The Best WordPress Event Ticketing Plugins in 2026 (Honest Comparison)
ima nekih ispravki:
Search “WordPress event ticketing plugin” and you get a dozen results, every one of them ranked #1 by the company that makes it. This page is different in exactly one way: we tell you where our own plugin loses.
We make Venuera. That is a conflict of interest, and pretending otherwise would insult you. So here is the deal — every plugin below gets the same treatment: what it actually costs in year one and year three, what it does well, what it genuinely can’t do, and who should buy it. Venuera included. If you run a 40-person community meetup twice a year, we will tell you to install something free and leave. If you run a 900-seat theatre, we think we win, and we’ll show the arithmetic.
Prices verified July 2026, taken from each vendor’s own pricing page. They change; check before you buy.
The short version
| If you are… | Buy this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Already running WooCommerce and want tickets on top | Venuera or FooEvents | One checkout, one order table, no parallel cart |
| A seated venue — theatre, cinema, concert hall | Venuera, Tickera or The Events Calendar Elite | Only these three do real visual seat selection well |
| Running a box office / selling at the door | Venuera or FooEvents POS | These are the only two with a real register — everything else has none |
| Broke, and just need QR tickets this weekend | Venuera free core or Event Tickets (free) | Genuinely usable free tiers |
| Building a big public events calendar, ticketing secondary | The Events Calendar or Modern Events Calendar | Nobody beats them on calendar views |
| Running a community directory with user-submitted events | WP Event Manager | Listing-directory architecture, front-end submissions |
| A university / association doing complex registration forms | Event Espresso | Registration logic is its whole personality |
| An agency wanting one licence across every client site | Tickera Lifetime | $399 once, unlimited sites, never renews |
| Selling appointments and classes, not events | Amelia | It’s a booking plugin, and a good one |
| Running one event a year and never touching WordPress again | Eventbrite | Honestly. Pay the fee, save the weekend |
What we actually measured
Feature lists are marketing. These eight questions decide whether you’ll still be happy in eighteen months.
- Per-ticket fees. Does anyone take a cut of every sale? Over a year this is the single biggest number in the comparison, and it dwarfs licence cost.
- Checkout architecture. Does it use your existing WooCommerce checkout — your gateways, taxes, coupons, order emails — or bolt on a second cart your buyers have never seen?
- Reserved seating. Can a buyer pick seat H14 from a map, or is everything general admission?
- Door check-in. QR codes are table stakes. What matters is scan speed, offline mode, multi-staff scanning and re-entry rules.
- Ticket design. Branded PDF that looks like your venue, or a grey stub with a barcode?
- Box office / POS. Can you sell and print at the door, cash and card, with a shift report at the end of the night?
- Recurring events. Weekly classes, nightly runs of a show, monthly workshops — one event with many dates, or 52 duplicated posts?
- Total cost over three years. Year-one price is a marketing number. Renewals, per-site licences and add-on stacking are the real number.
The two architectures — and why it decides everything else
Every plugin here is one of two things.
Standalone plugins ship their own product type, their own cart, their own checkout, their own orders table and their own gateway integrations. Tickera, Event Espresso and Events Manager work this way. The upside is independence — no WooCommerce required, and the ticketing flow can be tuned end to end. The downside is that you now run two commerce systems: two sets of orders, two refund workflows, two tax configurations, and any WooCommerce extension you already own is useless to it.
WooCommerce-first plugins add only the ticketing layer and let WooCommerce do the commerce. Venuera and FooEvents work this way; The Events Calendar and Eventin can. The upside is one cart, one order list, one tax setup, and instant access to every WooCommerce gateway, subscription tool, accounting bridge and abandoned-cart plugin ever written. The downside is real: you must run WooCommerce, and you inherit its weight and its upgrade cycle.
There is no universally right answer. If you already sell anything online, WooCommerce-first is almost always correct. If your site is only an events site and you resent installing a store, standalone is defensible.
