Events can be a primary part of your business, or perhaps events only support your business. But, as an event organizer, you can use your WordPress website to accept registrations, sell tickets, offer customer support, and run email marketing campaigns. You can organize in-person events, virtual events, or a hybrid of both.
WordPress event manager plugins help businesses and organizations manage events and simplify and automate day-to-day event-related tasks like accepting registrations, selling tickets, reaching out to attendees, and tracking attendee metrics.
But how do you select the right WordPress event manager plugin for your website to help you to achieve all that?
In this post, we’ll talk about some of the key features you should look for in an event manager plugin for your WordPress site. These include creating event pages with ticket options, setting up event calendars, managing attendees, and sending event emails.
Let’s begin!
Article Outline
What is a WordPress Event Manager Plugin?
A WordPress events plugin enables you to simplify and automate everyday tasks involved in organizing an event such as accepting registrations, collecting payments, tracking attendees, and offering customer support.
Finding the right event manager plugin for your WordPress site isn’t difficult if you know what features you need.
Here’s what you need to look for in a WordPress event manager plugin for your event site:
Your event plugin should let you create and manage events within your WordPress website.
Some organizations host events regularly (such as annual conferences or bi-monthly webinars) while others only need to organize one or two events. Your event manager plugin should also help you create and manage all types of events including regular, in-person events and virtual events. These can be conferences, camps, fundraisers, classes, or galas, etc.
One of the most powerful things a WordPress event manager plugin lets you do is sell tickets and collect payments. You should be able to create and sell tickets and collect payments directly through your website. Selling tickets from your WordPress website allows you to have more control over the fees you pay and thus you can avoid paying extra commission fees, to a service like Eventbrite.
Ideally, your WordPress event management plugin should offer multiple payment options that you can integrate into your event website like credit cards, checks, and invoices.
Your event manager plugin should support online event registration as it helps attendees complete the entire registration process seamlessly. You also need flexible ticketing options like creating multiple ticket tiers and setting ticket prices.
The event manager plugin should also give you full control over your attendees’ personal information. It should help you manage attendee data and use this information to collect feedback and track attendance metrics.
A dedicated event manager plugin can save you time and money. It lets you easily organize the entire event directly through your website. This way you don’t have to sign up for a separate platform.
Here are the key features you should look for in a WordPress event manager plugin:
- Creating event pages
- Flexible ticket and date management
- Calendars
- Registrations and ticketing
- Event emails
- Manage attendees
Now that you know what features to look for, let’s go over some of the best WordPress event manager plugins.
3 WordPress Event Manager Plugins Compared
Here are some of the most popular event manager plugins for WordPress:
#1: Event Espresso
Event Espresso is a powerful WordPress event manager plugin that lets you automate event registration and ticketing for your events. It comes with a variety of advanced features out of the box as well as helpful product add-ons.
Event Espresso helps you accept registrations, create and sell tickets, collect payments, and track attendance at your events. In addition to this, you can use premium add-ons for advanced features.
Key features:
Event Espresso makes it easy for attendees to easily register for your events by submitting an online registration form. You can also create waiting lists and accept group registration for your events.
In addition to this, it gives you access to several payment gateways right out of the box, and you can select from more than 15 additional payment integrations that integrate seamlessly with the plugin. You’ll be able to collect payments through invoices, check, credit cards, and PayPal.
Event Espresso gives you complete control over your attendees’ personal data and offers tools to make your event site GDPR-compliant.
You can offer special discounts and promotional codes to potential attendees in order to boost event registrations and ticket sales. Event Espresso helps you build your Mailchimp mailing list so you can run your email marketing campaigns. It also lets you add social sharing buttons on your event site.
Price:
Each Event Espresso plan receives a 30% discount for annual automated renewals.
- Personal Support License costs $79.95 per year
- Developer Support License costs $299.95 per year
- Everything Support License costs $299.95 per year
Event Espresso 4 Decaf is the free version for people who only need a very lite version with basic functionality.
Event Espresso is ideal for event organizers that need to organize multiple events throughout the year as well as businesses that need to organize events occasionally.
Event Smart a great option if you don’t have a WordPress website, you can get all the same great features of Event Espresso in a hosted website.
#2: Events Manager
Events Manager enables you to accept event registrations, collect payments from registrants, and showcase event calendars on your event website. It supports integration with iCal feed and Google Calendar.
Key features:
Events Manager is a user-friendly event management and sharing tool that helps you share event information on social sites using BuddyPress.
It enables you to create recurring and multi-day event registrations and lets you easily approve or reject booked seats. Moreover, you‘ll be able to create single-day registrations by setting the start and end times and providing some basic event information.
You can enable site visitors to submit their own events which is useful for smaller businesses and public event sites.
Events Manager allows you to implement Google Maps to your event pages and dedicate an area that shows users events based on their location.
Price:
Events Manager Pro includes premium features and add-ons for:
- 1 site $75.00
- Up to 5 sites $150
Free version available which includes the standard Events Manager framework.
#3: WP Event Manager
WP Event Manager is a simple WordPress event manager plugin that doesn’t affect your event site’s performance. You can use WP Event Manager to quickly turn your WordPress website into an event management platform.
Key features:
WP Event Manager has an easy-to-use interface and comes with a fully responsive design, front-end forms, a search module, and built-in caching. Its event calendar uses AJAX which ensures a smooth browsing experience for your website users.
It lets you easily manage your event listings by organizing them into categories and sub-categories. This also helps prospective event registrants quickly find events they might be interested in.
WP Event Manager gives you access to responsive and friendly developer support. In addition to this, you can offer multilingual translation in widgets and front-end forms and show searchable event listings using shortcodes.
Price:
The core WP Event Manager plugin, which provides very basic event listing functionality is free.
Additional, advanced functionality is available through add-ons. Add-ons purchased separately from $19 to $99.
WP Event Manager is the go-to option for event organizers looking for a very basic event management plugin. For those wanting to add certain features beyond the very basic core plugin this option can get very costly.
Conclusion
Planning and organizing an event is much easier when you use the right event manager plugin. You should focus on choosing a WordPress event plugin that fits your specific needs and budget. This will help you create better experiences, increase event attendance, and improve attendee satisfaction.
So, which WordPress event manager plugin is right for you? These are our recommendations:
- Event Espresso if you’re looking for a powerful event manager plugin. It’s an easy-to-use event ticketing and plugin that lets you create an event calendar to showcase event details such as venue, date, and time. It also offers powerful marketing tools to help you increase registrations and ticket sales.
- Events Manager if you’re looking for a free event manager plugin. It is a useful event management plugin that comes with a flexible AJAX-based calendar. Events Manager allows you to create recurring and multi-day event registrations and approve and reject booked seats.
Ready to start organizing engaging events? Schedule an Event Espresso demo today!