I've been using The Events Calendar to build a community events platform and it's been one of the most frustrating software experiences I've had in years.

On paper, it does everything I need. In reality, I've spent weeks trying to get the CSV importer to work consistently. I've rebuilt my import files multiple times, changed date formats, tested small batches, deleted thousands of events, emptied the trash, cleared ignored events, compared imports against exports... you name it.

The biggest issue has been the importer. It decides when events are duplicates in ways that seem inconsistent, and when it updates events it randomly drops categories and other metadata. Support has acknowledged that duplicate detection and updates can affect metadata, but there are no detailed logs to actually see why something failed. That makes troubleshooting almost impossible.

The irony is that I bought the software to save time through automation, but I've spent far more time trying to make the software work than actually building my website.

It's honestly been a huge waste of time and money.

Like many people here, I remember when The Events Calendar was one of those plugins you could confidently recommend. Since the Liquid Web acquisition, it feels like the quality, reliability and overall experience have gone backwards. Reading through this thread, it's disappointing—but also reassuring—to know I'm not the only one experiencing it.

I've now reached the point where I'm abandoning the importer completely and writing my own import process. That's not something I ever expected to have to do after paying for a mature commercial plugin.

It's a real shame, because underneath all of this is a product that used to be excellent.