Event Genius – Event Management, Events Calendar, Registration, and RSVP vs Meow Mailer – Free SMTP, Everything Included

Complete WordPress Event Management & Registration Solution Event Genius is a powerful yet easy-to-use free event registration plugin designed for schools, sports organizations, pickleball clubs, membership sites, fitness classes, conferences, and any business needing comprehensive event registration capabilities. Whether you need a simple RSVP form, virtual event registration, hybrid event management, or a full-featured event registration system, Event Genius makes event planning effortless. Event Genius is a modern WordPress event management plugin built by an experienced team with a deep understanding of what event organizers need. It offers a streamlined alternative to plugins like The Events Calendar and Events Manager, with a focus on flexibility, performance, and ease of use. Our goal is to provide a robust and intuitive event management experience that works out of the box while still offering the flexibility to grow with your needs. If you need help, our team is here to support you. Migrate from The Events Calendar in minutes Automatically import events, recurring events, registrations, venues, organizers, categories, tags, and more from supported versions of The Events Calendar ecosystem. Your existing calendar remains active while you review imported events before switching. Event Management Features Unlimited Events & Event Registrations No limits on how many events you can create or attendees you can manage through our event registration and ticketing system. Perfect for creating event lists or an interactive calendar where your visitors can register for events. Built-In Migration Wizard Import events, recurring events, registrations, venues, organizers, Event Tickets attendees, categories, tags, and settings from supported versions of The Events Calendar while keeping your existing calendar active. Event Details Control Set custom start and end dates, assign venues and organizers to an event, set a cost, set a registration capacity, add images and descriptions for each event. Virtual & Hybrid Events Create in-person, virtual, or hybrid events from the same event editor. Add Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, or other meeting links, include virtual instructions, and automatically protect join links until attendees register. Confirmation emails and calendar downloads include virtual event details for registered attendees. Multiple Event Calendar Views Choose from list, month, and grid views for displaying your events in an organized event calendar format. Allow visitors to toggle between the views and filter based on venue, category, and search terms. Google Calendar & iCal Event Sync Allow users to add your events to their personal calendars with a few clicks, which will significantly increase your event attendance. Dedicated Venue and Organizer Pages Create individual pages for venues and organizers with detailed information and lists of related events. Show social proof that the venues and organizers of your events will create meaningful experiences. Event Registration Form Builder Create custom event registration form solutions with drag-and-drop ease, adding fields like text inputs, dropdowns, and checkboxes. Make fields required, add a terms and conditions acknowledgement, and prevent duplicate registrations. Create event registration forms exactly as you need them. Accept RSVP submissions and allow users to access tickets. Flexible Registration Display Registration forms automatically appear on event pages, or use blocks and shortcodes to place them anywhere on your website. Attendee List Management Display attendee lists on event pages or use dedicated blocks and shortcodes for flexible placement. Automated Event Emails Send confirmation emails to attendees and notifications to event organizers automatically. Customizable Email Templates Customize both attendee confirmation emails and organizer notification emails with your own branding and messaging. Event Registration Controls Set registration start/end times, event capacity limits, or disable registration entirely while keeping event information visible. Self-Cancellation System Attendees can cancel their registration or RSVP through secure email links for better event management. Event Management Admin Tools Add, edit, delete events, export event reports, and manage event attendees from your WordPress dashboard. CSV Export Functionality Export all event registrations