Do you have a WordPress website? Does your business host events? If so, you might be on the hunt for a fully functional event scheduling and management plugin. Something that enables you to handle ticketing, RSVPs, guests, automated email notifications, booking forms – the list goes on…

One such plugin is WP Events Manager.

So, we thought it would be a good idea to explore what this plugin has to offer.

Let’s dive in!

What’s the WP Event Manager Plugin?

WP Event Manager prides itself on providing everything you need to manage events via your WordPress site. From website calendars to ticketing, this app offers everything you need from the frontend as well as the backend to help your events run smoothly.

‘#1 All in One Event Management Plugin for WordPress’

WP Event Manager offers a free version that you can upgrade if you want to purchase add-ons (more about these in a sec).

Who Needs a WPNeeds WP Event Manager?

WP Event Manager is a lightweight WordPress event management plugin. As such, it’s best for anyone who wants to keep their site running fast. If you’re after a plugin that doesn’t take up too much space…this could be the solution for you.

The interface is sleek and simple-to-use, so if you’re worried about the tech-y side of things, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Not only that, but WP Event Manager is a fantastic option if you’re on a budget. The freemium version boasts an impressive suite of features. For instance, you get access to pretty sophisticated functionalities like multilingual translations, frontend forms, and shortcodes for searchable event listings. Impressive, right?

How to Install WP Event Manager

If you already have a WordPress site, you’ll need to log into your dashboard using your username/email and password:

Now, head over to Plugins, and select ‘Add new,’ in the left-hand sidebar.

In the search bar, type WP Events Manager. Locate and click on the WP Event Manager app, followed by ‘Install Now,’ and then ‘Activate.’

When you activate the plugin, you’re redirected to the WP Event Manager Setup Wizard, which you can use to set things up. Just click ‘Continue to page setup’ to be taken to the Wizard.

You’re then prompted to select the pages you want to create, these include:

• Past events
• The event dashboard
• Event listings
• The event submission form
• Event summary
• The single event listing

Select whichever of these pages you want to appear on your website, and then click “Create selected pages.”

This prompts WP Event Manager to create these pages using shortcodes.

WP Event Manager’s Features:

Here are a few of WP Event Manager’s most notable features:

• WP Event Manager is fully responsive: This means that the plugin looks great no matter what size screen website visitors are using – desktop, mobile, laptop, tablet, etc.
• It’s entirely customizable: Due to the plugin’s open-source nature, if you have the coding know-how, you can edit the programming to enhance the app’s core functionality to comply with whatever you need.
• It’s SEO-friendly: WP Event Manager uses structured data markups to help Google better understand your website content. Once search engines have a clearer idea of the nature of your content, they’re more likely to rank you higher in search results.
• Multiple Views: When you begin creating your events, you can format them a couple of different ways – List View and Box View. Pick whichever way looks better for your brand!
• It’s easy-to-use: Event managers and organizers can submit listings from the frontend of your website, while your admin team can handle the coding on the backend. It’s also easy to visualize and manage multiple events with WP Event Manager’s intuitive dashboard – from the convenience of one organizer account, users can handle various events, venues, and vendors.
• You can preview your event before it goes live: You can preview your scheduled events before they go live, so if you want to make any last-minute changes, that’s totally doable.
• It’s easy for visitors to find events that interest them: Potential attendees can search and identify events they want to attend by filtering their search results by ‘types’ and ‘categories.’
• Template Override: This feature enables you to customize your WordPress templates on the frontend, without hampering the original plugin settings.
• WP Event Manager supports multilingual translation: You can cater to worldwide attendees with multilingual translation. Plus, WP Event Manager is also compatible with other  3rd party translation plugins too.
• It’s compatible with all significant web page builders: Including Gutenberg and third-party page builders like elementor, visual composer, Divi builder! As such, you don’t need any web development skills to make the most out of WP Event Manager.
• Access to a free mobile app: At the time of writing, this was still in development. But, WP Event Manager plans to launch their app soon, and when it’s out, you should be able to use the majority (if not all) of WP Event Manager’s features from the convenience of their mobile app.
• Event widgets: You can publish the details of your events using event widgets, which you can then place on your web page. You can create widgets for upcoming, featured, and recent events.

WP Event Manager Add-Ons

If you wish to extend the functionality of WP Event Manager’s free plan, the easiest way to do so, if with their add-ons. You can either purchase each add-on individually or buy one of two of their bundled packages:

1. The Developer Bundle Package
2. The Personal Bundle Package

The Developer Bundle Package

As the name of the package suggests, it’s best suited to developers. For $499 a year, developers can access all these add-ons with just one license key across five web domains!

