as you have some coding abilities.
The plugin lets you add events with all the important details, such as date, time, location, and description. Plus, WP Event Manager comes with a handy widget that you can use to display upcoming events on your website's sidebar or other widget-ready areas.
However, WP Manager only offers two views: List and Box Views. Calendar views are only available as paid add-ons. Also, the design tools are quite limited, and the free version does not include recurring events.
4. Tockify Events Calendar
If calendar design is not a priority for you, and you are just looking for a simple and clean calendar plugin for your website, then check out Tockify Events Calendar.
The free version allows you to create an online event calendar and add images to your event pages. The calendar theme is not customizable, and it only offers one calendar view: Agenda View.
In case you want to be able to customize your calendar to match your site, additional calendar views, or even have the ability to set up recurring events, you will need to subscribe to one of their paid plans.
If you're looking for an event calendar for your WordPress website with basic functionalities, Tockify is a good option.
5. Modern Events Calendar
Modern Events Calendar was one of the most popular calendar plugins for WordPress until its free version - the Modern Events Calendar Lite - was permanently closed due to a WordPress Guidelines violation.
WordPress moderators suggest finding an alternative, but you can still download it on the developer’s website. If you want to go that route, Modern Events Calendar’s forte is their design features, such as calendar views and event widgets. They also offer recurring events on their free version, but no filtering tools.
Choosing the Right Free Event Calendar Plugin for your Website
With so many free calendar plugins for WordPress available, choosing one can be challenging. We have reviewed some of the best 5 free events calendars out there, but with so many options, how can you choose the right one?
Free Features Comparison
Usually, people make their selection by reviewing the free features of each WordPress calendar plugin and checking them against their event management needs.
To help you out in this process, we’ve compared the 5 calendar plugins for wordpress above and created a comparison table. Check it out:
| FREE FEATURES |
TIMELY Plugin |
THE EVENTS CALENDAR |
WP EVENT MANAGER |
TOCKIFY Plugin |
MODERN EVENTS CALENDAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MAIN FUNCTIONALITIES | |||||
| Multiple language | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multiple time zones | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Easy to use | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Mobile-friendly | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| DESIGN & CUSTOMIZATIONS | |||||
| Custom branding | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Calendar themes | ✓ 12 themes | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ 1 theme | ✗ |
| Custom theme | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Calendar views | ✓ 3 views | ✓ 3 views | ✓ 2 views | ✓ 1 view | ✓ 6 views |
| Calendar widget | ✓ 3 styles | ✓ 1 style | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Select different view for mobile and desktop | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Customizable toolbar | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Event page layout template | ✓ 1 style | ✓ 1 style | ✓ 1 style | ✓ 1 style | ✓ 2 styles |
| Filtering bar | ✓ By date, month and year | ✓ By date, month and year | ✗ | ✓ By date | ✓ By month and year |
| Filter by keyword | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Filter by tag, organizer and venue | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Event venue & organizer tag system | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Add multiple organizers per event | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| EVENT PUBLISHING & REACH | |||||
| Single-day, multi-day and all-day events | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cloning Events | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Recurring events | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Local time | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Event Location system | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| EVENT AGGREGATION | |||||
| Import event (csv / ics file) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| EVENT PROMOTION & ENGAGEMENT | |||||
| Calendar subscription | ✓ Google, Apple & Outlook | ✓ Google, Apple & Outlook | ✗ | ✓ Google, Outlook & Yahoo | |
| Social share buttons | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| File export | ✓ ICS & XML | ✓ ICS | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ ICS |
| Print ready | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
From this feature-by-feature comparison it is easy to see why Timely All in One Events Calendar is the number 1 free event calendar in wordpress. Indeed, it has all the required calendar functionalities for you to start and succeed in your event business.
Other Important Considerations
Comparing features is a great start. However, when choosing among event calendars for WordPress, one should also consider the plugin’s reliability, security standards, as well as accessibility and page speed performance. If you are serious about your event business those other evaluation criteria should not be overlooked.
For a truly reliable plugin, you can trust Timely events calendar for WordPress. Timely’s plugin had zero security vulnerabilities reported in the past years, being the safest event calendar plugin on the market so far. In addition, Timely software has higher accessibility and page speed scores.
In any event, we recommend you try the free version of the calendar plugins for wordpress that most caught your attention before subscribing to any paid plans. This way you will have more information to compare and choose your favorite. To try Timely All-in-One Events Calendar plugin for WordPress, download it now.
Free vs. Paid Calendar Plugins for WordPress Websites
Freelancers and small entrepreneurs will probably be happy with any of the 5 free event calendars for WordPress listed above.
However, if you're looking for something more advanced, we recommend using a paid plugin or a SaaS event management system integrated to your WordPress website. These softwares usually offer more features and customization tools. For example, custom filters, event submission form, automated newsletters, social media integration, event registration and ticketing, to name a few.
They also tend to be more effective in the long run. Certainly, the added features can help you run events more efficiently. But it is just not that, they can also help you be more productive, saving you time and money.
Reach out today, and learn more about Timely event software, and how your organization can benefit from our enterprise-level solutions.
Disclaimer: The software products mentioned in this webpage for the purpose of comparison with Timely software are not sold or marketed by Timely. All products, names, trademarks, and registered trademarks are properties of their respective owners. They are used in this webpage for identification and reference purposes only. Timely is not endorsed by, directly affiliated with, maintained, authorized, or sponsored by any of the trademark owners referenced within. This webpage was last updated on September 30, 2022, and it is accurate to the best of our knowledge. If you believe anything to be incorrect, please contact us.
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Event Management Updates
If you want to know more Timely company and product update news, please visit our Event Management Blog. There is always something new happening at Timely, so we do our best to keep our clients on the loop!
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