All-in-One Event Calendar vs Modern Events Calendar: Which One is the Most Efficient?

Posted by Josh Blackburn, in Event Plugins

Choosing the right event calendar plugin for your WordPress website can be quite challenging, given the numerous options available. A well-designed event calendar plugin helps you manage and display your events effectively and enhances user experience on your site. This article will compare two popular event calendar plugins: All-in-One Event Calendar and Modern Events Calendar.

All-in-One Event Calendar is known for its intuitive interface and powerful features that make event management a breeze. It offers various customization options and seamless integration with popular social media platforms. On the other hand, Modern Events Calendar is praised for its beautiful designs, ample display options, and advanced features such as ticketing and integration with Elementor and WooCommerce.

Key Takeaways

• All-in-One Event Calendar offers an intuitive interface and social media integration.
• Modern Events Calendar is known for attractive design options and advanced features such as ticketing.
• Both plugins have their unique advantages, and the choice ultimately depends on your specific needs and preferences.

All-in-One Event Calendar

Features

All-in-One Event Calendar is a powerful and widely-used WordPress plugin that enables you to create, manage, and display events on your website. With an impressive feature set, it comes with various options for customization, such as color-coded categories, event filtering, and drag-and-drop event editing. Its recurring and repeating events feature allows you to set up events that occur on a regular basis, such as weekly meetings or annual conferences. The plugin supports multiple organizers and allows front-end event submission for user-generated events.

Event information such as location, organizer, event cost, and registration details are easily accessible, and the plugin is schema-ready, ensuring better visibility on search engines. All-in-One Event Calendar offers different view options, including daily, weekly, and monthly views, as well as list, masonry, full calendar, cover, and carousel views to customize the presentation of events. Additionally, it’s compatible with Google Calendar, allowing you to synchronize events between platforms.

Free vs Pro Version

All-in-One Event Calendar comes in both a free version and a Pro version with additional features. The free version offers basic functionality, such as creating and displaying single-day, all-day, and multiple-day events. It also provides essential views, like list, full calendar views, and event filtering options.

The Pro version extends the plugin’s capabilities, introducing features like an event locations system, ticket sales and integration with popular ticketing systems, and support for hybrid events (online and in-person). The Pro version also improves overall performance, reducing load time with caching options, and offers advanced customization, such as custom colors and unique event images.

Ease of Use

Setting up All-in-One Event Calendar is straightforward, and its intuitive interface makes it easy for both novices and experienced WordPress users to manage events. The plugin provides clear guidance on creating and categorizing events, adding event details, and customizing the calendar’s appearance. Responsive design ensures that your calendar looks great on various screen sizes, fitting effortlessly into your WordPress site.

While All-in-One Event Calendar is feature-rich, the learning curve is minimal, allowing you to create and manage events without any hassle.

Modern Events Calendar

Features

Modern Events Calendar (MEC) is a responsive and customizable WordPress plugin that provides users various features to create and manage events. Notable features include:

• Calendar views: MEC offers various calendar views, such as daily, weekly, full calendar, list, masonry, cover, and carousel view.
• Event types: The plugin supports single-day, multi-day, and all-day events to suit different event preferences.
• Locations and organizers: It comes with an event locations system and multiple organizers, allowing easy association between events and their corresponding venues and organizers.
• Front-end event submission: Users can submit events from the front end of the WordPress site, making event submission more convenient and engaging.
• Recurring and repeating events: MEC allows you to create recurring events with options for custom repetition patterns.
• Event categories and filtering: The plugin supports event categories and offers flexible filtering options for users to find events according to their interests.
• Hybrid events: MEC can facilitate physical and virtual events, making it a versatile solution for varying event needs.
• Ticketing and registration: Modern Events Calendar integrates with popular ticketing and registration systems, allowing for seamless attendee management.

Free vs Pro Version

MEC is available in both a free version and a Pro version. The free version offers a good range of basic features, but the Pro version provides advanced functionality, including:

• Custom color schemes: Personalize calendar designs with custom color selections.
• Schema-ready: The Pro version displays your events more accurately in search engine results.
• Advanced filtering and search: More robust filtering and search options are available in the Pro version.
• Event venue and location features: Enhanced features, such as a larger event locations database and advanced venue options, are provided in the Pro version.
• Ticket sales: The Pro version supports more extensive ticket sales functionality, including integration with third-party platforms such as WooCommerce.

Ease of Use

Modern Events Calendar is designed to be easy for beginners and experienced WordPress users. The plugin’s user interface is intuitive; you can create and manage events without any coding skills. Additionally, MEC is optimized for fast load times and caching, ensuring optimal performance on your WordPress site.

Comparison

Functionality

All-in-One Event Calendar and Modern Events Calendar are powerful WordPress plugins designed to manage events on your website. They offer a variety of functions, with each providing some unique features.

