If you are comparing Eventin alternatives, you already know what Eventin is good at: it is the Elementor-native conference plugin, with speaker grids, session tracks, badge generation, and Zoom integration built for people running a summit, not just publishing a meetup date. That is a real, narrow strength, and for a one-off conference site it is a reasonable pick.
Last updated: 6 November 2026
Where Eventin runs out of road is everything after the conference ends. There is no member dashboard for attendees to RSVP to a recurring Thursday session, no guest-count RSVP with a waitlist, no way for members to submit their own events without buying a separate form plugin, and nothing resembling BuddyPress or BuddyNext. If your site is a community that runs events every week, not a landing page for one conference, that gap matters a lot.
This guide compares Eventin against six real alternatives, starting with Eventonomy, the free plugin we build at Wbcom Designs for community and membership sites. We will stay honest about where Eventin still wins, because for a pure Elementor conference build, it sometimes does.
Quick Verdict
- →Pick Eventonomy if your events repeat, members RSVP and bring guests, and you want it inside BuddyX, BuddyPress, or BuddyNext.
- →Pick Modern Events Calendar if you want one all-inclusive Pro license covering virtual events, ticketing, and 14+ calendar views.
- →Pick The Events Calendar if you need Eventbrite/Meetup imports and the deepest ticketing ecosystem.
- →Stay on Eventin if you are running one Elementor-built conference with speakers and tracks and nothing recurring after it.
In This Guide
Where Eventin Runs Out of Road
Eventin, by ThimPress, is one of the better-known Elementor-focused event plugins, and the WordPress event category it sits in is genuinely crowded: The Events Calendar’s free core alone has more than 600,000 active installs, and dozens of other event plugins each carve out a different niche underneath that. Eventin’s niche is the conference: speaker bios, session schedules organized into tracks, QR-code badges, attendee check-in, and Zoom integration for virtual or hybrid sessions, all wired into Elementor widgets so a non-developer can lay out a conference landing page visually.
The free version covers basic event listing and a handful of Elementor widgets. The paid tiers unlock the speaker and schedule builder, badge generation, attendee check-in, and virtual conference tooling, with WooCommerce, Stripe, and PayPal handling ticket payment. Pricing scales from a single-site tier up through agency bundles; check Eventin’s own pricing page for current numbers since tiers shift.
What is genuinely missing, at any tier: a member-facing dashboard where attendees track their own RSVPs across multiple events, a guest-count RSVP with an automatic waitlist, a way for members (not just admins) to submit their own events, and any integration with a community layer like BuddyPress or BuddyNext. Eventin assumes one organizer running one event or one series of sessions. It does not assume a community running dozens of small events a year, organized by different members.
That gap is not a bug, it is the design. Eventin was built for the agency or marketing team that ships one conference landing page a year and wants it to look expensive without hiring a developer. A neighborhood association, a hobby club, or a course community running a weekly or monthly session needs something else: a plugin that treats the member, not the organizer, as the person who shows up to use it most often.
Market snapshot
The Events Calendar’s free core plugin lists more than 600,000 active installations on WordPress.org (WordPress.org plugin directory, checked November 2026). Install count is a measure of reach, not fit: a conference site and a weekly community meetup need very different features.
1. Eventonomy, Best Eventin Alternative for Community Sites
Eventonomy is the free WordPress events plugin we build at Wbcom Designs, built around the opposite assumption from Eventin: your events are something members do together, over and over, not a single landing page you build once.
The free plugin ships month, list, grid, and upcoming calendar views, plus a calendar block for any page. Members RSVP going, maybe, or no, with your own custom RSVP questions, and can bring guests up to a limit you set, counted against capacity. Once an event fills up, new RSVPs land on an automatic waitlist instead of a flat “sold out” page. Guests without an account can RSVP with a name and email and manage it later through a magic link, which matters for an open community event where not everyone wants to register.
Daily, weekly, and monthly recurring events are free, along with add-to-calendar links, an ICS feed, and day-before and hour-before email reminders. Members get a My Events dashboard and a submission form, so a hiking club, a study group, or a volunteer team can run its own calendar, with or without your approval on each event. None of this sits behind a paywall the way Eventin’s speaker tools and badges do.
