Three very different products end up on the same shortlist when a WordPress site owner searches for event software: Eventbrite, the hosted ticketing marketplace almost everyone has used as an attendee at least once; The Events Calendar, the WordPress.org plugin that has been the default calendar for over a decade; and Eventonomy, the newer free plugin built specifically for sites where a community, not a single organizer, keeps the calendar full. They solve overlapping problems in three structurally different ways, and the right pick depends less on feature count than on where your attendee data lives and who is actually posting the events.
Last updated: 6 November 2026
Quick answer: Pick Eventbrite if you want a hosted ticketing marketplace and accept per-ticket fees. Pick The Events Calendar for a self-hosted, display-first calendar on WordPress. Pick Eventonomy if members of a community site should add events and RSVP, with BuddyPress and BuddyNext integration.
This comparison checked pricing, fee structures, and install data directly against each vendor’s own site rather than carrying over old numbers, because all three have changed their pricing in the past year. We cover what each product ships for free, what you pay for the rest, how they handle a paid ticket, and which one fits a marketplace listing, a self-hosted calendar, or a community site where members RSVP and sometimes run their own meetups.
Quick Verdict
- →Pick Eventbrite if you want a hosted marketplace that handles payments and discovery for you, and you do not mind paying a per-ticket fee and giving up your attendee data.
- →Pick The Events Calendar if you want a mature, self-hosted WordPress calendar and are fine paying for Pro the day you need recurring events, more views, or ticketing.
- →Pick Eventonomy if your site is a community where members RSVP, bring guests, and sometimes organize their own events, especially on BuddyX, BuddyPress, or BuddyNext.
In This Guide
Market snapshot
- The global event management software market (all vendors, not just WordPress plugins) was valued at USD 9.90 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 32.62 billion by 2034, a 14.16% annual growth rate over 2026 to 2034, according to Fortune Business Insights.
- The Events Calendar reports 600,000+ active installations on WordPress.org (checked 6 November 2026).
Why Event Software Is Getting More Competitive
The global event management software market is valued at roughly $15.2 billion in 2026 and is projected to grow to $24.17 billion by 2031, a compound annual growth rate of about 9.7%, according to Mordor Intelligence’s latest industry analysis. That growth is why the category looks so crowded right now: hosted marketplaces, standalone WordPress plugins, and community-native tools are all competing for the same event organizer, and each one is betting on a different idea of who should own the data and the relationship with the attendee.
That split matters more than any single feature comparison. Eventbrite bets that organizers will trade data ownership for discovery and a hosted checkout. The Events Calendar bets that WordPress site owners want a calendar they fully control, paid for piece by piece. Eventonomy bets that on a community site, the calendar is not a standalone tool at all, it is one more thing members do inside the same feed, profile, and notification system they already use for everything else.
1. Eventbrite
Eventbrite is a hosted SaaS platform, not a WordPress plugin. There is no self-hosted install: you create an event on eventbrite.com, and if you want it to appear on your own WordPress site, you embed it, either through Eventbrite’s own widget code (an iframe-style embed that still checks out on eventbrite.com) or a third-party connector plugin that pulls your Eventbrite events into a WordPress listing. Eventbrite’s own official WordPress plugin was discontinued some years ago, which is why every current integration path runs through an embed rather than a native post type.
Publishing free events costs nothing. For paid tickets, Eventbrite currently charges a per-ticket service fee of 3.7% plus $1.79, on top of a 2.9% payment processing fee per order, figures that are specific to the US and change by region and plan, so check Eventbrite’s own pricing page before you commit. You can choose to absorb those fees or pass them to the attendee, but either way they scale with every ticket you sell, unlike a flat WordPress plugin license. Eventbrite Pro, a separate marketing add-on for email campaigns of up to 10,000 sends a day, starts at $15 a month, and Eventbrite Ads layers paid promotion on top in markets where it is available.
Key Strengths
- Built-in discovery: people already searching Eventbrite’s own marketplace can find your event without you driving all the traffic yourself.
- Handles global payments, refunds, and tax collection without you touching a payment gateway.
- No plugin to install, update, or secure, since everything runs on Eventbrite’s infrastructure.
- Mature mobile apps for both organizers and attendees, including a dedicated check-in scanner app.
- Free tier covers unlimited free events with no platform fee.
Falls Short
- Attendee data lives in Eventbrite’s system, not your own database, so you are renting the relationship with every person who RSVPs.
- No native WordPress integration since the official plugin was discontinued; every path onto your own site is an embed pointing back to eventbrite.com.
- Per-ticket fees mean the more successful your paid event is, the more you pay, with no flat-rate ceiling.
- No member dashboard, no RSVP waitlist tied to your own site’s accounts, and nothing that surfaces in a community feed, group, or member profile.
- Branding is limited on the checkout and listing pages; your event still looks like an Eventbrite page, not your site.
2. The Events Calendar
The Events Calendar is a self-hosted WordPress.org plugin with 600,000+ active installations and a 4.2-star average rating, making it the largest free calendar plugin in the directory by a wide margin. The free core covers single and recurring-looking event listings, month, list, and day calendar views, saved venues and organizers, Google Maps, iCalendar and Google Calendar export, a REST API, and an ajaxified, responsive front end. It is a genuinely complete display layer for a calendar page, and it is why the plugin has stayed the default choice for so long.
Where it changes is pricing. The Events Calendar now sits under StellarWP alongside LearnDash, Give, and Kadence, and Events Calendar Pro, the add-on that unlocks true recurring events, more calendar views, and advanced widgets, is listed at $399 a year on a single site, with an Elite tier at $599. Beyond Pro, a feature-complete setup typically also needs Event Tickets Plus for e-commerce ticketing, Event Aggregator for automatic imports from other calendars, and Filter Bar for advanced filtering, each sold as a further add-on rather than bundled into Pro by default. None of that stack includes a member dashboard or a path into a community layer; The Events Calendar has no native BuddyPress, BuddyNext, or BuddyX integration at any price.
Key Strengths
- By far the largest install base of any free WordPress calendar plugin, with a decade of plugin-directory history and documentation behind it.
- Free core is a genuinely usable calendar: listings, views, venues, maps, and REST API, not a crippled trial.
- Deep third-party ecosystem: theme compatibility, page builder support, and integrations most newer plugins have not caught up to yet.
- REST API and iCal export make it straightforward to pull event data into other tools.
- Self-hosted, so your event data lives in your own database rather than a vendor’s platform.
Falls Short
- Events Calendar Pro’s $399/year single-site price is a steep jump from the plugin’s free core, and climbing toward a feature-complete setup adds further paid add-ons on top.
- No native community integration: nothing surfaces in a BuddyPress group, a BuddyNext feed, or a member profile without custom development.
- Recurring events, additional calendar views, and ticketing all sit behind Pro or a separate add-on, not the free core.
- No member-facing “my events” dashboard for attendees to track their own RSVPs across the site.
3. Eventonomy
Eventonomy is the free WordPress events plugin built at Wbcom Designs, and like Eventbrite and The Events Calendar it is a full RSVP and calendar system, but it starts from a different assumption than either: on a community site, members are the ones who fill the calendar, not just one organizer posting to it. The free plugin covers unlimited events and RSVPs with going, maybe, and waitlist statuses, Month, List, Grid, and Upcoming calendar views, daily, weekly, and monthly recurring series, custom RSVP questions with ten answer types, and guest RSVPs that work without an account through a magic link, with guest counts applied against the capacity you set.
The free core also ships an ICS feed and add-to-calendar links, a shared venue and organizer catalog, a My Events member dashboard, a frontend submission form so members can post and manage their own meetups, CSV export, and branded confirmation and reminder emails, none of it gated. Eventonomy Pro, priced at $99/year for one site, $199/year for five sites, or $249/year unlimited (with lifetime pricing from $249 to $629 if you want to skip renewals), adds Stripe, PayPal, or WooCommerce checkout with tax, booking fees, and coupon codes, Week and Day calendar grids, geocoding and map clustering, a door check-in scanner using secure ticket tokens, organizer analytics, a discovery feed with follow and saved-event functionality, SMS reminders through Twilio, and custom email templates.
The piece neither Eventbrite nor The Events Calendar has an equivalent to at any price is community integration. Eventonomy is tested against BuddyX, so its event pages inherit your theme instead of fighting it. With BuddyNext, Eventonomy activity surfaces directly in the community feed, member profiles, and search, with event reminders landing in the same notification bell members already check. On classic BuddyPress, Eventonomy Pro adds a native Events tab to every group, with the option to attach one event to multiple groups at once. The free plugin also ships a built-in importer for The Events Calendar, EventON, Events Manager, and WP Event Manager, so moving off any of those does not mean rebuilding a calendar by hand, though it is worth knowing upfront that RSVPs, orders, and check-in history do not carry over with an import, only the event records themselves.
Key Strengths
- Free tier is a complete events platform, not a demo: unlimited events, RSVPs, waitlists, recurring series, and member submissions all ship free.
- The only one of the three with a native path into BuddyX, BuddyPress, and BuddyNext, surfacing events in the feed, profiles, and groups members already use.