Cost and architecture, side by side
| Plugin | Architecture | Free tier | Entry price | Everything-unlocked price | Per-ticket fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Venuera | WooCommerce-first | Yes — full ticketing | Free | $99/yr (All-Access, 1 site) | None |
| Tickera | Standalone (+ Woo bridge) | No | $149 yr 1 → $99/yr | $199 yr 1 → $149/yr, or $399 once | None |
| FooEvents | WooCommerce-first | No | $139 (Basic Bundle) | $349 (POS Bundle) | None |
| The Events Calendar | Both (own commerce or Woo) | Yes — calendar + basic tickets | $259/yr (Essentials) | $599/yr (Elite) | None on paid plans |
| Event Espresso | Standalone — no Woo | Yes — “Decaf” | $129/yr (Core) | $399/yr (All Access) | 3% on free tier; 1–3% if licence lapses |
| Eventin | Woo-compatible | Yes — limited | ~$49/yr | ~$679/yr top tier; lifetime offered | None |
| Modern Events Calendar | Both | Yes — MEC Lite | ~$99/yr | Higher tiers for booking/payments | None |
| Events Manager | Standalone | Yes — full core | Pro licence, annual | Pro + add-ons | None |
| WP Event Manager | Standalone / directory | Yes — full core | $99/yr | $399/yr (All) | None |
| EventPrime | Standalone | Yes | $69 (1 site) | $129 (unlimited) | None |
| EventOn | Woo-adjacent | Lite only | ~$25 (CodeCanyon) | Add-ons priced individually | None |
| Sugar Calendar | Woo or Stripe | Yes — Lite | Annual, low | Annual, mid | None |
| My Calendar | Standalone | Yes — full core | $69 (3 sites) | $399 unlimited + $29 ticketing | None |
| Amelia | Standalone booking | Yes — limited | Annual | Lifetime offered | None |
| Eventbrite | Hosted SaaS | Free events only | $0 | n/a | ~$3.45 on a $25 ticket (US 2026) |
Capability matrix
| Plugin | Reserved seating | Box office / POS | Recurring events | Scanner app | Branded PDF ticket | Native Woo checkout |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Venuera | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on | Free core, 27 templates | Yes |
| Tickera | Bundle | No | No | Free (Checkinera) | Yes, drag-and-drop | Via Bridge add-on |
| FooEvents | Add-on | Add-on | Via Bookings/Multi-day | Free app | PDF add-on | Yes |
| The Events Calendar | Elite tier only | No | Yes, all tiers | Pro tier | Limited | Pro tier |
| Event Espresso | No — stated by vendor | No — stated by vendor | All Access | Yes | Yes | No Woo integration |
| Eventin | Basic | No | Yes | QR check-in | Template builder | Woo payments |
| Modern Events Calendar | Limited | No | Yes, strong | Add-on | Limited | Optional |
| Events Manager | No | No | Yes, strong | App available | Basic | Separate add-on |
| WP Event Manager | No | No | Yes | Organizer app | Basic | Add-on |
| EventPrime | Basic seat map | No | Yes | Yes | Basic | Optional |
| EventOn | No | No | Yes | No | No | Partial |
| Sugar Calendar | No | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Amelia | No | No | Yes | No | Basic | Woo payments |
The plugins, one by one
1. Venuera — best for WooCommerce venues that run real doors
Ours. WooCommerce-first by design: tickets are WooCommerce products, orders are WooCommerce orders, and there is no second checkout to maintain. The free core is not a demo — unlimited events, unlimited tickets, the full Ticket Designer with 27 templates and AI generation, automatic event pages that inherit your theme, PDF tickets attached to order emails, manual check-in with entry rules, CSV and PDF attendee export, sales and check-in reports, Schema.org event markup and GDPR export/erase integration. You can sell out a real show without paying us anything.
Upsides. The free tier is the most capable in this comparison, and the Ticket Designer being in it is unusual — most competitors charge for PDF tickets. The Venue Designer handles zones, sections, tables and per-seat pricing. Point of Sale gives you a genuine register with shift reports, which almost nobody else in this list has at any price. All-Access at $99/year is the cheapest full-stack option here by a wide margin, and AI Connect lets you drive your events from Claude or ChatGPT.
Downsides — and these are real. Venuera is new. Tickera has been shipping since 2012 and FooEvents for over a decade; we have not yet survived as many WordPress releases as they have, and if a fourteen-year track record is what makes you sleep at night, buy one of theirs. WooCommerce is a hard requirement — if you don’t want a store on your site, Venuera is simply the wrong tool. The core is free but almost everything a serious venue needs is an add-on: seating, POS, recurring dates, the scanner app and custom attendee fields are all paid, and add-on licences are tiered by site count while the free core is not. We are also not a calendar plugin — if your primary need is a beautiful public events calendar with month/week/map views, The Events Calendar or MEC will make you happier. And our community is small: fewer Stack Overflow answers, fewer freelancers who already know the codebase, fewer third-party extensions.
Best for: venues, theatres, promoters and clubs already running WooCommerce, that need seating and a door operation and don’t want to pay a platform a percentage.
