63
The Events Calendar
The industry standard is starting to feel like a billboard for other products.
HealthyDeclining
63/100
Strong features and support are marred by an intrusive admin menu and aggressive upselling.
Active installs
~750,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 700k+
Rating
4.3★
2,442 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
-17%
Declining
7,666 → 6,377 installs/day
Downloads over time
real new installs per day · release spikes shown separately from the trend2025-04-302025-08-082025-11-162026-02-232026-06-03
organicrelease spikerelease tailorganic trend · 14d rolling median
Declining · -17% in the last year
7,666/day a year ago→6,377/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayThe Events Calendar is a capable and widely-used event management plugin with a well-regarded support team, but a recent update introduced an unwanted Liquid Web admin menu that users widely describe as intrusive, alarming, and non-consensual.
What people like
- +Support staff are praised as responsive, patient, and thorough in resolving issues×6
- +Free version covers core event listing needs for many users
Common complaints
- −Update 6.16.0 injected an unsolicited 'Liquid Web' admin sidebar menu promoting unrelated paid products, with no opt-in and no easy way to remove it — causing user panic and confusion about potential malware (since 6.16.0)×4
- −Aggressive and persistent upselling throughout the interface, with ads and pop-ups interrupting normal use×2
- −Support quality and responsiveness is inconsistent for paid users, with reported multi-day waits and no reply
- −Plugin overwrites existing page content on activation without warning
- −Interface feels overly complicated and cluttered compared to simpler alternatives×2
- −Shortcode handling inside event descriptions is non-standard and convoluted
- −Pricing has reportedly increased significantly
Review trustReviews look organic
- 4.12★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.30★
- 18%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
2025-06-092025-12-062026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 2,442 total
Latest reviews · 90 analyzed
- 2026-05-20★★★★★Too Many Error CodesApril
- 2026-05-17★★★★★Plugin-squatting at its worst – Run awayesquipulas
- 2026-05-17★★★★★No thanks61pixels
- 2026-05-14★★★★★Unusable after 6.16.0jsm1161-shot
- 2026-05-14★★★★★Awful updateJeroen Rotty
- 2026-05-13★★★★★best event plugins on the marketsamicai
- 2026-05-12★★★★★Big mistakeGarth
- 2026-05-10★★★★★Fiev star plu for Chika at The Events Calendarjohncameron9881-shot
- 2026-04-24★★★★★Excellent customer servicecarriebradley
- 2026-04-13★★★★★Excellent Customer Servicemets69mets861-shot
Releases
recent versions from WordPress.org SVNFor developers & the curious
the raw signals behind the grade — none of this is on the friendly summary aboveDownload signals
Baselines are computed on organic days only — release spikes and their tails are excluded, so they're not inflated by the auto-update wave.
5,047
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
5,783
Prior 7-day baseline
8,295
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
100,796
Mean release-day peak (30d)
11,796
Latest day · 2026-06-03(tail)
-12.7%
Week-over-week organic trend
Review signals
Concentration and drive-by metrics drive the review-burst and fake-review flags. 30–40% solo reviewers is normal; we only flag the extremes.
19%
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
0.61
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
73%
5★ share in analyzed sample
18%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
-11%
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.10 → 4.12★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered