Three plugins turn up in almost every “WordPress events plugin” search right now: The Events Calendar, Eventin, and increasingly Eventonomy. The first is a display-focused calendar with a 15-year head start and the biggest install base in the category by far. The second is an Elementor-native plugin built around one assumption: a single organizer designing one ticketed conference page, with speaker grids, session tracks, and badge generation. Eventonomy starts from a different assumption than either: that events on a community site repeat every week, members RSVP to them and bring guests, and some of those members run their own meetups without ever touching wp-admin.
Last updated: 6 November 2026
Quick answer: Pick The Events Calendar for a display-first calendar with the biggest install base. Pick Eventin if you are building one Elementor-designed, ticketed conference page. Pick Eventonomy if members of a community site run recurring events and RSVP, with BuddyPress and BuddyNext integration.
That one-off-conference versus recurring-community-events distinction is the whole comparison. A plugin built to make one Elementor landing page look great for one event in March does not automatically handle a hiking club’s Saturday meetup every week of the year, or a 400-member forum where a dozen different people post their own gatherings. We make Eventonomy at Wbcom Designs, so we have a stake in the answer, but every figure below is cited to a vendor pricing page or a WordPress.org listing, dated 30 October 2026, so you can check it yourself before deciding. Where we could not verify a specific number, we say so instead of guessing.
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).
- Eventin reports 10,000+ active installations on WordPress.org (checked 6 November 2026).
The WordPress Event Plugin Market in 2026
The Events Calendar is the category’s default answer, and the numbers show why. WordPress.org lists its free core at 600,000+ active installations with a 4.2 out of 5 average across 2,461 reviews, checked 30 October 2026. BuiltWith’s live-site tracking, cited the same day, counts 472,760 live sites currently running it, well ahead of every other dedicated events plugin on WordPress.org. Eventin, by contrast, sits at 10,000+ active installations with 413 ratings on its own WordPress.org listing. That is not a small plugin by any measure, but it is a fraction of The Events Calendar’s footprint despite a newer, more feature-dense ticketing engine.
The Numbers
- →472,760 live sites run The Events Calendar, per BuiltWith, cited 30 October 2026, the category’s clear default.
- →600,000+ active installations and a 4.2/5 average across 2,461 reviews for The Events Calendar’s free core, per WordPress.org.
- →10,000+ active installations for Eventin’s free core, per WordPress.org, a fraction of The Events Calendar’s reach despite a deeper ticketing feature set.
The gap between those two numbers is not really about feature depth. Eventin ships a built-in event template builder, WooCommerce ticketing, Zoom integration, and a separate Elementor addon with 21 single-event widgets from the same developer, Arraytics, a genuinely more modern stack than a 15-year-old calendar plugin. What it does not ship is breadth of fit. The Events Calendar works for almost any public calendar use case out of the box, free. Eventin is built, by its own marketing and its own template builder, around one organizer designing pages for one event or one tightly scoped series. A plugin aimed at that single scenario will always reach fewer installs than one aimed at “anyone who needs a calendar,” no matter how good the ticketing engine is underneath.
1. The Events Calendar
The Events Calendar, by The Events Calendar team (part of StellarWP), is the WordPress.org default for a reason: a free custom post type for events, multiple calendar views, venue and organizer fields, Google Maps integration, and iCal/Google Calendar export, all with no license key required.
Key Strengths
The free plugin is a real, well-built calendar, not a teaser for the paid add-ons. Month, list, and day views ship free, along with venue and organizer archives, category and tag filtering, and the export options members already expect from any calendar tool. At 600,000+ active installs and a 4.2-star average across 2,461 reviews on WordPress.org, checked 30 October 2026, it has the kind of long public track record that makes installing it on a client site an easy call. For a straightforward public calendar, no RSVPs, no member submissions, no ticketing required, the free core genuinely covers the job and looks good doing it.
Where It Falls Short
Everything a community site actually needs beyond “here is what’s happening” sits behind paid add-ons: Events Calendar Pro for recurring events, advanced views, and custom fields; Community Events for front-end member submission; Event Tickets Plus for e-commerce ticketing; and separate add-ons again for Event Aggregator imports and Promoter email reminders. There is no native BuddyPress or BuddyNext integration at any tier, and member RSVPs are not a built-in concept at all, the plugin assumes an admin publishing events and visitors reading them, not members organizing their own. Stacking the add-ons you actually need for a community site, recurring events plus member submission plus ticketing, adds up to multiple separate purchases rather than one upgrade.