2. Tickera — best for agencies and anyone allergic to renewals
Standalone by default, with a WooCommerce bridge available. Fourteen years old, 373,850 downloads, 19 built-in gateways, and a free iOS/Android scanner called Checkinera. Standard is $149 in year one (including a one-off $50 activation fee) then $99/year; Bundle with all 25 add-ons is $199 then $149/year; Lifetime is $399 once and never renews.
Upsides. Every plan covers unlimited sites, which is remarkable — an agency can buy Lifetime once and use it on every client build forever, with the scanner app source code included so you can ship it under your own developer account. The plugin keeps working after a licence lapses. Seating Charts and Bridge for WooCommerce are both in the Bundle. Support has a genuinely strong reputation across years of reviews.
Downsides. No box office. There is no POS add-on among the 25, and Tickera’s own documentation points you at a separate POS plugin for manual sales while warning that it cannot load seat maps from the Seating Charts add-on — so anything sold that way arrives without an assigned seat. If you sell at the door, this is disqualifying. No native recurring events either — if you run the same show nightly for three weeks, you will be duplicating events. The default architecture is a second checkout; using your existing WooCommerce cart means buying the Bundle for the Bridge add-on. The add-on model means the useful configuration is spread across 25 plugins, and there’s more setup friction than a modern all-in-one. Interface design shows its age in places.
Best for: agencies, developers, non-WooCommerce sites, and anyone who would rather pay $399 once than think about renewals again.
3. FooEvents — the most mature WooCommerce-first option
Turns WooCommerce products into tickets. Over a decade old, 17,000+ customers, used by events selling 75,000+ tickets. Bundles: Basic $139, Bookings $169, Premium $199, Point of Sale $349 — each 12 months of updates and support, licensed per domain.
Upsides. Extremely well-proven at scale. Genuine breadth: seating, bookings with time slots, multi-day passes, POS, express check-in, name badges and wristbands, Apple/Google Wallet passes, Zoom for virtual events. Free scanner apps. Uses WooCommerce stock to prevent overselling, which is the correct way to do it.
Downsides. Per-domain licensing gets expensive fast for agencies — every client site is another purchase. The functionality is split across nine separate extensions, and working out which bundle you need is genuinely confusing (their own FAQ has a section explaining why Bookings isn’t in the Premium bundle). PDF tickets are a paid extension. No free tier at all, and no free trial — only a 14-day refund. The POS Bundle at $349 is the priciest entry point in this comparison outside The Events Calendar.
Best for: established WooCommerce stores running one site, who want a decade-proven system and don’t mind paying for it.
4. The Events Calendar / Event Tickets — the default, and it now costs
800,000+ active installs, over a billion events managed, now owned by Liquid Web. In 2026 it moved to bundled tiers: Essentials $259/year, Pro $399/year, Elite $599/year. The free calendar and free Event Tickets plugin remain on WordPress.org.
Upsides. Nothing else matches its calendar. Seven view types, filters, community submissions, importing from Meetup and Eventbrite, shortcodes, structured data. The free tier alone runs a decent public calendar. Elite includes a drag-and-drop seat map builder with per-section pricing and QR check-in sync, plus a full email marketing suite. Documentation and support are the best-resourced in the category.
Downsides. Price. WooCommerce ticket sales require Pro at $399/year. Reserved seating requires Elite at $599/year — five to six times what the same capability costs elsewhere. There is no box office. The plugin is heavy, and the historical add-on sprawl means a lot of legacy documentation now contradicts the new tiers. If ticketing rather than calendaring is your actual job, you are paying a large premium for calendar features you may never use.
Best for: universities, cities, large membership organisations — anyone whose primary deliverable is a public calendar with hundreds of events, where budget is not the constraint.
5. Event Espresso — registration logic, at a price, with a fee trap
Standalone WordPress registration and ticketing, in the market since 2012. Decaf is free; Core is $129/year; All Access is $399/year with 30+ add-ons.
Upsides. The registration engine is the deepest here — conditional logic forms, waitlists, attendee movers, group registrations, per-event payment gateways, approval workflows, 25+ languages, a real REST API. If your problem is “sign up 400 parents and their children for 30 overlapping classes with different forms”, this is the tool.
Downsides, and they are significant. The free Decaf tier charges 3% pay-as-you-go, and if a paid licence lapses you drop to 1–3% per transaction — the only plugin in this comparison that can take a percentage of your sales. And Event Espresso’s own documentation states it is not a good fit for seating charts, point of sale or box office, event directories or user-submitted events, or multi-currency and multi-timezone events — and that it does not integrate with WooCommerce at all. That is admirably honest, and it also rules the plugin out for most venues.
