Does everything I want, and then some

No plugin suits everyone and Ai1ec is no exception. If it doesn’t work out of the box, then it’s possibly a conflict with your WP theme or one of your plugins. It’s also not the lightest plugin on memory usage, and if your webhost is stingy with their PHP memory settings, you can have issues.

For what this plugin is capable of however, it’s well worth the trouble IMO. Yes, the plugin is complex, but that’s because it does a huge amount.

PS: The upgrade breakages of the V1 days are now long past (thankfully) and Time.ly are releasing regular updates addressing bugs (every 2-4 weeks). Sometimes there’s a regression, and I recommend either keeping a copy of your site backed up. Do a full DB and File backup – XML WP exports don’t cut it as a backup, even if by a 3rd party plugin – get a proper MySQL DB backup, a copy of the older zip files of the plugin, and/or set up a staging system to test things on. I use a staging site (a VM on my PC) for all theme and plugin updates, and it’s saved me countless times (and not specifically with Ai1ec).