2. Eventin
Eventin, from Arraytics, is an event registration and ticketing plugin built around its own front-end template builder, with WooCommerce checkout, Zoom integration, and recurring and virtual event support, plus a separate Elementor addon with 21 single-event widgets for teams who design in Elementor instead.
Key Strengths
Eventin’s template builder is genuinely more modern than a classic post-type-and-widgets calendar: speaker grids, session and track schedules, QR-coded badge generation, and a Zoom panel for virtual sessions all ship as first-class pieces of the event page, not bolted-on add-ons. WooCommerce ticketing means anyone already running a WooCommerce store gets ticket sales through a checkout flow they already know, and the free core on WordPress.org is enough to build and sell tickets for a real event without paying anything upfront. For an organizer running one well-designed conference landing page, with speakers, sessions, and a single registration flow, Eventin’s building blocks fit the job precisely.
Where It Falls Short
Eventin’s own template builder and feature set assume one organizer running one event or one tightly scoped series, not a community running dozens of small, member-run events a year. There is no member-facing RSVP dashboard where a regular user can see or manage what they are attending, no guest-count RSVP with an automatic waitlist the way an open community event needs, and no way for an ordinary member to submit their own event without admin access to the dashboard. There is also no mention anywhere in Eventin’s documentation of BuddyPress or BuddyNext integration, the plugin has no concept of a community layer at all. Pricing follows a tiered annual license model gated by site count and add-ons such as WooCommerce, Zoom, and the Elementor template kit; tiers and rates shift, so check Eventin’s own pricing page for the current numbers before budgeting.
3. Eventonomy
Eventonomy is the free WordPress events plugin we build at Wbcom Designs, built around a third assumption that neither plugin above shares: your events repeat on a schedule, members RSVP and bring guests, and some of those members run their own meetups without ever opening wp-admin.
Key Strengths
The free plugin ships unlimited events and RSVPs, going, maybe, or waitlist, with custom RSVP questions and a guest count per RSVP that counts against capacity. Month, List, Grid, and Upcoming calendar views come free, along with an ICS feed and add-to-calendar links. Daily, weekly, and monthly recurring events are free too, the one line item both The Events Calendar and Eventin either gate behind Pro or do not treat as a community feature at all. Members get a My Events dashboard and a submission form, so a book club or a hiking group can run its own calendar on your site, with or without your approval on each event, no license key needed. Guests without an account can RSVP with just a name and email and manage it later through a magic link, which matters for an open community event where forcing a login costs you attendance.
The feature neither competitor has an answer for at all is community integration. Eventonomy is tested against the BuddyX theme, so event pages inherit your site’s design instead of fighting it. With 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 the option to attach one event to several groups at once, per Eventonomy’s BuddyPress documentation. Pro also adds paid ticketing through Stripe, PayPal, or WooCommerce, tax and coupon support, maps and geocoding, and a secure-token door check-in system with organizer analytics.
Where It Falls Short
Eventonomy is younger than either competitor, so its install base and public review history are smaller, which is a fair thing to weigh if a long track record on WordPress.org matters to you. It does not ship a dedicated Elementor template builder the way Eventin does, or Eventin’s speaker-grid and badge-generation widgets, so a team that designs every event page by hand in a page builder will find Eventin’s toolkit more purpose-built for that one job. The deeper ticketing and reporting tools, paid checkout, tax and coupons, door check-in, organizer analytics, maps, and SMS reminders through Twilio, all sit in Pro, at $99/year for one site, $199/year for five, or $249/year unlimited, with lifetime options from $249 to $629 if you would rather skip renewals, per eventonomy.org’s Free vs Pro page, checked 30 October 2026.
Side-by-Side Comparison Table
| Plugin | Free Tier Covers | Recurring Events | Member-Submitted Events | Community / BuddyPress | Starting Paid Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Events Calendar | Calendar views, venues, organizers, iCal/Google export | Pro add-on | Community Events add-on | None, at any tier | Varies by add-on bundle |
| Eventin | Event template builder, WooCommerce tickets, Zoom, recurring/virtual events | Free core | No, at any tier | None, at any tier | Tiered annual license, check vendor page |
| Eventonomy | RSVPs, waitlist, recurring events, member submissions, all free | Free | Yes, free | BuddyX, BuddyPress, BuddyNext | $99/yr (1 site) |
Prices and tiers change; check each vendor’s own pricing page before you commit. For a community site specifically, the column that decides the match is “Community / BuddyPress”: Eventonomy is the only plugin here with a native path into BuddyX, BuddyPress, and BuddyNext, and the only one that lets ordinary members submit recurring events without touching wp-admin.
