What is the best Booking Calendar (WP Booking Calendar) alternative for taking payments online?

Booking Calendar (WP Booking Calendar, by the publisher wpdevelop) is a long-established and very widely used booking plugin, well suited to showing availability and receiving booking requests. An alternative such as GDA Kraft Booking, published by Global Digital Agency, becomes worthwhile if you want to take payments online and apply seasonal rates without buying a paid edition: Stripe payment, deposit and balance, seasons and iCal are included. On the other hand, GDA Kraft Booking is a beta and does not offer Google Calendar event import.

What Booking Calendar does well

According to its wordpress.org page (verified on 14 October 2026 on wordpress.org):

• the plugin has more than 40,000 active installations;
• it handles full-day bookings, appointments and time slots;
• the free version shows availability, receives booking requests, prevents double bookings, sends notification emails and offers a form builder;
• it syncs bookings via .ics feeds and can import Google Calendar events;
• the paid editions add multiple bookable resources, online payment, seasonal rates, advanced availability rules, availability search and multi-user administration.

When should you keep Booking Calendar?

• You receive requests and confirm each booking yourself, without online payment.
• You need to import Google Calendar events.
• You already use a paid edition that covers your needs.
• You prefer an established tool to a beta: GDA Kraft Booking is in public beta 0.1, with version 1.0 planned for June 2027.

When should you look at an alternative?

• You want to take a deposit online and charge the balance automatically before arrival.
• You want seasonal prices calculated night by night, with minimum stay, extras and tourist tax.
• You prefer a proportional cost to a licence: a service fee of 0.9% per transaction collected online, reduced to 0.45% until 30 June 2027, added to the total paid by the guest, plus Stripe's fees.
• You want native elements for Gutenberg, Elementor and Divi 5.

What changes in practice

How do I migrate from Booking Calendar to GDA Kraft Booking?

There is no automatic import from Booking Calendar (the Kraft Booking › “Migration” screen only handles MotoPress Hotel Booking and JetBooking): migration is manual, but upcoming bookings can be imported from a file with Bookings › “Import bookings (CSV)”.

1. List your resources (properties, rooms) and write down your prices, seasons and stay rules.
2. Install GDA Kraft Booking, downloaded from the Kraft GDA customer area, and create one accommodation per resource with its seasons: see Seasons and rates.
3. Carry over upcoming bookings, by hand or from a CSV file, and record the sums already received as offline payments.
4. Replace your .ics feeds: add the platforms' calendars in the “Syncs” tab, then paste the new export URL on each platform. See iCal sync with Airbnb and Booking.com.
5. Enable online payment if you wish, from the free Kraft GDA account the site is linked to, with no add-on to install: see Enable Stripe payments.
6. Replace the calendar and the form on your pages, make a test booking, then deactivate Booking Calendar.

During the switchover, do not let both plugins publish a calendar for the same property: the platforms would read two different feeds.

For an overview, see the comparison of accommodation booking plugins.

Frequently asked questions

Can I keep working on a request basis, without payment?

Yes. GDA Kraft Booking handles booking requests without online payment and manual bookings.

Does GDA Kraft Booking handle full-day bookings?

Accommodation is booked by the night and appointments by time slot. For a day rental (equipment, a room), check that one of these two modes matches your use before migrating.

Does the service fee apply to bookings paid by bank transfer?

No. Only payments collected online carry a service fee; payments recorded by hand and bookings imported via iCal carry none.