Best for: associations, training providers and educational institutions with complex registration forms and no seating or door-sales requirement.
6. Eventin — the aggressive-value all-in-one
ThemeWinter’s event plugin. Free version on WordPress.org, paid tiers from roughly $49/year up to around $679/year at the top, with a lifetime option. Bundles event creation, ticketing, speakers, schedules, certificates, Zoom and Google Meet, recurring events and AI-generated event content into one plugin.
Upsides. Genuinely all-in-one — you don’t stack six add-ons to get a working conference site. The template builder for event pages, tickets and certificates is good. Strong for conferences specifically: speakers, agendas, multi-track schedules. Cheap entry, and every tier includes all pro features with tiers differing only by site count.
Downsides. Reserved seating is basic to nonexistent — not a theatre tool. No box office. Ticketing is bolted to a calendar-and-conference product rather than being the centre of gravity. And the plugin’s marketing is unusually combative toward competitors, which is worth mentioning because a lot of the “comparisons” you’ll find ranking Eventin #1 are published by ThemeWinter themselves. Take their benchmarks with the same salt you should take ours.
Best for: conference and summit organisers who want one plugin and a low bill.
7. Modern Events Calendar — the design-led option
Webnus’s MEC. Free Lite tier; paid from around $99/year. Fifty-plus layout options for displaying events.
Upsides. The most visually flexible event display of any plugin here. Strong recurring event handling. Good page-builder integration. If you have a designer and want event pages that don’t look like everyone else’s, MEC gives them the most to work with.
Downsides. Booking, payments and the more useful integrations live in higher tiers, so the real cost is above the headline. Ticketing is competent rather than deep — no serious seating, no POS, no branded PDF pipeline. The sheer number of options is a genuine usability cost; setup takes longer than it should.
Best for: design-driven sites where the calendar is a visual feature of the page, and ticketing is straightforward general admission.
8. Events Manager — the free workhorse
Free on WordPress.org with a full-featured core; Pro sold as an annual licence. Booking model, recurring events, locations, coupons, custom fields.
Upsides. The free core is unusually complete — real bookings, not a teaser. Scales from a meetup to enterprise scheduling. Recent releases added block editor support and an MCP layer so AI assistants can create events, cancel sessions, refund attendees and query booking data in plain language, which puts it ahead of most of this list on the AI front. A mobile app is now available.
Downsides. No reserved seating, no POS. WooCommerce integration is a separate add-on, not the native architecture. Customisation frequently means code. The admin interface is functional and dated. The project has patched several security disclosures recently — handled responsibly and promptly, which is the right outcome, but worth knowing if you take public bookings.
Best for: budget-constrained organisations that need real booking functionality for free and have someone technical on hand.
9. WP Event Manager — best for directories
Free core, paid bundles from $99 to $399/year. Built as a listing directory rather than a calendar.
Upsides. Front-end event submission, multi-organizer workflows and organizer dashboards work more naturally here than in any calendar-first plugin. Lightweight core. An organizer app with QR check-in. Good fit for marketplaces where you host other people’s events.
Downsides. Ticketing is an add-on to a directory, and it shows — no seating, no POS, no serious ticket design. The bundle structure means the useful configuration sits behind the $199–$399 tiers. Constant sitewide discount banners make the real price hard to pin down.
Best for: community event directories and multi-organizer marketplaces.
10. EventPrime — the cheap unlimited-site option
$69 for one site, $129 for unlimited. Calendar-first with booking, multiple ticket types and a basic seat map.
Upsides. Unlimited-site licensing at $129 is excellent value for anyone running several small event sites. Clean modern admin. Covers the basics competently.
Downsides. Smaller team, smaller ecosystem, thinner documentation. The seat map is basic — fine for a 60-seat studio, not for a tiered auditorium. No POS. Fewer integrations than the majors.
Best for: small operators and freelancers running multiple simple event sites.
11. EventOn — cheap, pretty, limited
Around $25 on CodeCanyon, roughly 60,000 active installs. Distinctive event card design; PayPal in core, Stripe via the Tickets add-on.
Upsides. The lowest entry price of any premium option here, and the event cards genuinely look different from the standard list-and-calendar layout.