What It Costs
A fair cost comparison has to account for what each plugin forces you to buy, not just the headline price of its cheapest paid tier.
| Scenario | The Events Calendar | Eventin | Eventonomy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public calendar, no RSVPs, no recurring events | $0 | $0 (free core) | $0 |
| Recurring weekly meetups | Pro add-on required | $0 (free core) | $0 |
| Members submit their own recurring events | Community Events add-on required | Not available at any tier | $0 |
| Paid tickets, one site | Event Tickets Plus required | Paid tier, check vendor page | $99/yr |
| BuddyPress or BuddyNext group integration | Not available at any tier | Not available at any tier | Pro, native group tab and feed integration |
The pattern across every row is the same one from the strengths-and-weaknesses sections above: The Events Calendar charges per add-on the moment a community site needs recurring events, member submissions, or ticketing, stacking costs rather than bundling them. Eventin’s free core is actually generous for a single ticketed event, but has no path at any price to member-submitted events or community integration, because that was never the use case it was built to solve. Eventonomy includes recurring events and member submissions in its $0 tier and keeps the one paid upgrade, Pro, to the features that genuinely cost money to run: payment processing, SMS, and advanced reporting.
Real-World Scenario: A City Tech Meetup Group Picks a Plugin
A city-wide tech meetup group runs a WordPress community site for about 900 members, with a free monthly meetup, a handful of member-run smaller sessions, a hiring mixer, a beginner workshop night, a portfolio review, and one flagship one-day conference each autumn with paid tickets, named speakers, and a schedule of sessions.
They first try The Events Calendar’s free core, since it is the plugin every WordPress tutorial mentions and the calendar itself is easy to set up. It handles the public listing of the monthly meetup well, but recurring events need the Pro add-on, and letting two trusted organizers post their own sessions needs the separate Community Events add-on on top of that, with no BuddyPress path for either. They look at Eventin next, specifically for the autumn conference, and it is genuinely good at that one job: a polished landing page with a speaker grid, a session schedule, and WooCommerce ticket sales, built in an afternoon with the template builder. But Eventin has no answer for the rest of the calendar, the monthly meetup, the hiring mixer, the member-run workshop nights, none of that fits a one-event ticketing tool, and there is still no member RSVP dashboard or BuddyPress integration at any tier.
They settle on Eventonomy for the community side: the free plugin covers the monthly meetup, the member-run sessions with approval turned on, and RSVPs with guest counts and a waitlist, all at $0, with event activity surfacing in their BuddyNext member feed instead of living on a page nobody checks. For the autumn conference, they add Eventonomy Pro at $99/year for their one site, which unlocks paid ticketing, tax handling, and door check-in for the flagship event, on the same plugin members already use every month rather than a second tool bolted on for one day a year. Total first-year cost: $99, against a stack of separate add-on purchases on The Events Calendar that still would not have covered member submissions, or a one-event tool on Eventin that would have left the other eleven months of the calendar unsolved.
Which Should You Actually Pick
Match the plugin to what your events actually look like across a full year, not just how the one event you are planning right now looks in the demo.
- A community or membership site with recurring events members RSVP to and sometimes run themselves: Eventonomy. No other plugin here reaches into BuddyX, BuddyPress, or BuddyNext, and recurring events and member submissions are free.
- A public calendar with no community layer, no RSVP complexity, mostly informational listings: The Events Calendar’s free core is a solid, well-reviewed choice, as long as you never need recurring events, member submissions, or ticketing without paying for add-ons.
- One well-designed conference or ticketed event page, built in Elementor or Eventin’s own builder, with speakers and sessions: Eventin, for that single event, is genuinely the most purpose-built tool of the three.
- A site that needs both a recurring community calendar and an occasional ticketed flagship event: Start with Eventonomy’s free plugin for the community calendar, and add Pro only when the ticketed event becomes real, rather than running two separate plugins that do not talk to each other.