- Attendee and RSVP data stays in your own WordPress database, the same ownership model as The Events Calendar, without Eventbrite’s per-ticket fee.
- Guest RSVP via magic link removes the signup friction that blocks casual attendees on a plugin that requires an account.
- Built-in migration path from The Events Calendar, EventON, Events Manager, and WP Event Manager.
Falls Short
- Four free calendar views is fewer than The Events Calendar’s decade of accumulated layout options; Week and Day views sit in Pro.
- No built-in event discovery marketplace the way Eventbrite has; you are relying on your own site’s traffic, not a third-party audience actively browsing for events.
- Younger in the market than The Events Calendar, with a smaller third-party ecosystem and fewer years of plugin-directory review history.
- Supports adding a join link such as Zoom to any event, but does not yet ship a dedicated virtual-conferencing scheduling panel.
A Real-World Scenario
Picture a professional association running a WordPress site on BuddyX: free monthly member meetups organized by volunteers, a members-only mentorship program with its own recurring sessions, and one paid conference a year that needs to cap attendance, collect payment, and check people in at the door.
On Eventbrite, the conference is easy to set up and benefits from Eventbrite’s own search traffic, but every ticket sold carries the 3.7% + $1.79 fee plus payment processing on top, and the attendee list lives on Eventbrite’s platform rather than the association’s own member database. The free monthly meetups could also run on Eventbrite at no direct cost, but members would be clicking out to a separate site to RSVP, with no tie-in to the member directory or mentorship program they already use. On The Events Calendar, the conference ticketing and the recurring mentorship sessions both work once Events Calendar Pro and Event Tickets Plus are purchased, roughly $400-$600 a year depending on the tier, but there is still no dashboard for a volunteer organizer to manage the meetups they run, and nothing shows up in a members-only space because the plugin has no concept of one. On Eventonomy, the free plugin covers the meetups and mentorship sessions at no cost, with volunteer organizers managing their own events from the My Events dashboard, and when conference season comes around, Eventonomy Pro’s Stripe checkout with coupon codes and door check-in handles the paid event for $99 a year, all while every event, free or paid, shows up in the same BuddyX activity feed members already check for everything else on the site.
Side-by-Side Comparison Table
| Plugin/Platform | Starting Price | Hosting Model | Ticketing Fee | Member Dashboard | Community / BuddyPress | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eventbrite | Free / fees on paid tickets | Hosted SaaS | 3.7% + $1.79 + 2.9% processing | No | None native | Marketplace discovery and hosted checkout without self-hosting |
| The Events Calendar | Free / $399-$599/yr Pro | Self-hosted WordPress | None (plugin license only) | No | None native | Mature, display-focused self-hosted calendar with the largest ecosystem |
| Eventonomy | Free / $99-$249/yr Pro | Self-hosted WordPress | None (plugin license only) | Yes, free | BuddyX, BuddyPress, BuddyNext | Community and membership sites running member-organized, recurring events |
Prices and fee structures change; check each vendor’s own pricing page before you commit. For a community or membership site specifically, the columns that decide the match are “Member Dashboard” and “Community / BuddyPress”: Eventonomy is the only option in this table that lets members manage their own events and shows up natively inside a BuddyPress, BuddyNext, or BuddyX community layer.
Total Cost of a Feature-Complete Setup
For a site running only free events, all three options are free to start: Eventbrite charges nothing to publish unlimited free events, The Events Calendar’s core is free on WordPress.org, and Eventonomy’s free plugin already covers unlimited events, RSVPs, waitlists, recurring series, and member submissions with no cap. The gap opens the moment money changes hands or you need the full feature set. Sell $5,000 in tickets on Eventbrite at the standard per-ticket fee and you are paying out several hundred dollars in fees on that one event, a cost that scales with every future event you run. A feature-complete setup on The Events Calendar, Pro plus Event Tickets Plus for checkout, typically lands around $400-$700 a year depending on the tier and add-ons, a flat cost regardless of how many tickets you sell. Eventonomy Pro matches or undercuts that at $99/year for one site or $249 once for a lifetime license, while adding the community integration neither competitor offers at any price.
Run Events on the WordPress Site You Already Own
Free forever for unlimited events and RSVPs, with no per-ticket platform fee and native BuddyX, BuddyPress, and BuddyNext integration no other event tool ships.
Download Eventonomy Free →Which Should You Actually Pick
Match the tool to who is running the events after the first one goes live, not just how simple the setup looks on day one.
- A single organizer who wants hosted discovery and does not mind a per-ticket fee: Eventbrite. You give up data ownership and pay fees that scale with sales, in exchange for a marketplace audience and zero self-hosting.