Eventonomy Pro exists for the day you start charging for tickets: Stripe, PayPal, or WooCommerce checkout with tax, fees, and coupons, plus door check-in, map views, SMS reminders through Twilio, and organizer reports. Pro runs $99/yr for one site, $199/yr for five sites, or $249/yr unlimited, with lifetime options from $249 to $629 if you want to skip renewals.
The feature Eventin has no answer for at all is community integration. Eventonomy is tested against BuddyX, so event pages inherit your theme instead of fighting it. On BuddyNext, Eventonomy activity surfaces in the community feed, search, and member profiles, with reminders landing in the same notification bell members already check. On classic BuddyPress, Eventonomy Pro adds a native Events tab to every group, with a list or calendar view and the option to attach one event to several groups. If your site runs on BuddyX or BuddyNext already, our guide on building a complete community on WordPress with BuddyX shows where events fits into the full stack.
Side-by-Side Comparison Table
| Plugin | Starting Price | Elementor Widgets | Recurring Events | Member Submissions | Community / BuddyPress | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eventin | Free / paid tiers | Yes, native focus | Pro | No member dashboard | None | Elementor conferences, one-off summits |
| Eventonomy | Free / $99-$249/yr | Works with any theme/builder | Free (yearly rules in Pro) | Yes, free | BuddyX, BuddyPress, BuddyNext | Community & membership sites |
| Modern Events Calendar | Free / ~$75/yr | Widgets + shortcodes | Free and Pro | Yes, free and Pro | None native | Feature-dense all-in-one calendars |
| The Events Calendar | Free / $99+/yr | Via theme templates | Pro add-on | Community Events add-on | None native | Public calendars, ticketing, imports |
| Sugar Calendar | Free / $49-$199/yr | Gutenberg block only | Professional tier only | No, any tier | None | Lean publishing, podcasts, authors |
| WP Event Manager | Free / $19+ per add-on | Shortcodes | Paid add-on | Yes, free core | None native | Lean, performance-first listings |
| Amelia Events | $69-$399/yr | React widget | Yes, core | No, booking-only | None native | Paid capacity-limited workshops |
| EventON | $29 one-time + add-ons | Shortcodes | Yes, core | Action User add-on | None native | Design-led brand calendars |
Prices and tier names change; check each vendor’s own pricing page before you buy. For a community site, the column that decides the match is “Community / BuddyPress”: Eventonomy is the only plugin here with a native path into BuddyX, BuddyPress, and BuddyNext.
2. Modern Events Calendar
Modern Events Calendar (MEC), by Webnus, is the closest thing to a direct Eventin competitor on features, because it also bundles virtual events, ticketing, and a builder into one plugin, just with a much bigger calendar surface. The free version on WordPress.org ships more than a dozen calendar views (month, week, day, list, grid, agenda, masonry, timetable, carousel, slider, tile, cover, countdown, map), recurring events, search and filter, and frontend event submission. MEC Pro, priced around $75/yr for all features on one site, adds the booking and ticketing engine, PayPal/Stripe/WooCommerce gateways, invoices, an event builder, and virtual event integrations across Zoom, Google Meet, Jitsi, BigBlueButton, and Webex.
Against Eventin specifically, MEC’s advantage is breadth: one Pro license covers virtual events, ticketing, and every calendar view, where Eventin’s conference-specific tools (speaker grids, tracks, badges) have no real equivalent in MEC. MEC’s advantage over Eventin elsewhere is frontend submission in the free tier and a single all-inclusive price instead of stacked tiers. The trade-off is weight: MEC’s footprint is heavier than a lean plugin because so much ships by default, and there is still no BuddyPress or BuddyNext integration out of the box.
3. The Events Calendar
The Events Calendar (TEC) is the default WordPress event plugin, built by the team formerly known as Modern Tribe, with more than 600,000 active installs of the free core alone. If what you actually need from Eventin was never the conference tooling but just a reliable public calendar with imports and ticketing, TEC is the obvious next stop.
The free core covers month, list, and day views, single-event pages, venues, organizers, and an iCalendar export feed. Events Calendar Pro, at roughly $99/yr for one site, adds recurring events with exception handling and more views. Event Aggregator (roughly $99/yr) imports from Meetup, Google Calendar, iCal, and Eventbrite on a schedule, something neither Eventin nor MEC does natively. Event Tickets Plus (roughly $89/yr) layers WooCommerce-powered paid tickets, attendee management, a check-in app, and QR codes on top. A fully loaded TEC site typically lands around $188-$287 in year one.