Downsides. Support runs through CodeCanyon’s system and documentation is thinner than the majors. The WordPress.org Lite version is essentially a preview. Ticketing is a bolt-on: no seating, no POS, no scanner app, no PDF design. Add-ons are priced individually and add up.
Best for: budget sites that want attractive event pages and only occasionally sell a ticket.
12. Sugar Calendar — deliberately minimal
Lightweight calendar from the WPBeginner/Awesome Motive orbit, with built-in ticketing through WooCommerce or Stripe.
Upsides. Fast, clean, no bloat, easy to learn. Doesn’t slow your site down. Good if events support your main content rather than being the business.
Downsides. Minimalism is the product, so almost every advanced requirement is a no: no seating, no POS, no branded PDF tickets, no scanner app. It is a calendar that can also take money.
Best for: blogs, small businesses and consultants running a handful of simple events.
13. My Calendar — the accessibility choice
Pro from $69 for three sites up to $399 unlimited, with ticketing sold separately at $29.
Upsides. The most accessibility-conscious plugin in the category by a distance, which matters if you are a public body with WCAG obligations. Ethical, stable, long-maintained, and the cheapest route to compliant event listings.
Downsides. No drag-and-drop builders, no seating, no POS. Ticketing is a $29 add-on to a calendar, not a ticketing system.
Best for: government bodies, universities and non-profits with accessibility requirements.
14. Amelia — a booking plugin, filed here by mistake
Amelia appears on every “best event ticketing” list, and it mostly shouldn’t. It is an appointment and service booking plugin with an events module attached — step-by-step booking wizards, staff scheduling, two-way Google Calendar and Outlook sync, Zoom and Teams.
Upsides. Best-in-class for appointments, classes and staff-based scheduling. Beautiful booking forms.
Downsides. As a ticketing system: no seating, no POS, no PDF ticket design, no real door operation. If you’re selling admission to a show, this is the wrong shape of tool.
Best for: salons, clinics, tutors, studios — anyone booking time rather than selling seats.
15. Eventbrite and the hosted platforms — the baseline you’re escaping
Worth stating plainly because it’s the comparison that actually matters. On Eventbrite’s published 2026 US schedule, a $25 ticket costs roughly $3.45 in platform and processing fees. Sell 1,000 and that’s about $3,450. Sell 10,000 and it’s about $34,500 — against a one-time $399 for Tickera Lifetime or $99/year for Venuera All-Access.
Upsides. Zero setup. Discovery — Eventbrite’s marketplace genuinely sends you buyers you would not otherwise reach. Someone else’s problem when it breaks at 9am on-sale day.
Downsides. The fee, forever. Your attendee list lives on their servers. Your buyers check out on their domain, under their brand. You are renting a customer relationship you could own.
Best for: a first event, a one-off, or anything where discovery is worth more to you than margin.
Three-year cost, three real scenarios
Licence price is not cost. Here is what three years actually looks like.
Scenario A — community venue, 200 seats, general admission, 40 shows a year, 6,000 tickets at €20
| Option | 3-year software cost | Platform fees | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venuera free core | €0 | €0 | €0 |
| Tickera Lifetime | $399 once | $0 | $399 |
| FooEvents Basic | $139 × 3 | $0 | $417 |
| The Events Calendar Pro | $399 × 3 | $0 | $1,197 |
| Eventbrite | $0 | ~$2.90/ticket × 18,000 | ~$52,000 |
At this scale the free Venuera core does the job and the interesting comparison isn’t between plugins at all — it’s between any plugin and the platform.
Scenario B — 600-seat theatre, reserved seating, box office at the door, weekly run
| Option | 3-year cost | Gets you seating? | Gets you POS? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venuera All-Access | $297 | Yes | Yes |
| Tickera Lifetime | $399 once | Yes | No |
| FooEvents POS Bundle | $1,047 | Yes | Yes |
| The Events Calendar Elite | $1,797 | Yes | No |
| Event Espresso All Access | $1,197 | No | No |
This is the scenario we built Venuera for, and it’s the one where the spread is widest — $297 against $1,797 for the same three capabilities, and two of the five options can’t do the job at any price.
Scenario C — agency, 12 client sites
| Option | 3-year cost across 12 sites |
|---|---|
| Tickera Lifetime (unlimited sites) | $399 once |
| Venuera All-Access, unlimited-site tier | Unlimited tier × 3 years |
| EventPrime unlimited | $129 × 3 = $387 |
| FooEvents Premium (per domain) | $199 × 12 × 3 = $7,164 |
| The Events Calendar Pro (per site) | $399 × 12 × 3 = $14,364 |
Per-domain licensing is the single most expensive decision an agency can make in this category. If you build client sites, check the site-count terms before the feature list.
