How a WordPress Event Manager Plugin Compare to an Event Calendar? – WordPress plugins can help you with your events. You can use WordPress plugins for posting a simple event calendar online or managing a complex event registration process.
However, there is a difference between calendaring and event management, and here is our advice when searching for a WordPress plugin for your events.
Event Management vs Event Calendar
The difference between event manager and event calendar really comes down to engagement.
If your business just wants to let people know what you or your organization is doing, then perhaps an event calendar is right for you. But if you are in the business of hosting events, or you use events to strengthen your business, then an event management plugin might be right for you.
WordPress event calendar plugins focus on the low-engagement calendar functionality on your website. The calendar is used to simply inform your audience about your upcoming events in the format of a calendar. The calendar may be available in different formats such as month, week, day or list views, or might have different filter views for events. The calendar may also allow people to save an event to their own calendar. But that’s where most of the interactive features end, showcasing your events.
WordPress event manager plugins are designed to do more than showcase your events. Event manager plugins for WordPress allow you to engage with your audience by allowing them to register or buy tickets to the event, automate communication to those attendees, and also accept payments and capture revenue.
Features of Event Manager Plugins
Every business or organization that uses events to engage with their audience can benefit from an event registration and ticketing plugin for their WordPress business.
When you look for an event manager plugin, consider whether your processes need to be unique or standardized. The features of an event plugin for WordPress are usually sufficient for 95% of businesses. There might be 5% of the features or processes that you want to change. However, based on our experience, you should look very closely at whether your event registration or ticketing process really needs to be unique.
When you start thinking outside of standardized processes and features you start talking about expensive investments and maintaining custom code. We’ve found that most businesses should start or stick with a standardized process to keep their processes efficient and sustainable.
Here are some of the most important features of event manager plugins that will be a huge benefit to most businesses.
Purpose of the Event Calendar
Event management plugins include, but are not limited to a calendar. A good event manager plugin will include an event calendar regardless of whether your business hosts low-engagement events and just informs your audience about your events, or if you want to capitalize on the interest about your events and get people to buy or register.
The event calendar for an event management plugin will allow people to click an event that is listed on the calendar and invite them to engage more…such as register or buy tickets, signup.
Ticketing
In order to get the most out of your event calendar, you need to provide a way for people to take action. Offering tickets to your event, even free tickets, or sign ups for a volunteer position can help you maximize your relationship with your audience.
Tickets can be unique and varied so they make sense for your business. You can offer free tickets, offer VIP tickets, General Admission, or even Sponsorship tickets. Offering multiple registration and types of tickets can help you engage with your audience the way they want to interact with you, and you can learn more about your audience by the type of ticket they choose.
Tickets also help you organize your attendees at your event by the type of ticket they choose.
Registration Forms
The registration form system in an event manager plugin is key to giving your audience the right experience. If you know enough about your attendees, you can give them what they want and need, or keep them all organized and use that information for future events and marketing.
Confirmation Emails
Communicating to attendees is critical. You want to automate this communication as much as possible too. So, a good event manager plugin for WordPress will include automated registration and payment confirmation. The automated communication also gives confidence to your attendees that they successfully registered. Without this, you’ll likely have a lot of customer service issues from people looking to confirm their reservations.
Smart Checkout
The best event management plugins for WordPress are smart. For example, if someone is purchasing a paid ticket, they should be asked to provide payment details. However, if the attendee is registering for a free ticket, they should NOT be asked for payment. This can help keep the registration process simple, efficient; which also helps with converting your web traffic.
Payments
When your attendees register or purchase tickets, they should be asked for payment information. Attendees should be allowed to purchase with a credit card, PayPal, bank transfer, check, invoice, etc. The best event manager plugins for WordPress allow the event organizer to configure which options should be available to attendees, and attendees should be able to choose from those payment options to make a payment.
Great Customer and Technical Support
Supporting customers is also critical. Over the course of your business you will rely on a plugin company to provide you service too. That service will include signing up and purchasing the plugin, getting invoices and sales support, getting technical support including plugin updates and new features. Choose a company with great reviews and a track record of being helpful to customers.
That is not an exhaustive list of the features of a WordPress event manager plugin, but these are generally the most important features to consider.
The Best WordPress Event Manager Plugin
With those event manager plugin features in mind, we do want to recommend Event Espresso as the WordPress event manager plugin. That link will even send you to their guide about how to use an event manager plugin. They are great at training you to be successful with their event management plugin. Not using WordPress? Check out Event Smart where you can get an event website to sell tickets.
Event Espresso has been leading the way for WordPress event manager plugins for more than a decade. Event Espresso offers more features and control than any other plugin. So if you’re looking to make your events more successful, you should consider Event Espresso.
