Modern Events Calendar WordPress Plugin Alternative
Timely All-in-One Events Calendar vs. Modern Events Calendar (MEC)
While Timely’s events calendar plugin offers unique functionalities and advantages to its customers, there are other products on the market that deliver somewhat similar features. If one is looking for free event calendars for WordPress, it is possible to find alternatives that, on the surface, may appear like a good choice - like the Modern Events Calendar (MEC). However, when fully compared, Timely WordPress event calendar stands out from the competition in many aspects.
In this post, we will cover the distinctness of Timely All in One Events Calendar WordPress Plugin, and point out some of the ways our product surpasses the Modern Events Calendar Plugin. We will guide you through a few comparisons that we consider the most important ones when comparing these two free wp calendar plugins so you can choose the right software for your website.
Timely versus Modern Events Calendar: At a Glance
Based on +1,500 WordPress users reviews
+80,000 active installations
- Feature Rich
- Credible
- Reliable
- Secure
- Scalable
- Beautiful and modern design
- Variety of calendar views and widgets
- Preset themes plus customization tools
- Responsive design
- Cloning and recurring events
- Add images, video and links to event posts
- Filters for easy event categorization
- Built-in toolbar for advanced search
- Import events with CSV/ICS files
- Event promotion tools
- Web based software
- No coding or web design skills required
- Your own domain name in event links
- Intuitive and easy to use
- Fast loading
- Accessible
Banned from WordPress in May 2022
- Modern and fluid design
- Variety of calendar views but 1 widget
- Customization based on site’s theme
- Recurring events but no duplicating events
- Event organization by filters
- Month, year and keyword search only
- No import events tools
- Limited event promotion tools
- Coding and web design skills required
- Complex to use
- May slow down your website
- Not accessible
1. Calendar Plugin Reliability
We thought about starting this post by comparing product features, which is something most people want to know when looking for alternative products. However, for this particular software comparison article, we've decided to change the order of the topics and present you the most relevant issues first. Therefore, in this first section, we will talk about calendar plugin reliability.
Since everyone can build a plugin, the first tip when searching for a WordPress events calendar plugin is getting it from a reliable source. For free WordPress products, the plugin directory on WordPress.org is considered the most reliable source available.
Modern Events Calendar Lite
Modern Events Calendar is a plugin designed by Webnus, a small web design and software development company. Webnus' free calendar plugin version - the Modern Events Calendar Lite - was first released in 2018.
Prior to being permanently closed from Wordpress.org in May 2022, the Modern Events Calendar free plugin was among the most popular free calendar plugins for WordPress. At that time, it was said to be compatible with WordPress version 4.0.0 and PHP version 5.6 or higher.
Reasons for the permanent closure are unclear. Webnus informed that they were banned from WordPress for breaching the Community Guidelines.
WordPress moderators refused to give details but said that all plugins from Webnus will no longer be updated, and suggested searching for a replacement.
Timely Events Calendar Plugin
Timely Events Calendar, on the other hand, is a more mature and reliable product. It was launched in 2011 by Timely Network Inc, a technology company with offices in the US and Canada.
Moreover, it is constantly updated to be in line with industry standards. It is compatible with WordPress version 5.0.0 and PHP version 7.2, and has always been compliant with WordPress Community Guidelines.
Timely Events Calendar WordPress plugin comes from a long-time history as a WordPress developer and profound knowledge of events managing needs.
Indeed, for over 10 years, Timely has been offering event software solutions globally. More than 150,000 event creators worldwide are benefiting at this very instant from our technology solutions that go way beyond our free calendar plugin.
2. Data & Privacy Protection
As mentioned above, Modern Events Calendar Lite has been recently excluded from the WordPress plugin platform.
Webnus has explained that they were banned from WordPress because they asked users for the login and password to their websites, so that they could provide support.
Since the WordPress support forum is public, anyone would be able to have access to the user’s personal data and misuse that information. For example, by hacking their website and stealing all of their data.
The purpose of the WordPress Community Guidelines is to keep the forums useful, friendly and safe to all users. Therefore, asking for a user’s login information on the public forum, even to provide support, is considered a bad behaviour and a clear violation of the Guidelines.
Timely, on the other hand, takes privacy laws and regulations very seriously. Indeed, we perform Privacy Impact Assessments (PIA) and update our Privacy Policy and internal rules regularly.
