Deceptively powerful, relatively easy to use

Other reviewers have correctly pointed out that there are no perfect event or booking plugins. This is true. Based on several years experience adding events to real-world websites I’m comfortable saying The Events Manager is the best choice.

I’ve used the EM plugin on different clients’ sites for a few years now. It’s a very good choice if you’re just trying to knock something together in a hurry (i.e. “I need a signup system for our book club.”) And the pro version (you need this to sell tickets) has additional options (custom attributes let you ask for, for instance, shirt size for complimentary event t-shirts.) You can customize outgoing email, customize CSV exports without an additional plugin, and build remarkably complex displays with shortcodes. (You can basically enclose all the plugins’s #_placeholders, with html tags, inside the base shortcode, which is pretty $%!#% cool.)

I should add that the documentation is well organized and while reports on support differ widely (perhaps pro users get priority?) I’ve been able to find the answers I need. And the answers I’ve seen in the pro knowledge base have seemed patient and respectful of even inexperienced users.

Why write this review now then? Because this week in addition to finishing a site with a lot of events customization for one client I’ve also been wrestling with another client’s site that uses one of the other popular event-management plugins. Which requires you to not only install the free version and buy the pro version of the event manager, but also requires the free and pro version of the separate ticketing plugin, AND requires you to integrate it all with WooCommerce. Oh, and for this client’s needs, we ended up having to buy the pro version of a 3rd-party shortcodes plugin too! Nothing wrong with WooCommerce, or pro versions of plugins. But needing six plugins to do what The Events Manager can do with just one or two is a little silly. Also seriously time-consuming.