Axiom Event Calendar vs GetSiteCalendar Lite

Axiom Event Calendar is a powerful yet simple plugin designed to bring your events from the Axiom Event Systems platform directly into your WordPress site. It offers 12 display modes, a visual shortcode builder with live preview, smart recurring-event collapsing, and granular control over what information appears on each card. Key Features: Twelve Display Layouts: Grid, List, Monthly Calendar, Mini Calendar, Next-Up Hero, Carousel, Masonry, Compact, Timeline, Grouped-by-Month, Featured Hero + Feed, and Poster (images only). Visual Shortcode Builder: Build your shortcode directly in the WordPress admin with a layout picker, conditional controls, live preview, and one-click copy-to-clipboard. Thirteen Shortcode Attributes: Control layout, limit, image fit, aspect ratio, hero accent color, hero gradient style, columns, and toggles for images, date, and location; plus month-grouping and featured-card options. Smart Recurring Events: Automatically collapses consecutive events from the same series to keep your views clean and organized. Seamless Integration: Fetches events in real-time via the Axiom Event Systems API. Performance Focused: Built-in 1-hour caching ensures fast load times for your visitors. Responsive & Modern: CSS Grid and Flexbox based layouts with mobile breakpoints at 768px and 480px.

A WordPress events calendar that just works. Site Calendar Lite is the free events plugin built for community groups, clubs, churches, schools and small venues — sites that need a beautiful calendar without the bloat or the enterprise pricing. Publish your first event in minutes. Embed the calendar with one shortcode. Let visitors RSVP without forcing them to create an account. Subscribe to your event feed in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook. All free, all GPL, all maintained by the team that built it. Free features Custom post types: Events, Venues, Organizers Five views: Month grid + List (Week, Day, Photo are Pro) Single-event pages with venue and organizer details Featured-image thumbnails in every view, with category-coloured icon fallbacks for events without an image Categories and tags Featured events with visual highlight Tickets (one or more ticket types per event, each with label, price, capacity, and max-per-order) Attendees list in wp-admin showing every front-end RSVP Free RSVP form with attendee capture and basic confirmation email ICS feed for calendar app subscriptions (Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook) Add-to-calendar buttons (Google, Outlook, .ics download) JSON-LD schema for SEO REST API for headless / external integrations Customisable colours: primary, accent, event-link, and Week view chip colour [getsitecalendar] shortcode for the full calendar UI [getsitecalendar_list] shortcode for upcoming-events lists [getsitecalendar_search] shortcode for filter forms Upgrade to Site Calendar Pro for: Week, Day and Photo views with toolbar switcher Full recurring-event series management (skip / override per occurrence) Multi-ticket-type RSVP with capacity gauges and CSV export Paid tickets via Stripe Checkout and WooCommerce Custom fields engine with front-end filter UI CSV bulk import with smart venue/organizer auto-create Front-end event submission for logged-in users Compact upcoming-events widget and Gutenberg block Door check-in with QR codes and mobile scanner Dedicated Pro Calendar Scanner role for door staff Branded HTML confirmation emails with custom From / Reply-To Sequential PCAL- order numbers for unified audit trail Priority email support Site Calendar Pro is a separate commercial add-on available from getsitecalendar.com. External services Site Calendar Lite does not send analytics, telemetry, or any data about your site back to its authors. The only external service the plugin interacts with is: Google Maps embed (single-event pages) When a single-event page is rendered and the event has a venue with an address, the plugin embeds a Google Maps iframe so visitors can see the venue location and get directions. The embed uses Google’s public https://www.google.com/maps?output=embed endpoint and does not require an API key. What data is sent: The venue address only (no visitor data, no event details, no attendee data). The browser — not the server — is what loads the iframe, so the request originates from the site visitor, not from your WordPress installation. When it’s sent: Each time a single-event page is rendered that has a venue with a non-empty address. Events without a venue address do not embed the map. Provided by: Google LLC. Google Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy If you do not wish to embed Google Maps on event pages, simply leave the venue’s address field empty — the map will not be rendered. Privacy Site Calendar Lite stores attendee names and email addresses (provided via the RSVP form) in your own WordPress database, in the pcal_attendee custom post type. No data is sent to third parties from the server side. Site owners are responsible for their own privacy policy and GDPR compliance. See also the External services section above for information about Google Maps iframe embeds on single-event pages.