Where Venuera loses
Since the whole point of this page is that we’ll say it: here are the situations where you should not buy our plugin.
- You don’t want WooCommerce. Buy Tickera or Events Manager.
- You need a big public calendar. Buy The Events Calendar or MEC. We generate event pages; we are not a calendar product.
- You want one licence across 12 client sites, forever, for $399. Buy Tickera Lifetime. We don’t beat that.
- You need a fourteen-year production track record. Buy FooEvents or Tickera. We’re new and we know it.
- Your problem is complex conditional registration forms, not admission. Buy Event Espresso.
- You need user-submitted events and organizer revenue splits. Buy WP Event Manager or The Events Calendar Pro.
- You’re booking appointments. Buy Amelia.
- You need discovery more than margin. Use Eventbrite, honestly.
Questions to ask any vendor before you pay
- Is there a per-ticket fee at any volume, or if my licence lapses? (Check this one twice.)
- What happens to the plugin when the licence expires — does it keep selling, or stop?
- How many sites does one licence cover, and is a multisite subsite counted separately?
- Is reserved seating included in the tier I’m buying, or two tiers up?
- Can I sell and print at the door?
- Does it support recurring dates, or will I duplicate an event 52 times?
- Can it collect custom data per attendee, not just per order?
- Is it HPOS-ready for high-traffic on-sales?
- Is attendee data covered by WordPress’s GDPR export and erase tools?
- What’s the refund window, and is there a working demo before I pay?
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free WordPress event ticketing plugin?
Venuera’s free core is the most capable — unlimited events and tickets, the full Ticket Designer, PDF tickets, exports, reports and check-in, with no per-ticket fee. Event Tickets (from The Events Calendar) and Events Manager also have genuinely useful free tiers. Be careful with Event Espresso‘s free Decaf tier: it charges 3% per transaction.
Which WordPress ticketing plugins support reserved seating?
Realistically four: Venuera (Venue Designer add-on), Tickera (Seating Charts, in the Bundle), FooEvents (Seating extension) and The Events Calendar (Elite tier only, at $599/year). EventPrime has a basic seat map. Event Espresso states it does not support seating charts at all.
Should I pick a WooCommerce-first or standalone ticketing plugin?
WooCommerce-first if you already sell anything online — one cart, one order list, one tax setup, and every WooCommerce gateway and extension available to you. Standalone if your site is events-only and you don’t want a store. The mistake to avoid is running both: two carts means two refund workflows and reconciliation pain at year end.
Do any WordPress ticketing plugins charge per-ticket fees?
Almost none — that’s the point of self-hosting. The exception in this comparison is Event Espresso, which applies a 3% pay-as-you-go fee on its free tier and 1–3% if a paid licence lapses. Everyone else charges a licence fee only; your payment gateway’s processing fee (typically around 2.9% + $0.30) applies regardless and goes to the gateway, not the plugin.
What’s the cheapest way to run a seated venue on WordPress?
Venuera All-Access at $99/year, or Tickera Bundle at $199 in year one then $149/year. Tickera Lifetime at $399 once is cheapest over any horizon longer than about three years. The Events Calendar Elite does the same job at $599/year.
Do ticketing plugins help with SEO?
The good ones output Schema.org Event markup so your events are eligible for Google’s event rich results. Venuera, The Events Calendar and MEC all do this automatically. Check before you buy — it’s an easy thing for a plugin to skip and a meaningful amount of free traffic to lose.
Can I migrate between these plugins later?
Partly. Attendee and order data usually exports to CSV, so you can carry the list. What doesn’t migrate is seat maps, ticket designs, event page layouts and any shortcodes embedded across your site. Assume a rebuild, and choose as if you’re choosing for three years.
Try the free Venuera core
Venuera is a free, WooCommerce-first event ticketing system for WordPress. Build the event, design the ticket, sell it through your own checkout and scan guests in at the door — no per-ticket fees, no third-party platform, and nothing to pay until you need seating, a register or recurring dates.
Get the free core → Explore the add-ons
Related: our complete guide to selling tickets on WordPress, a deeper look at the Eventbrite alternative question, and our theater ticketing software buyer’s guide.
Pricing verified July 2026 from each vendor’s published pricing page. Vendors change prices; confirm before purchasing. Venuera is our own product — see “Where Venuera loses” above for the cases where we recommend a competitor.