Liquid Web acquires the WordPress plugin, the events calendar from Modern Tribe

Liquid Web announced today via the iThemes blog that it has acquired Modern Tribe's Events Calendar. The acquisition gives them ownership of the plugin, its suite of event-related plugins, and the team behind it.

"We acquired all the associated plugins, including event tickets, etc.," said Matt Danner, COO at iThemes. "They identify as a team under the event calendar umbrella, so we've continued to position the team that way."

As part of the acquisition, the 50+ employees of The Events Calendar plugins team are now part of the Liquid Web family. They will continue to work on the plugin and related products. Zach Tirrell announced on The Events Calendar blog that he will remain at the helm and that the team structure will not change.

The remaining 74 Modern Tribe employees will continue to work on the other projects of the Agency work, including clients such as Microsoft and Harvard University. Reid Peifer, creative director at Modern Tribe, teased potential future projects in his announcement post. "We can't help but make things, so you may see some surprises from us in the coming months."

The events calendar plugin on WordPress.org currently has over 800,000 active installs with an average rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars. Modern Tribe released the plugin in 2011 and has built a larger product line and customer base over the past decade.

For existing customers it should be as usual. Nothing has changed in terms of who is developing the events calendar. The website is still a separate entity, and the billing remains the same.

The acquisition comes just a few months after iThemes, owned by Liquid Web, purchased Restrict Content Pro (RCP), a membership plugin. While RCP still has an independent site, users can download it directly from the iThemes website using one of the plugin bundles.

However, the events calendar is completely independent from iThemes. Customers hoping for a similar package with the events calendar are out of luck.

"The acquisition of RCP was under the iThemes brand," Danner said. "We added that team to our team, and the membership product is a key part of our positioning with iThemes. The event calendar acquisition was done under the larger Liquid Web brand. Their team joins Liquid Web along with iThemes as part of the larger software division. We definitely think there are opportunities for collaboration between our teams in the future (including product bundles from both teams), but their products will not be part of the iThemes product line. "

One of the biggest remaining questions is whether individual teams will eventually create integrations between the event calendar and RCP. There are several reasons why event organizers may want to restrict content based on memberships, especially for virtual events. Danner did not give any specific plans in his response.

"We're very excited to explore all the opportunities to integrate our products," he said. "I think RCP and TEC have some great opportunities to work more closely together, and both customers have requested deeper integration between the two. This acquisition was a perfect fit from so many angles. The people, the values of the team, and the products align with what we're developing at Liquid Web. "