Moreover, we have a dedicated Compliance team responsible for implementing procedures and controls to ensure the privacy of our customers. This includes, among other things, employee training on best practices for data protection.
3. Security Compliance
4. Product Fit & Free Features
Timely All-in-One Events Calendar
Timely All-in-On Events Calendar is the most impressive free calendar for WordPress. It combines a beautiful and modern design with powerful event calendaring features.
It offers several views and widgets, including Month, Week, and Agenda, as well as an engaging event page style. Moreover, it comes with a variety of preset themes that you can use out of the box, or easily customize to match your brand and website design. Everything is responsive, so your online calendar adapts perfectly to any device.
Timely WordPress calendar plugin allows you to create, clone, import, edit, schedule, and publish events with just a few clicks. You can also create recurring events, with all sorts of recurrence rules. Another useful feature is the organization of events by categories, tags, organizers and venues.
In addition, Timely all in one calendar has a built-in customizable toolbar, allowing your audience to search events by date, month, year and keywords, as well as by using the applicable filters.
Timely free wordpress events calendar also comes with event engagement tools. These interactive features are designed to keep your audience engaged throughout their event discovery experience. They include calendar subscription for Google, Apple and Outlook calendars, social share buttons for all the major social networks, file export, and calendar print ready version.
One important information is that Timely wordpress calendar is super easy to use and does not require any coding or web design skills. Furthermore, it is accessible for people with disabilities and loads fast, two very relevant factors for ranking higher on online searches.
Modern Events Calendar Lite
Before being banned from WordPress.org, Modern Events Calendar Lite was among the most popular free calendars for wordpress.
However, after their permanent suspension, it is unknown how many sites are still using it. WordPress moderators have suggested searching for a replacement. Moreover, WordPress security plugins, such as Wordfence, are flagging it as a critical security risk.
If website security is not an issue for you or your organization, or if you are confident you have strong security measures in place to block viruses, malware and hackers, you may want to consider installing MEC on your site.
Without a doubt, Modern Events Calendar Lite's popularity was due to its calendar design features. Indeed, it offers six different calendar views and two event pages styles.
Another advantaged of MEC, is that it allows you to create all sorts of events, including recurring events. Nevertheless, it does not have features to duplicate or import events.
The Modern Events Calendar also offers search tools so your audience can look for events by keyword, month and year. However, it does not offer filtering events by categories or tags, and the tool bar is not customizable.
Timely vs. Modern Events Calendar: Free Features Comparison Table
| FREE FEATURES | TIMELY Plugin | Modern Events Calendar |
|---|---|---|
| MAIN FUNCTIONALITIES | ||
| Multiple language | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multiple time zones | ✓ | ✓ |
| Easy to use | ✓ | ✗ |
| Mobile-friendly | ✓ | ✓ |
| DESIGN & CUSTOMIZATIONS | ||
| Custom branding | ✓ | ✓ |
| Calendar themes | ✓ 12 themes | ✗ |
| Custom theme | ✓ | ✓ |
| Calendar views | ✓ 3 views | ✓ 6 views |
| Calendar widget | ✓ 3 styles | ✗ |
| Select different view for mobile and desktop | ✓ | ✗ |
| Customizable toolbar | ✓ | ✗ |
| Event page layout template | ✓ 1 style | ✓ 2 styles |
| Filtering bar | ✓ By date, month and year | ✓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 | |
| Social share buttons | ✓ | ✓ |
| File export | ✓ ICS & XML | ✓ ICS |
| Print ready | ✓ | ✗ |
5. Conclusion: Timely All in One Events Calendar is a Safer and Smarter Alternative to Webnus Modern Events Calendar
While all WordPress calendar plugins may appear the same at first sight, a point by point comparison like the one in this post makes it clear that Timely product is superior than Modern Events Calendar. All our event software products are well thought. They are expert tools designed from years of experience and knowledge about the event industry's needs.
Even the simplest of our products offers clear advantages when compared to our competition. Above all, we are proud to offer a secure, efficient, and complete solution to anyone who wishes to upgrade and optimize an events calendar, whether for publication on a personal blog or a business website.
Check out Timely All in One Events Calendar WordPress plugin to optimize event management in a safe and smart way!
