A Review of the Modern Events Calendar Plugin for WordPress
Finding the best WordPress event calendar for event management can be a challenging task.
If you are a website owner and plan to create events for conferences, meetings, webinars, online classes and so on, there is a lot to do. Publishing the created event in an informative way, registering the participants, managing the different time zones, prices, and venues can all make everything much more complicated.
This is where you need the best WordPress event calendar possible. Whatever website you run, you need a modern and versatile event management system.
In this article, we are going to introduce the Modern Events Calendar (MEC) plugin to you which is one of the best event calendars for WordPress. Read on to discover the distinguishing features that make it stand out from the competition.
Modern Events Calendar Introduction
Modern Events Calendar (MEC) is a remarkable WordPress plugin made to help website owners create and manage their events in the easiest and most practical way. This plugin is possilby the best WordPress event calendar and is published in two versions; Lite and Pro.
The Webnus developer team has focused on the customization and features of the tool to present the best event calendar on the market. This WordPress event calendar plugin can be customized to a large extent which lets you edit your events according to your specific needs. You can create all kinds of single and recurring events and refine them to the last details.
Modern Events Calendar Features
This plugin is a budget choice since not only the free version is equipped with great features, but also the premium type can be purchased at a reasonable price. The best WordPress event calendar free version provides users with various options that are beyond what can be found in similar products.
To mention a few, the Countdown view and multiple organizers are provided in the free version of MEC, whereas you have to pay extra money for them in other famous plugins such as EventOn. Should you need even more features, you can buy the Pro version of the best event calendar at such a lower price compared to others.
The total number of features is so high that it won’t disappoint you in any way. Here we have tried to mention some of the most important ones to give you a better understanding of the best WordPress event calendar.
Event Creation Features
You can easily create a variety of events including single and multiple day events, or the more personalized ones. Above all, you have full control over the customizations of each event.
The events can be created dynamically and you can set customized intervals for them. Showing featured events, countdowns, and permanent events are other options that are included in the plugin.
In the best WordPress event calendar, you can put multiple events into different categories using tags and labels. Furthermore, you can classify them based on the location or the host of the events. In order to add more details, you can include images, event organizers, hourly schedules, and local time to let the visitors know more exact details. When you are done creating the event, you can share all the information with your audience using an easy QR code.
Event Display Features
The best event calendar plugin is equipped with modern and stylish layouts. Your events will look clean and sharp and ready to use, whereas, in other products, a lot of customizations are required to achieve a pleasant look.
The plugin has multiple color skins and icons of Font Awesome to choose from. You can see your calendar in multiple lists, grid, agenda, carousel, full and other view styles. All needed to do is to copy your favorite shortcode from the menu and create a WordPress page to view that. These codes are all compatible with different page builders, as for example the Elementor and Visual Composer.
Responsiveness and RTL support in the best WordPress event calendar help you view these events on various devices perfectly. Considering the provided customization options, you can easily line up your brand with your events in a couple of minutes.
Integration
If you are currently using another event management plugin on your WordPress website, you don’t need to worry about replacing that with the best event calendar ever, Modern Events Calendar. The MEC in an integration-friendly plugin that helps you import information from other tools as well. You can easily import data from other popular WordPress plugins like The Event Calendar, and EventOn.
Moreover, you can add events from your Google Calendar, Facebook account, Meetup, etc. by using the easy integration options provided. You also have the option to add events to other favorite tools like Outlook and iCal to manage them from those platforms.
Mailchimp integration is also provided for you so that you can use the best WordPress event calendar for your marketing plans as well.
Booking Feature
Generally, considering the main functionality, currently available related plugins can be categorized into two different groups; event management and booking. Sometimes both of these features are required simultaneously. For example, instead of receiving the fees from your attendees on the event day, you can let them book and pay the required money in advance and just attend the event with their tickets.
In the Pro version of the Modern Events Calendar, you can find a useful set of booking features with different payment gateways, ticket types, custom fields, and many other options. After activating the feature, it can be used for your current events as well as the future ones.
Modern Events Calendar Add-ons
As we mentioned earlier, the best WordPress event calendar plugin is designed in a way that covers all of the users’ needs. Besides, there are also some add-ons provided to increase the functionality to a higher level.
- WooCommerce: If you sell products or services on your website, you can add this add-on to use the WooCommerce cart for purchasing tickets. In other words, every single ticket will be considered as a product and users can purchase all the items in their cart at the same time.
- Elementor: By enabling these features, you will have the option to preview the events in Elementor and place the shortcodes in pages easier. You can also build forms in this editor and arrange them by drag and drop features, edit single event pages with Elementor, and create unlimited custom shortcodes inside it.