TEC has no speaker/track builder and no Elementor-native widget set, so for a pure conference landing page Eventin’s purpose-built tools are faster to assemble. For anything beyond one conference, TEC’s ecosystem and import tooling go further. Neither has a BuddyPress or BuddyNext layer.
4. Sugar Calendar
Sugar Calendar, by the Sandhills team behind Easy Digital Downloads and AffiliateWP, is the anti-Eventin: deliberately minimal instead of feature-dense. The free Lite version covers single events, a calendar block for the editor, and a clean event detail page. Personal (roughly $49/yr) adds the admin calendar view. Plus (roughly $99/yr) adds Stripe ticketing and calendar feeds. Professional (roughly $199/yr) finally adds recurring events and custom event meta.
If what frustrated you about Eventin was its complexity and the Elementor dependency, Sugar Calendar’s simplicity is the cure, but it is a different cure than Eventonomy’s. Sugar Calendar has no speaker tools, no frontend submission at any price, and no community layer either, so it solves “too complex” without solving “members can’t run their own events.” For a deeper look at this exact trade-off, see our Modern Events Calendar vs Sugar Calendar comparison.
5. WP Event Manager
WP Event Manager takes the performance-first route Eventin never considers. Its free core is deliberately kept under 1MB, with Ajax-powered event listings, filtering, search, and a frontend submission form built into the free tier. Everything beyond that, a month-grid Calendar view, Registrations, Sell Tickets, Recurring Events, Google Maps, Speaker Schedule, Sponsors, Zoom Integration, is an individually priced add-on running roughly $19-$69 each. A typical bundle lands around $150-$220/yr, with lifetime pricing available on most modules.
Interestingly, WP Event Manager does have a Speaker Schedule add-on, which is the closest any plugin here comes to Eventin’s conference focus outside of MEC, but it is bolted onto a lightweight listing core rather than built around Elementor the way Eventin is. For sites that want to pay only for the add-ons they use, it is the leanest route; for a visual, drag-and-drop conference page, it is more setup work than Eventin.
The sub-1MB core also means WP Event Manager rarely slows down an admin screen the way a fully-loaded page builder plugin can on shared hosting, which is worth weighing if your site already runs Elementor plus several other builder-dependent plugins.
6. Amelia Events
Amelia, by TMS Plugins, is a booking platform first; the Events feature extends its appointment-booking engine to paid, capacity-limited group events. An Amelia event is a structured booking flow: a start date, a capacity, a price, and a multi-step checkout wizard handling guest counts, custom fields, tax, and payment through Stripe, PayPal, Razorpay, Mollie, or WooCommerce, with confirmation and reminder emails firing automatically and SMS available via Twilio.
Pricing runs Basic at roughly $69/yr for one domain, Pro at roughly $159/yr for three domains, and Developer at roughly $399/yr for fifteen domains, with lifetime tiers from around $249. Against Eventin, Amelia wins on the actual booking-and-payment checkout experience, which is more polished than Eventin’s WooCommerce-based flow. It loses badly on conference-specific tooling: no speaker grid, no session tracks, no Elementor widgets, no public calendar browsing at all beyond a shortcode list.
7. EventON
EventON, sold by AshanJay on CodeCanyon, is a one-time-purchase alternative to Eventin’s subscription tiers. The base plugin is a $29 one-time buy with more than 38,000 sales and a 4.6 average rating, built around a genuinely beautiful single-page accordion calendar with color-coded categories and repeat events in the core. Add-ons for tickets, bookings, Stripe payments, front-end submission (Action User), Mailchimp sync, and maps are typically $25 each, so a calendar-plus-tickets setup lands around $80-$120 one-time with no renewal pressure.
EventON does not try to compete with Eventin’s conference tooling at all; there is no speaker/track builder and no badge system. What it offers instead is a genuinely gorgeous general-purpose calendar at a lower total cost than Eventin’s subscription model, if a conference-specific feature set is not actually what you need.
Eventin was built to make one conference look good in an afternoon. Eventonomy was built to make the fiftieth Tuesday meetup still feel easy, because by then a member is running it, not you.
Which Should You Actually Pick
Match the plugin to what happens after the first event, not just how good the landing page looks on day one.
