Suitable for simple free events?

[Jonathan]

I’m looking for an event ‘ticketing’ plugin. My client organises free events with a limited number of places available. There will be multiple events, and each event could be held at multiple times (e.g., tours today at 13:00-14:00 and at 15:00-16:00). Visitors of the site should be able to register for an event at the time of their choice. During registration visitors should choose how much people will come.

Would the £40 version of this plugin be suitable for that? I’m a bit afraid that this plugin (and all other event ticketing plugins I’ve found) are a bit too big/extensive for this use case. Hopefully you can say something about that 🙂

[Stephen Harris]

Hi Jonathan,

Yes, Pro does support tickets for free events. If tickets are free then the payment gateway option is hidden from the user, and they are not taken to a payment gateway. On the booking form there is still a price column but this can hidden with few lines of CSS:

.eo-booking-total, 
.eo-booking-ticket-price {
    display: none;
}

The only caveat is that each event has only one time (i.e. if it’s a recurring event, each occurrence is at the same time). If you’re offering multiple times, then each time would require its own event.

Alternatively you could offer a ticket type for each timeslot – though I can’t recommend this as it’s a mis-use of the multi-ticket feature. For example clicking on an event in the admin calendar you can view a booking summary – but that small summary will group all tickets (which maybe confusing if each ticket represents a different timeslot). Of course, you can still view a detailed breakdown of bookings for an event.

Event Organiser (& Pro) are both designed to provide a lot of features, but to do so in away which maintains a simple and easy to use user-interface. If you, or you’re client aren’t quite sure it’s right for you, you’re welcome to demo the plug-in at http://wp-event-organiser.com/try-it/.

[Author]

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