Core WordPress has no built-in way to show a store or office’s opening hours. This post compares four real plugins for adding business hours to a WordPress site: We’re Open!, Business Hours Indicator, Five Star Business Profile and Schema, and PlexBlocks Business Hours for Block Editor. Short version: We’re Open! is the most configurable if you don’t mind a shortcode instead of a block, Business Hours Indicator is the one to reach for if you want a live open-or-closed status with a countdown, Five Star Business Profile and Schema earns its spot if structured data for Google matters more to you than the hours display itself, and PlexBlocks Business Hours is the plainest option if you just want a native block with a live status badge and nothing else to configure.
| Plugin | Best for | Price | Last updated |
|---|---|---|---|
| We’re Open! | Deep customization, Google Business sync | Free | January 4, 2026 |
| Business Hours Indicator | Live open/closed status with countdown | Free, Pro pricing not published | October 11, 2025 |
| Five Star Business Profile and Schema | Schema markup plus a contact card | Free, Premium from $39 | August 20, 2026 |
| PlexBlocks Business Hours for Block Editor | A native block with a live status badge, nothing else | Free | September 7, 2026 |
Before picking one, it’s worth being honest about why this is harder to research than it looks. Most general “best business hours plugins” roundups lump in tools like SeedProd or All in One SEO, which are page builders and SEO suites that happen to include a business hours block among dozens of other features. That’s a reasonable pick if you already run one of those plugins for other reasons, but it’s a strange recommendation if all you want is a lightweight way to show your Tuesday through Saturday hours on a contact page. The four plugins below are all dedicated, single-purpose tools: install one, and you get a business hours display and not much else riding along with it.
We’re Open!
We’re Open! is a free plugin built entirely around shortcodes and widgets, with more configuration depth than anything else in this comparison.
- Price: Free
- Requires: WordPress 5.3+, PHP 5.2.4+
- Last updated: January 4, 2026
What sets it apart is how far the customization goes. You can set up to three separate time groups per day (useful for a restaurant that closes between lunch and dinner service), consolidate hours across weekdays or weekends into a single line, and format everything down to the separator character between open and close times. It also syncs hours directly from a Google Business Profile if you supply an API key and Place ID, and it ships with schema.org structured data out of the box, so search engines get the same open-hours information a visitor sees.
Setup runs through Settings > We’re Open! in the dashboard, where you configure regular hours, special holiday hours, and any temporary closure date range. Getting it onto a page means dropping in a shortcode or adding the widget to a sidebar; there’s also a conditional shortcode that only renders content when the business is currently open, closed, or on special hours, which is handy for swapping a “call us now” message for an “email us and we’ll respond tomorrow” one automatically.
The catch, and it’s a real one for a block-editor-first site: there is no native Gutenberg block at all. Every placement goes through a shortcode dropped into a Shortcode or Custom HTML block, or a classic widget. If your workflow is entirely block-based and you don’t want to remember shortcode syntax, that’s a genuine friction point the other three plugins here don’t have.
Business Hours Indicator
Business Hours Indicator by Studio Wombat covers blocks, shortcodes, and widgets, and its standout feature is a live status indicator rather than just a static table of hours.
- Price: Free, Pro pricing not published
- Requires: WordPress 3.7+, PHP 7.0+
- Last updated: October 11, 2025
The differentiator is the countdown. Beyond a simple “we’re open” or “we’re closed” badge, it can display a countdown until the next status change, so a visitor lands on the page and sees “closing in 42 minutes” instead of having to cross-reference a table against the current time themselves. It also supports up to three locations in the free version, handles vacation periods and one-off special dates separately from the regular weekly schedule, and ships with a frontend already translated into roughly twenty languages, which matters if you’re building a multilingual site and don’t want to hand-translate the hours widget yourself.
Setup goes through Dashboard > Settings > Business Hours Indicator, where you enter your location name, daily hours, and any special or vacation dates. From there you can place it with the Gutenberg block, the [mbhi location="my location"] shortcode, or one of four bundled widgets, whichever fits the page you’re editing.
The honest limitation: the plugin’s own pricing page hides its Pro tier pricing behind a “buy now” flow rather than listing numbers, so you can’t compare the paid features against a competitor’s price without clicking through to checkout. And at just under a year since its last update as of this writing, it’s not stale, but it’s also not moving as fast as the other three plugins in this comparison.
Five Star Business Profile and Schema
Five Star Business Profile and Schema takes a different angle entirely: it’s an SEO structured-data plugin that happens to include an hours display, not an hours plugin that happens to have SEO features.