All-in-One Event Calendar allows users to create events with detailed information, including registration, location, organizer, and event cost. It also supports Google Calendar integration and offers a responsive design for mobile devices. Some of its main features include:

• Recurring/repeating events
• Filtering options
• Event categories and tags
• Front-end event submission
• Schema-ready event structure

On the other hand, Modern Events Calendar comes with similar features plus additional options like hybrid events (online & offline), advanced event locations system, and custom color options. Key features include:

• Multiple calendar views: weekly, masonry, cover, carousel, map
• Ticketing functionality
• Event venue and organizer management
• Custom event labels
• All-day events

Customization

Both All-in-One Event Calendar and Modern Events Calendar offer customization options, allowing users to adjust the appearance of their event calendars, match the design to their WordPress themes, and display event information as needed.

All-in-One Event Calendar provides a variety of color-coded event categories, enabling users to customize event appearances. Users can also display events in monthly, daily, or posterboard view.

Modern Events Calendar offers even greater customization with numerous attractive calendar views, custom label options, and personalized venue and organizer templates.

Performance

A stable and reliable performance is crucial for any event calendar plugin. Both All-in-One Event Calendar and Modern Events Calendar have optimized codes for ensuring fast load time and minimal server resource consumption.

Modern Events Calendar has an edge in performance optimization since it supports caching, which reduces server load and improves page load speed.

Pricing

All-in-One Event Calendar offers a free version with essential features, but you’ll need to purchase the Pro version to unlock its full potential. The pricing starts from $9 per month, billed annually.

Modern Events Calendar also has a free Lite version in the WordPress repository. The Pro version costs $79 for one site license for more advanced features.

Support

Support is essential when dealing with WordPress plugins, especially when managing complex events and calendars. All-in-One Event Calendar and Modern Events Calendar provide extensive documentation and support services.

All-in-One Event Calendar offers email support, while Modern Events Calendar provides ticket-based support for Pro users. It’s important to consider which support system you prefer when choosing an event calendar plugin for your website.

Final Verdict

All-in-One Event Calendar and Modern Events Calendar are both excellent choices for managing events on your WordPress site. Each plugin offers unique features and functionalities, catering to various event management needs.

It provides an easy-to-use interface with features like a flexible event filtering system and color-coded category tagging. All-in-One Event Calendar is an excellent choice if you’re looking for a straightforward, efficient way to manage and display events on your WordPress website.

On the other hand, the Modern Events Calendar is highly customizable, responsive, and mobile-friendly. This plugin caters to users requiring a more comprehensive event management tool with free and pro versions available. Modern Events Calendar is also compatible with the latest version of WordPress (5.9.5) and is responsive, ensuring smooth functionality on any device.

If you’re leaning towards a plugin focusing more on ticketing and event registration, Event Espresso is another option worth considering. This plugin offers additional features like payment gateways, event check-in, and ticket scanning apps, making it ideal for those who need to manage a more complex event setup.

In conclusion, selecting the right WordPress event management plugin depends on your specific needs as a website owner. Both All-in-One Event Calendar and Modern Events Calendar offer their advantages, and choosing one over the other will be a matter of personal preference and the specific features you require. Take the time to assess your needs and explore the available options to ensure you make the right decision for your event management and website.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main differences between All-in-One and Modern Events Calendar?

All-in-One Events Calendar is a free events calendar plugin trusted by over 150,000 event creators around the globe, including institutions like UPS, AT&T, and Harvard University. It allows users to create, manage, and share events with the rest of the world. On the other hand, Modern Events Calendar Lite has both a free and premium version, offering a range of features and add-ons that cater to different user preferences.

Which calendar has better integration with WordPress?

All-in-One Events Calendar and Modern Events Calendar are designed to integrate seamlessly with WordPress. However, as the more popular plugin, Modern Events Calendar possibly offers better compatibility with a wider range of themes and other plugins. Users’ experiences might differ based on their theme and plugin preferences.

Are there pricing differences between the two?

Yes, there are pricing differences between the two calendars. The All-in-One Events Calendar is a free plugin, while Modern Events Calendar has a free Lite version and a premium version with additional features and add-ons, ranging from $45 to $455 depending on the package and the number of licenses purchased.

Which calendar is more user-friendly and customizable?

Both calendars provide a user-friendly interface and are customizable. The Events Calendar offers full customization and is designed with user experience in mind. Modern Events Calendar also offers a wide range of options and provides an intuitive interface for users. User preferences may affect which plugin they find more user-friendly and customizable.

How do their support systems compare?

The support systems for both calendars are comprehensive. All-in-One Events Calendar is backed by Timely, offering various support resources, including documentation and a help center, while Modern Events Calendar offers a thorough knowledge base, FAQ section, and dedicated support ticketing system. The quality of support may depend on individual queries and response times.

Do both calendars offer recurring events features?

Yes, All-in-One and Modern Events Calendar have recurring events features. These features allow users to create events that repeat daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly, depending on their needs and preferences.