- Event API: If you need to see your events on other websites that do not have MEC installed, this add-on will take care of it in the easiest way possible.
- Multisite Event Sync: In case you are managing different websites and want to share events using the best WordPress event calendar available, you can simply sync them by this feature.
- Ticket and Invoice: By using this option, you can manage invoices with different features.
- Advanced Report (Coming Soon): This add-on is getting prepared to let the users utilize an advanced report page in which tables and graphs can be filtered based on the date.
- Advanced Map (Coming Soon): Considering the importance of maps, you can use OpenStreetMap instead of the common Google Maps. This option allows you to enjoy new features like street and region and display different filters next to the map.
- Fluent-view Layouts (Coming Soon): The UI/UX experts of the Webnus team have spent much time and effort to prepare new modern themes for the plugin to make the best event calendar even more enjoyable. This add-on is completely free and is inspired by the latest design trends. By using this tool, a fresh appearance will be applied on your calendar that pleases your audience’s eyes.
Summary
MEC is one of the best event calendar and an all-round plugin that can help you create great professional events on your website without having to pay not inconsiderable sums of money. It is easy to configure and you can enjoy a lot of useful features even in the free version.
Therefore, if you already have or are planning to launch an event management system on your WordPress website, MEC is a great choice for your business plans.
Unfortunately, I think you need to spend more time with this plugin on a larger project. It is absolutely the best on the surface, but several issues arise as you get into a larger project. First, try and update from LITE. You have to download your settings and each page. Not a problem, but on reinstall, only a few will be recognized. Next, when you have to deal with all the bugs in Pro, you will discover a product that may be right for someone with a couple of events but a considerable risk for a company. Test it out. Reset all the settings that are not different in pro and you will get different results. I am not sure why, but you will spend hours trying to figure it out, and then suddenly, something will work while affecting another area. These are the simple things you will encounter. Add that support is very responsive but never gives you the complete answer and always wants to log into your back site, plus their videos are so quick and often based on old formats, that following them is not easy. Once you get the events to work, different than in lite, but acceptably, there will be another issue that comes up with links. Unfortunately, many unresolved problems that keep coming up as we dig deeper and spend more time on a solution that I wish I would have known more about earlier. I would say yes, it is an excellent plugin for a personal website or for someone that doesn’t care about excessive setup time. But many red flags will arise if you use it past that point. I would say an almost useful plugin. Unfortunately, the other event plugins, for the majority, look terrible and are based on Ajax and poor design and need a lot of customization. If you have any other recommendations, however, we would be very open to trying them since we are going to pull the plug on MEC.
I think you are right. First -> how do you add featured image from google calendar.. I didn’t find it. Didn’t find the ability to add multiple google calendar either..
I’d be interested in knowing a better option too.
I have found their support to be dismissive and have just come across the biggest flaw of the entire plugin which they seem reluctant to address. All bookings are stored in the wp_options table (and not a custom table). Any test bookings or deleted bookings are not removed from this table. This causes massive database bloat and there is no option to remove them. They (the bookings) are all set to autoload meaning considerable drag on the performance of the backend. I have asked them about this and they really don’t seem to want to discuss it as usual. I need something that has similar capabilities but is actually well coded.
Just experienced this as well: their support is apparently trying hard to be as unhelpful as possible, barely reading one’s questions, and closing tickets right away without bothering to give helpful answers.
Also the way bookings are saved as multiple CPTs in wp_posts with loads of stuff in wp_postsmeta and additional entries into wp_options makes it real hard to do much with the data without lots of custom code.
Unfortunately, like others here I haven’t yet really found much of an alternative: eventON is weird in many of its own ways, Tribe’s event calendar has been optimized to force everyone even halfway serious about communications with users to use their Promoter “solution”, and so on.
I’m just about to recommend to my client to use Eventbrite.
@Philby
Since 1 year, I am using WP Event Manager, lightweight, scalable and full-featured event management plugin and they provide quick support and they care about customers like us. if you are planning to build an Eventbrite site, that possible with this plugin.
Please check: https://www.ostraining.com/blog/wordpress/events-manager/
Hi Jason. I was interested in this and went looking. As of 8 March 2021 at least, the bookings are all stored in wp_posts, not wp_options. Also, if a booking is Trashed and then Deleted Permanently in the WordPress admin area, the entry is removed from wp_options. Not sure if that’s because of a recent update to the plugin. It might be better if they used a separate table altogether, but the current setup doesn’t seem to be that bad.
Haii i dont want to delete the past events from my calendar.how can i achieve that ?
plugin also bloats and adds lots of css and js to everypage of your site and slowing down entire site.