- Price: Free, Premium from $39
- Requires: WordPress 5.3+, PHP requirement not specified
- Last updated: August 20, 2026
Its core job is adding schema.org LD+JSON structured data to your site, covering every organization type Google’s Rich Results Test recognizes. The business hours piece lives inside a Contact Card block, which bundles your address, phone number, a map, and your opening hours into one component with the correct structured markup attached automatically. That combination is the real selling point: a visitor sees a normal contact card, and Google gets a machine-readable business listing it can potentially surface directly in search results, without you writing a line of JSON-LD yourself.
Setup is guided: activating the plugin triggers an automatic walkthrough that helps you pick a schema type, fill in company details, and set your schedule. After that, you add the Contact Card block from the block inserter (or the [contact-card] shortcode on non-block pages), and your address, hours, and schema all render together wherever you place it.
The tradeoff worth naming plainly: this is not a plugin to install if you only want an hours table on your contact page. You’re pulling in a full schema management system to get there, which is either exactly what you need if local SEO is part of the goal, or more plugin than necessary if it isn’t. The free version also bundles hours into the contact card rather than letting you display a standalone hours block on its own.
PlexBlocks Business Hours for Block Editor
PlexBlocks Business Hours for Block Editor, built by ConicPlex, is the one plugin in this comparison built natively for Gutenberg from the ground up, with no shortcode or classic widget path at all.
- Price: Free
- Requires: WordPress 6.3+, PHP 7.4+
- Last updated: September 7, 2026
The feature that earns it a place next to plugins with years of track record is the live status badge combined with a current-day highlight, rendered entirely as block markup with no external script dependency. Set your weekly hours once in the block’s sidebar, and the badge switches between an “Open Now” and “Closed” state based on the visitor’s site timezone, while the row for today automatically highlights itself so a visitor scanning the table doesn’t have to count down from Monday to find where they are in the week. It also supports holiday overrides for one-off closures without touching your regular weekly schedule, and every visual detail, background and text color, border radius, padding, box shadow, is controlled from the same inspector panel you’re already using for other blocks, rather than a separate settings screen.
Setup matches how any other block gets added: activate the plugin, open the page or post in the block editor, click Add Block, search for “PlexBlocks Business Hours” (or browse the PlexBlocks category), and fill in your weekly schedule directly in the sidebar. There’s no dashboard settings page to visit first.
Worth saying plainly: this is a newer plugin, first released this year, so it hasn’t had the multi-year run that We’re Open! or Business Hours Indicator have had to surface edge cases. It’s also single-location only with no shortcode fallback, so a site built on the classic editor or a business with more than one address needs one of the other three options instead.
How to pick
- If you need multi-location hours, holiday exceptions, and Google Business Profile syncing in one place, use We’re Open!, and plan to place it with a shortcode rather than a block.
- If you want visitors to see a live countdown to opening or closing rather than just a static table, use Business Hours Indicator.
- If local SEO and structured data for Google are part of the goal, not just displaying hours to visitors, use Five Star Business Profile and Schema.
- If you’re already working entirely in the block editor and want a native block with a live status badge and nothing else to learn, use PlexBlocks Business Hours for Block Editor, keeping in mind it’s single-location only for now.
None of these need custom development to set up. If your business has a schedule these plugins genuinely can’t model, split shifts across multiple staff calendars, hours that vary by service rather than by day, or hours pulled live from a booking system, our Plugin Development team builds that as a custom block rather than forcing a generic hours plugin to do something it wasn’t designed for. For sites that need the rest of the WordPress build handled too, our WordPress Development team covers that. You can also see how a similar block-editor-native comparison played out in our table of contents plugin comparison, and browse ConicPlex’s own block-editor plugins on our products page.
FAQ
Does WordPress have a built-in way to show business hours?
No. Core WordPress has no business hours feature. You need a plugin or a custom block to display opening hours anywhere on a WordPress site.
Which of these plugins works if my business has more than one location?
We’re Open! supports multiple locations without a hard cap in the free version, and Business Hours Indicator supports up to three locations for free. Five Star Business Profile and Schema and PlexBlocks Business Hours are built around a single location.
Do any of these plugins update the display automatically when a business opens or closes?
Yes. We’re Open!, Business Hours Indicator, and PlexBlocks Business Hours all show a live open or closed state based on the current time, not just a static table. Five Star Business Profile and Schema displays the schedule but doesn’t include a live status badge.
Do I need any of these plugins if I only want business hours to show up correctly in Google search results?
Five Star Business Profile and Schema is the one built for that specifically, since it adds schema.org structured data alongside the hours display. We’re Open! also includes schema.org markup as a secondary feature; the other two plugins here focus on the visitor-facing display and don’t add structured data.
Can I use a shortcode-based plugin like We’re Open! inside the block editor?
Yes, by pasting the shortcode into a Shortcode block or a Custom HTML block. It works, but it’s an extra step compared to a plugin with a native Gutenberg block you can search for directly in the block inserter.