- A WordPress site that wants a mature, self-hosted calendar and is comfortable paying for Pro: The Events Calendar. The largest ecosystem of any free WordPress calendar plugin, with a real cost once you need recurring events or ticketing.
- A BuddyPress, BuddyNext, or BuddyX community where members RSVP, bring guests, and sometimes organize their own recurring meetups: Eventonomy. No other option here reaches into the feed, profiles, or groups, and the free plugin covers everything until you start charging for tickets.
For more on this specific pairing, see our deeper walkthrough on replacing The Events Calendar with Eventonomy on a community site, which covers the migration path step by step.
Where to Start
If your events are a side feature of a bigger community, install Eventonomy’s free plugin on a staging copy, add the calendar block to a page, and test an RSVP with a guest and a waitlist before touching the live site. If you are running a single ticketed event and want a hosted marketplace to handle discovery and payments, Eventbrite remains a reasonable choice for that one use case. And if your site needs a mature, self-hosted calendar with the deepest third-party ecosystem and you are prepared to pay for Pro, The Events Calendar is still the default for a reason. The honest question across all three: who is still updating this calendar in month six, you alone, or the members who actually show up to the events?
Interesting Reads
- Replace The Events Calendar on Your Community Site with Eventonomy
- How to Run a Virtual Summit on WordPress with Eventonomy
FAQs
Is Eventbrite free to use?
Yes, for free events. Eventbrite charges nothing to publish and manage unlimited free events. Fees only apply once you sell a paid ticket, currently a per-ticket service fee plus a separate payment processing fee, figures that vary by country, so check Eventbrite’s current pricing page.
Does Eventbrite have a WordPress plugin?
Not an official one anymore. Eventbrite’s own WordPress plugin was discontinued; the current ways to show Eventbrite events on a WordPress site are Eventbrite’s embeddable widget code or an unofficial third-party connector, neither of which gives you a native post type or self-hosted event data.
Is The Events Calendar’s free version actually usable, or is it a crippled trial?
It is genuinely usable. The free core includes event listings, month/list/day calendar views, saved venues and organizers, Google Maps, REST API access, and iCalendar export. Recurring events, additional views, and ticketing are what sit behind Pro.
How much does Events Calendar Pro cost?
Events Calendar Pro is listed at $399 a year for one site, with an Elite tier at $599. A fully feature-complete setup, adding ticketing and import add-ons, can run higher depending on which add-ons you need.
Which of the three keeps attendee data in my own database?
The Events Calendar and Eventonomy both store events, RSVPs, and attendee information in your own WordPress database, since they are self-hosted plugins. Eventbrite is a hosted platform, so attendee data lives on Eventbrite’s system unless you export it.
Which plugin works best with BuddyPress or BuddyNext?
Eventonomy. It is tested against BuddyX, surfaces activity in the BuddyNext feed and member profiles with BuddyNext, and adds a native Events tab to BuddyPress groups with Eventonomy Pro. Neither Eventbrite nor The Events Calendar has an equivalent integration at any price.
Can members submit their own events for free on any of these?
Eventonomy’s free plugin ships a member-facing My Events dashboard and frontend submission form with optional approval, at no cost. The Events Calendar has no member dashboard at any price, and Eventbrite has no concept of a member-run calendar at all, each organizer manages their own events independently on the platform.
Can I migrate from The Events Calendar to Eventonomy?
Yes. Eventonomy’s free plugin ships a built-in importer for The Events Calendar, along with EventON, Events Manager, and WP Event Manager. It moves event records, venues, organizers, categories, and recurring rules, but RSVPs, orders, and check-in history stay with the old system, so time the switch between events rather than mid-campaign.
Does Eventbrite charge fees on free events?
No. Eventbrite’s free events have no platform fee. Fees only apply to paid tickets, where a per-ticket service fee and a separate payment processing fee are deducted from the sale.
Which option is cheapest for a site that needs to sell tickets?
It depends on volume. Eventbrite has no upfront cost but fees scale with every ticket sold, which gets expensive fast at high volume. The Events Calendar and Eventonomy both charge a flat annual license instead, Eventonomy’s $99/year single-site Pro tier undercutting Events Calendar Pro’s $399/year, with no per-ticket fee on either once you own the license.
Is Eventbrite or The Events Calendar better for a WordPress site?
The Events Calendar lives inside your site, so you control the data and design, and it has 600,000+ active installs on WordPress.org. Eventbrite is a hosted marketplace with its own fee structure and branding. Choose The Events Calendar for ownership, Eventbrite when its audience and ticket handling matter more than control.