When it comes to managing events on WordPress, selecting the right calendar plugin can significantly impact your user experience. After extensive testing and research, I’ve compared three notable options: EventKoi, The Events Calendar, and Pie Calendar. Here’s my comprehensive breakdown of each plugin’s strengths and weaknesses.

Pie Calendar: The Clear Winner for Modern WordPress Sites

Strengths

  • Simplicity That Works: Pie Calendar lets you effortlessly turn any post on your WordPress site into an event, making it visible on a user-friendly front-end calendar. It doesn’t lock you into any post type – use the default WordPress posts or pages, or create your own Custom Post Type (CPT)
  • Lightning Fast and Lightweight: Unlike bloated alternatives, Pie Calendar is intentionally lean, ensuring your site’s performance remains optimal
  • Ultimate Flexibility: Works with any post type, integrates seamlessly with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), and adapts to your existing workflow rather than forcing you into a rigid system
  • Developer-Friendly: Custom Field Support: Already have your own custom fields for Date and Time via Advanced Custom Fields or Meta Box? No problem! Pie Calendar can use custom fields for event dates and times.
  • No Learning Curve: Work directly in the WordPress Editor with existing posts and interfaces you’re already familiar with. There’s no external editor or custom interface to learn.
  • Excellent Value: Lifetime unlimited site license for $299, making it incredibly cost-effective for agencies and multi-site owners

Minor Weaknesses

  • Newer plugin (less established user base compared to alternatives)
  • Slow updates

The Events Calendar: The Established Veteran With Growing Pains

Strengths

  • Market Leader: The Events Calendar: #1 calendar plugin for WordPress with hundreds of thousands of users
  • Feature-Rich: Comprehensive event management system with venues, organizers, and detailed event information
  • Extensive Add-on Ecosystem: Wide range of premium add-ons for specialized functionality
  • Google Calendar Integration: Seamless importing and syncing capabilities
  • Multiple Calendar Views: Month, list, day, week views available

Significant Weaknesses

  • Bloated and Heavy: The Events Calendar plugin is a bloated beast. The core plugin and the Pro add-on are almost 60MB in total.
  • Steep Learning Curve: “This is an EXTREMELY difficult plugin to configure and customize. I wish there were something better. All they can do is point people to a very confusing (to non-programmers) Themer’s Guide.”
  • Aggressive Pricing: Recent price increases from $99 to $149 (50% increase) have frustrated long-term users
  • Poor Support Experience: “They don’t really have ANY support that is useful.”
  • Technical Issues: Users report “SEO issues stating duplicate pages for every event created” and compatibility problems with other plugins

EventKoi: Beautiful But Restrictive

Update: For transparency, while Pie Calendar is still my go-to, I did become a Founding Partner in EventKoi.

Strengths

  • Lovely User Interface: Modern, polished design that’s visually appealing and intuitive
  • Excellent Recurring Event Management: Superior recurring event functionality that handles complex scheduling patterns well
  • Modern Approach: Built by experienced product developers with a “painstakingly researched, obsessively crafted” approach
  • Blocks-First Design: Built with modern WordPress block editor in mind

Major Weaknesses

  • Limited Flexibility: Uses a native post type that restricts customization options, similar to The Events Calendar’s approach
  • Expensive Long-Term: Current half-price launch pricing of $99/year (1 site), $199/year (5 sites), $499/year (25 sites) becomes costly over time
  • Post Type Lock-In: Forces you into their event structure rather than working with your existing content workflow
  • No Free Version: “Be the first to get the free version of EventKoi. Launching later this year”
  • Limited Ecosystem: New plugin without an established add-on marketplace or third-party integrations

Pricing Comparison

Pie Calendar:

  • Free version: Full basic functionality
  • Pro: $299 lifetime unlimited sites (exceptional value)

The Events Calendar:

  • Free version: Basic calendar functionality
  • Pro: $149/year for 1 site (recently increased from $99)
  • Higher-tier plans: $199-$799/year, depending on site count

EventKoi:

  • 1 site: $99/year (currently 50% off launch pricing)
  • 5 sites: $199/year (currently 50% off launch pricing)
  • 25 sites: $499/year (currently 50% off launch pricing)
  • No free version currently available

User Experience and Interface Comparison

EventKoi undeniably has the most polished and modern user interface of the three options. Its visual design is impressive, and the user experience feels contemporary and intuitive.

The Events Calendar offers a functional but dated interface that can feel overwhelming due to its extensive feature set and complex configuration options.

Pie Calendar provides a clean, minimal interface that stays out of your way. While not as visually striking as EventKoi, its strength lies in seamlessly integrating with WordPress’s native editing experience, making it feel natural and familiar.

However, beautiful interfaces can’t compensate for fundamental architectural limitations. EventKoi’s gorgeous UI sits atop a rigid post type structure that will constrain your long-term flexibility – a costly trade-off for visual appeal.

Verdict: Why Pie Calendar Wins

Pie Calendar is a user-friendly and versatile WordPress plugin that allows you to add event calendars to your website. Any post or post type can be an event. Its compatibility, ease of use, and multilingual support make it a strong choice for bloggers and small business owners.

For Most Users: Pie Calendar strikes the perfect balance between functionality and simplicity. It respects your existing WordPress workflow while providing powerful calendar capabilities without the bloat.

For Agencies and Developers: The lifetime unlimited license at $299 makes Pie Calendar an absolute steal compared to The Events Calendar’s recurring annual fees and EventKoi’s expensive multi-site pricing structure.

For Complex Enterprise Needs: While The Events Calendar and EventKoi might seem appealing due to their extensive feature sets, both force you into rigid post type structures that limit customization flexibility. Pie Calendar’s approach of working with any post type provides far more long-term adaptability.

EventKoi vs Pie Calendar: Despite EventKoi’s beautiful interface and excellent recurring events, its native post type limitation and high long-term costs (especially for multi-site usage) make it less attractive than Pie Calendar’s flexible, cost-effective approach.

Final Recommendation

Choose Pie Calendar for 90% of WordPress calendar needs. Its philosophy of doing more with less, combined with excellent flexibility and fair pricing, makes it the smart choice for modern WordPress development. Unlike EventKoi and The Events Calendar, which lock you into rigid post type structures, Pie Calendar’s approach of working with any existing post type provides unmatched flexibility for future growth and customization.

The key differentiator is flexibility: while EventKoi offers a beautiful interface and The Events Calendar provides extensive features, both trap you in their specific post type systems. Pie Calendar’s genius lies in its adaptability – it enhances your existing content strategy rather than replacing it. Combined with its lifetime licensing model, this makes it the obvious choice for sustainable, long-term WordPress development.

Consider alternatives only if you specifically need EventKoi’s advanced recurring event interface (and can justify the high ongoing costs) or The Events Calendar’s specific add-on ecosystem (and can tolerate its complexity and limited user experience). For everyone else, Pie Calendar offers a refreshingly simple, powerful, and cost-effective solution that respects both your time and budget.