to CSV format for easy data analysis and management. Free Recurring Events Support Create daily, weekly, or monthly repeating events for ongoing event management needs. Free recurring events support is included in Event Genius. Advanced SEO for Recurring Events Prevent duplicate content penalties with automatic canonical URLs, smart sitemap filtering, and 301 redirects for invalid instances. Each recurring event instance gets its own unique URL optimized for search engines. Learn more about recurring events SEO. Why Choose Our WordPress Event Management Plugin? Fast & Lightweight Event Calendar – Optimized for performance, even on high-traffic websites. Mobile-Friendly Event Registration – Fully responsive event forms and event calendar for seamless experience on all devices. Virtual Event Ready – Easily manage webinars, online classes, hybrid conferences, virtual meetings, and live training sessions with protected meeting links and built-in registration. Block Theme & Full Site Editing Support – Complete compatibility with WordPress block themes and full site editing (FSE). Design custom event pages, organizer pages, and venue pages using the Site Editor without any custom code. Perfect for block themes like Twenty Twenty-Four. SEO-Optimized Event Pages – Advanced SEO features for recurring events including unique canonical URLs, automatic redirects for invalid instances, and smart sitemap filtering. Compatible with Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and other popular SEO plugins. WordPress Caching Plugin Compatible – Built-in support for WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Rocket, and LiteSpeed Cache. Automatically clears cache and refreshes dynamic content to ensure accurate registration information on cached pages. Flexible Registration Confirmation – Choose when registrations are confirmed and when the confirmation email is sent: automatically after registration or manual review only, with a one-click Send Confirmation Email from the registration in the admin. Regular Event Management Updates & Dedicated Support – We want to provide the best possible experience for our users. Please reach out if we can help. Perfect For Event Management Needs: Event Planners – Comprehensive event management tools for professional event planning Event Organizers – Streamlined event registration, RSVPs, and attendee management Event Websites – Complete event calendar and event management solution Event Businesses – Professional event registration, tickets, and event management capabilities Sports Clubs – Perfect for sports registration and pickleball registration needs Schools & Organizations – Ideal for managing event list displays and RSVP form requirements Upgrade to Event Genius Pro Unlock powerful advanced features to help you manage events more efficiently: Accept Payments & Sell Tickets – Accept payments through Stripe and PayPal, or track offline payments manually. Multiple Registration Forms – Create unique forms for different event types with customized confirmations and notifications. Multiple Registration Types – Define separate registration options on one event (for example General, VIP, or early bird), each with its own name, price, and optional capacity, so attendees pick the tier that fits them. Event Waiting Lists – Let visitors join a waiting list when events fill up, then automatically or manually promote attendees when spots become available. Check-in & Attendance Tracking – Streamline check-in and track attendance status with automated follow-up emails. Event Series Management – Group related events into series with flexible registration options for full series or individual dates. Scheduled Event Reminders – Automatically send reminder emails before events and follow-up messages after to improve engagement. Multiple Email Templates – Create different templates for various event types and maintain consistent branding. Register Multiple Guests – Allow attendees to register additional guests during the registration process. List Events Registered For – Help attendees see all their registered events in one place. Manually Email Registrants – Send targeted emails to specific registrants or groups. Advanced Form Fields – File uploads, date pickers, attendee number fields, and hidden admin fields. Multiple Event Registration – Allow attendees to register for multiple events at once. Offline Payment Tracking – Track and manage offline or manual payments with complete control. Upgrade to Event Genius Pro to unlock all these features and more!