- A BuddyPress, BuddyNext, or BuddyX community running recurring meetups members organize themselves: Eventonomy. No other plugin here reaches into the feed, profiles, or groups.
- A feature-dense all-in-one calendar with virtual event platforms and ticketing bundled: Modern Events Calendar.
- A public calendar needing Eventbrite/Meetup imports and the deepest ticketing ecosystem: The Events Calendar.
- Events as a genuinely secondary feature on a site that does something else: Sugar Calendar.
- A lean listing site where you only want to pay for one or two add-ons: WP Event Manager.
- Paid, capacity-limited workshops where the booking checkout is the product: Amelia Events.
- A design-forward general calendar on a one-time budget: EventON.
- One Elementor-built conference with speakers, tracks, and badges, nothing recurring after it: Eventin can still be the right, narrow answer.
For more plugins in this category, see our best event management plugins for WordPress roundup, and if Sugar Calendar’s minimal approach is also on your shortlist, read our Sugar Calendar alternatives guide for the same comparison from that angle.
FAQs
What is the best free Eventin alternative?
Eventonomy. Its free plugin covers RSVPs, guest counts, a waitlist, recurring events, and a member submission dashboard, none of which Eventin offers at any tier.
Does Eventin have a free version?
Yes. The free Eventin plugin on WordPress.org covers basic event listing and a set of Elementor widgets. Speaker and schedule tools, badges, check-in, and virtual conference integration are all paid.
Can Eventin let members submit their own events?
Not through a member dashboard. Eventin is built for one organizer managing one conference, not for members running their own recurring meetups. Eventonomy, Modern Events Calendar, and WP Event Manager all support member-submitted events in their free tiers.
Which Eventin alternative works best with BuddyPress or BuddyNext?
Eventonomy. It is tested against BuddyX, surfaces activity in the BuddyNext feed and member profiles with BuddyNext Pro active, and adds a native Events tab to BuddyPress groups with Eventonomy Pro. No other plugin in this comparison has an equivalent integration.
Do I need Elementor to use these alternatives?
No. Eventin is the only plugin in this comparison built specifically around Elementor widgets. Eventonomy, The Events Calendar, Modern Events Calendar, Sugar Calendar, WP Event Manager, Amelia, and EventON all work with the block editor or classic themes without Elementor installed.
Does Modern Events Calendar have speaker and track tools like Eventin?
Not in the same dedicated way. MEC focuses on calendar views, booking, and virtual event platforms rather than a speaker-grid-and-track builder. WP Event Manager’s Speaker Schedule add-on is the closest alternative to that specific feature outside of Eventin itself.
Which alternative is cheapest for a one-off conference?
EventON’s one-time purchase, if you do not need Eventin’s speaker/track/badge tooling. If you do need that conference-specific tooling, Eventin or Modern Events Calendar Pro remain the more complete options; neither WP Event Manager nor Eventonomy currently ship a dedicated badge generator.
Can I import my existing Eventin events into Eventonomy?
Eventonomy’s free plugin ships an importer for The Events Calendar, EventON, Events Manager, and WP Event Manager. A direct Eventin importer is not currently part of that list, so check Eventonomy’s documentation for current migration options, or recreate a smaller Eventin catalog by hand since conference events are usually few in number.
Is Amelia Events a good Eventin alternative?
Only if your event is really a paid, capacity-limited booking rather than a conference with speakers and sessions. Amelia has no speaker tools, no Elementor widgets, and no public calendar browsing, so it solves a narrower, different problem than Eventin does.
Which alternative has the largest install base?
The Events Calendar, with more than 600,000 active installs of its free core, well ahead of every other plugin named here, including Eventin.
Does Eventonomy support virtual events like Eventin does?
Eventonomy supports adding a join link (such as a Zoom link) to any event today, but it does not yet ship Eventin’s dedicated virtual-conference tooling such as a built-in Zoom scheduling panel. Modern Events Calendar Pro currently has the deepest native virtual event integration of any plugin in this comparison, covering Zoom, Google Meet, Jitsi, BigBlueButton, and Webex.
Where to Start
If your events repeat and members run some of them, 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 still running one Elementor-built conference and nothing recurring after it, Eventin’s existing setup may genuinely be the right tool for that one job. The honest question either way: what happens to this calendar in month two?