With the below add-ons at your disposal, you’ll transform your WordPress website into an event management portal with just a few clicks:

• Google Maps: Google Maps plugin is used to display Google Maps on different pages with all the available events added using WP Event Manager on your website. It also allows you to filter the events using different location filter options.
• Calendar: You can display an event calendar that lists your upcoming events. It’s the most efficient way to show all of your future events to your website visitors.
• Registrations: You can invite people to register for an event. Registrations add-on enables the invitees of your website to register for an event as an attendee. It also allows the organizer and admin to manage the event registration form registrations dashboard.
• Sell Tickets: This combines with WooCommerce to enable you to sell tickets on your website. You can track tickets, selling schedules, and offer and manage multilevel pricing.
• Attendee Information: This compiles your attendee information (i.e., the personal info the attendee provided when they registered for the event), you’ll also get a notification when you secure a new registrant.
• WooCommerce Paid Listings: This helps you manage the paid listing functionality run by WooCommerce. Here you can generate customized event suites for event proposals.
• Recurring Events: This enables you to create a batch of similar events in one go. This comes in handy if you’re hosting the same event each week, month, year – with the ‘Recurring Events’ add-on, it’ll automatically relist this event for you. Needless to say, this saves you tons of time!
• Event Alerts: If you want to receive event-related alerts, you can. You can manage your alerts via WP Event Manager’s dashboard.
• Bookmarks: This makes it easy for visitors to bookmark your events in their favorites. This add-on inserts a bookmark button on each event page and provides registered users with a dashboard to manage their bookmarks.
• An Embeddable Event Widget: This display event listings on your website from other places, without you having to write a line of code.
• Colors: You can select the color palette for your event listings (both the text and background).
• Sliders: This provides a carousel where you can display your events using beautiful images.
• Event Tags: By using event tags, you can tag event submission forms with the keywords you’re trying to rank for. This increases the likelihood of your event appearing higher up on Google’s search engine results.
• Export Events: When you do anything to your website, backups are essential. This is why being able to export your events into a CSV file is necessary.
• Google Recaptcha: This add-on is worth its weight in gold when it comes to protecting your website from spam.
• Emails: This add-on sends event organizers email notifications when any of the following occur: when an event listing is submitted, approved, and expires.
• Google Analytics: This add-on inserts a unique Google Analytics code across your website to measure visitor’s interactions on your website.
• iCal: If you want to link the events displayed on your website with your Google calendar (or any digital calendar for that matter), this add-on will come in handy.
• Zoom: Do you have a Zoom account? If so, with this add-on, you can seamlessly integrate it with WP Event Manager to create and manage your meetings & webinars. You can also highlight events as virtual, track reports, and manage your Zoom attendees from both your WordPress dashboard and your frontend.

Personal Bundle Package

The Personal package provides users with all of WP Event Manager’s add-ons. This offers you access to everything you need to start selling tickets and managing events from the get-go. Needless to say, this package works out cheaper than purchasing each add-on individually. Usually, $640, WP Event Manager, is currently selling this package at the reduced cost of $235 (billed yearly).

Just like developer bundle package you also get access to:

• Google Maps
• Calendar
• Registrations
• Sell tickets
• Attendee Information
• WooCommerce Paid Listings
• Recurring Events
• Alerts
• Bookmarks
• An Embeddable Event Widget
• Colors
• Sliders
• Event Tags
• Export Events
• iCal
• Google Recaptcha
• Google Analytics
• Emails
• Contact Organizer: The add-on saves you from writing code for forms and buttons and for email notifications to appear for your event organizers when they are contacted for queries.
• Zoom

Customer Support

When you contact WP Event Manager’s customer support, you’ll be pleased to hear that you get to speak to a real-life human being – you’re not forced to try and explain your query to a bot! The plugin boasts a team of remote WordPress professionals dotted all around the world, to ensure

someone responds to your question fast.

WP Event Manager also offers a free migration service, so if you’re currently using one of their competitors, they’ll happily transfer everything over that you need to hit the ground running – free of charge. How cool is that?

Are You Ready to Start Using WP Event Manager?

We hope that having read this review; you now have a better idea about whether WP Event Manager is the best choice for your business. Have you got any experience using this plugin? Or, are you considering downloading and using it? If so, let us know all about it in the comments box below, we’d love to hear from you!