For years, almost every WordPress site I ran ended up with a different plugin just to send email. I never really chose them. I installed whatever looked fine at the time, because honestly there is no clear winner. Most of them advertise features I don’t need, or hide the basics behind a paywall. At one point I simply wanted to see the emails my site had sent, or failed to send, and even that asked me to upgrade. That felt wrong. So I decided to build the simplest and most honest email plugin I could for WordPress. You pick one provider, set it up once, and every email your site sends goes through it. Everything is logged, so you always know what happened. No upsell maze, no ads, nothing basic locked away. That is Meow Mailer, and all of this is free: One provider, set up once. Pick the one you use and forget about it. No confusing multi provider routing. Import from your current SMTP plugin. Already set up with WP Mail SMTP or Easy WP SMTP? Meow Mailer notices and copies the provider, credentials and sender over in one click, so switching never means digging out your API keys again. A fallback for when it breaks, free. Name a second provider (or plain WordPress, which needs no setup) and it steps in only when the first one refuses an email. Your mail still goes out, the log tells you exactly who failed and why, and an alert lets you know your main provider needs a look. A real email log, free. Every email in a clean table with recipient, subject, provider and status (sent, failed, offline, pending). Click any row to read the full message, see the error, and resend it. Many plugins charge for this. Here it is free. Stays out of the way. Until you pick a provider, Meow Mailer doesn’t change how your email is sent, so activating it never breaks what already works. It still logs everything WordPress sends on its own, so you get the log from the moment you activate it. Never miss a failure. A dashboard warning appears when emails fail, so silent problems don’t go unnoticed. Dismiss it once you have had a look and it stays away until a new email fails. Failure alerts by email, free. Get told when your site stops being able to send, instead of finding out from a customer. The alert is sent by WordPress itself rather than your provider, so it still reaches you when the provider is the thing that broke. One alert per hour at most, however many emails fail. Alerts on Slack, Discord or Teams, free. Paste a webhook URL and the alerts and the weekly summary are posted to your chat as well, so finding out that email is broken never depends on email. Handy when you look after a lot of sites. Individual emails are never posted anywhere: this tells you about your site, not about the people it writes to. Weekly summary, free. A short email with what was sent, what failed, and the most common errors. Nothing is sent on a quiet week. Control WordPress’s own emails. Switch off the notifications WordPress sends by itself: new user registrations, password and email change confirmations, comment moderation, automatic update reports. Password resets are never affected, so nobody gets locked out. Background sending. Email goes out after the page has loaded, so your visitors never wait on the mail server. Offline mode. Capture every email in the log without sending. Perfect for staging and development. Filters and export. Filter by status and provider, search by subject or recipient, and export to CSV. Test and resend. Check your setup with an HTML or plain text test, and resend any logged message in one click. Auto prune. Keep logs forever, or delete anything older than 7, 30 or 90 days. Multisite ready. Set your provider up once on the main site and let every site of the network use it, or leave each site to configure its own. Email logs always stay per site. Light and private. No bloat, no tracking. Your credentials can live in wp-config.php instead of the database. What Meow Mailer will never do No open or click tracking. Other email plugins advertise it as a premium feature. It works by putting an invisible pixel in every message and rewriting every link to pass through a redirect, which means logging when your recipients read their mail and what they clicked. That is surveillance of the people your site writes to, it is personal data you then have to account for under the GDPR, and rewritten links make your email look more like spam, not less. Meow Mailer does not do it, and that is not a gap waiting to be filled in a Pro version. There is no Pro version. Supported providers Generic SMTP, Mailgun, Brevo, SendGrid, Amazon SES, Postmark, SMTP2GO, Mailjet, Resend, MailerSend, Maileroo, Gmail / Google Workspace (OAuth 2.0), Microsoft 365 / Outlook (OAuth 2.0), and Zoho Mail (OAuth 2.0). About Meow Apps Meow Mailer is part of the Meow Apps family of plugins, focused on doing one thing well with a clean, modern interface. External services Meow Mailer contacts an external service only after you choose and configure an email provider. Until then (the default “None”) and in “Offline” mode, it sends nothing anywhere. When you pick a provider, your outgoing email (recipients, subject, body, headers and attachments) and the credentials you entered are sent to that provider so it can be delivered, and only when your site actually sends an email. For Gmail, Microsoft 365 and Zoho Mail, Meow Mailer also contacts their OAuth servers when you connect and refresh your account. Nothing else is ever sent. You choose a single provider. Generic SMTP talks only to the server you configure. For the others, please review their terms and privacy policy: Mailgun (terms, privacy), Brevo (terms, privacy), SendGrid (terms, privacy), Amazon SES (terms, privacy), Postmark (terms, privacy), SMTP2GO (terms, privacy), Mailjet (terms, privacy), Resend (terms, privacy), MailerSend (terms and privacy), Maileroo (terms, privacy), Gmail (terms, privacy), Microsoft 365 (terms, privacy), and Zoho Mail (terms, privacy). Development Meow Mailer is open source. The full source, including the React code used to build the admin interface, lives on GitHub.