One more thing worth weighing before you install anything: a plugin built around one event does not get more useful as your calendar fills up with recurring ones, it just stops fitting. Eventin’s template builder will always be the sharpest tool for a single polished conference page, and The Events Calendar’s free core will always be a reasonable public listing. Neither one grows into a community calendar the way Eventonomy is built to from day one, because growing into that was never the problem either of them set out to solve.
Where to Start
Write down what your events actually look like across the next twelve months: do they repeat, do members run any of them, and is there one flagship ticketed event on the calendar too. That list decides more than any feature comparison table. If your answer includes a community layer or member-run events, 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 your live site. If you are designing one polished page for one upcoming conference and nothing recurring, Eventin’s template builder is worth a look. And if you just need a reliable, well-reviewed public calendar with nothing recurring or member-submitted, The Events Calendar’s free core still does that job well.
FAQs
What is the best free WordPress event plugin for a community site?
Eventonomy. Its free plugin covers unlimited RSVPs, recurring events, and member-submitted events, none of which The Events Calendar or Eventin include in their free tiers without an add-on or a use case they do not support at all.
Does The Events Calendar have a free version?
Yes. The free core on WordPress.org covers calendar views, venues, organizers, and iCal/Google Calendar export, with 600,000+ active installations and a 4.2-star average across 2,461 reviews, checked 30 October 2026. Recurring events, member submissions, and ticketing each require a separate paid add-on.
Is Eventin good for recurring community events?
Its free core does support recurring and virtual events on the calendar itself, but the plugin has no member RSVP dashboard, no guest-count RSVP with a waitlist, and no way for ordinary members to submit their own events. It is built around one organizer running one event or series, not a community running dozens of member-organized ones.
Which plugin works best with BuddyPress or BuddyNext?
Eventonomy. It is tested against BuddyX, surfaces activity in the BuddyNext feed and member profiles, and adds a native Events tab to BuddyPress groups with Eventonomy Pro. Neither The Events Calendar nor Eventin offers community integration at any tier.
Can members submit their own events for free on any of these plugins?
Only on Eventonomy. The Events Calendar requires its Community Events add-on for front-end submission, and Eventin does not offer member-submitted events at any tier.
What does The Events Calendar Pro cost?
Pricing is bundled across several separate add-ons (Events Calendar Pro, Community Events, Event Tickets Plus, Event Aggregator, Promoter) rather than one license, and rates change. Check The Events Calendar’s own pricing page for the current numbers before budgeting for the specific features you need.
How much does Eventin cost?
Eventin’s free core on WordPress.org handles a real ticketed event at $0. Paid tiers follow an annual license model gated by site count and add-ons such as WooCommerce, Zoom, and the Elementor template kit; tiers shift, so check eventin.co/pricing directly for current rates.
How much does Eventonomy Pro cost?
$99/year for one site, $199/year for five sites, or $249/year unlimited, with lifetime options from $249 to $629, per eventonomy.org’s Free vs Pro page, checked 30 October 2026.
Which plugin has the largest install base?
The Events Calendar, by a wide margin: 600,000+ active installations per WordPress.org and 472,760 live sites per BuiltWith, both checked 30 October 2026, against Eventin’s 10,000+ active installations on WordPress.org.
Can I import my events from The Events Calendar into Eventonomy?
Yes. Eventonomy’s free plugin ships an importer for The Events Calendar, along with Events Manager, EventON, WP Event Manager, and Sugar Calendar, which reads existing events, venues, organizers, categories, and tags, with a preview step before anything is created. RSVPs and bookings themselves do not move and need to be collected again on the new calendar; see our full guide to replacing The Events Calendar with Eventonomy for the step-by-step process.
Is Eventin better than The Events Calendar?
Eventin is aimed at a single ticketed conference built with Elementor, with speaker grids and session tracks. The Events Calendar is a general calendar with 600,000+ active installs against Eventin’s 10,000+. Pick Eventin for one conference page, The Events Calendar for an ongoing calendar, and neither is built around member-run events.
Sources
- Fortune Business Insights: Event Management Software Market
- WordPress.org: The Events Calendar
- WordPress.org: Eventin
Interesting Reads:
8 Best Eventin Alternatives in 2026
Replace The Events Calendar on Your Community Site with Eventonomy