WP Event Management Review: An Event Manager Plugin For WordPress

The biggest challenge that industries are facing nowadays is how to increase their user engagement. Hosting a special event to attract more users and engagement is one of the best cost-free digital advertisements. Despite many obstacles, such as high marketing costs, businesses are planning to host more trade shows, marketing meetings, and conferences. One of the most effective ways, so that these events reach your audience is displaying it on your website via an event manager plugin for WordPress. 

You will want to share important events no matter what type of website you have. Whether you own a music website, education, gym, or even a salon website it is relevant to show important information for multiple events in a familiar calendar-style format ie. an events manager. This will give more visibility and rapid registration for the event when, for example, if it is placed on a very high-traffic homepage. 

But who wants to spend time figuring out how to add this functionality? 

How to add events to your WordPress website

Luckily for you, WordPress theme and plugin developers have done all the hard work to make sure sharing events via a WordPress website is just a click away. The easiest way to set up an event calendar on your WordPress site is to use a full-fledged event plugin like WP Event Manager.

WordPress Event Manager, a fully responsive events manager plugin to create multiple types of calendars, specify venues, and even manage organizers. Even if you want to create a full-fledged WordPress learning management system conduct online seminars, this full-featured event management plugin is easily customizable and works with any kind of theme. You can easily set up events directly from your WordPress dashboard. 

Let’s have a closer look at how this WordPress events calendar plugin can make planning your next event a breeze. 

WP Event Manager is a feature-rich, SEO friendly events manager plugin that lets you create event listings on your WordPress website. In addition, it comes with an option where your users can add their own events too (with your approval of course). It is very easy to use and has a user-friendly interface so even if you lack technical knowledge you can easily organize and display your events listings from a single dashboard. 

You can also choose to display the events anywhere on your website using a simple shortcode, automatically created by the plugin. The admins can also manage all the event entries from the event dashboard where you can mark an event as the most important one, or view the canceled one or any expired event, all the events are marked differently with a different color so as to make them noticeable. 

What’s more, it has a bunch of add ons that help you build a full-fledged event platform where you can add the ticket sales and more. Below are some key features of WP Event Manager WordPress plugin:

1. Fully Responsive
2. Cross Browsers support ( Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera )
3. SEO Friendly & Compatible with SEO plugins.
4. Multilingual Translation – Internationalized Supported
5. Completely Ajaxified for super smooth browsing
6. Add, manage, and categorize event listings using the familiar WordPress UI.

Add and show events in WordPress

WP Event Manager is one of the best WordPress events plugins for anyone who wants to showcase their upcoming events. This may sound a bit general but that’s a fact. You can either use WP Event Manager to:

• Add, schedule, and manage your events or
• Accept event listings from other users

Here are some use cases for this event manager plugin:

1. Sell tickets to a film festival 
2. Organizing a Yoga class 
3. Webinars 
4. Hosting religious events. For example, a Bible study
5. Organizing fundraiser events
6. School Board Meetings 
7. Educational Training and much more.

Now, let’s explore the key plugin’s features that will help you sign up more event attendees.

Key features of WP Event Manager

WP Event Manager provides customizable features to create your business listings. Doesn’t matter what type of event you are planning to host, a simple interface like this is the best option for you. Below are the key features of WP Event Manager:

Event Submissions

After you have installed and activated the plugin, the event is automatically added as the custom post type. It provides a submission form in the backend and all you have to do is fill out the details to create the listings. While in the frontend the users who are registered can submit their events to be posted on your website. 

The users can add the event title, image, event description, etc. They also have an option to preview the event listing before it goes live on your website. 

Event Widgets

The event widgets let you display customizable listings on your website. These widgets can be used in any widget section like the footer or a sidebar. You can also use these widgets to show any recently added event or any upcoming events. All you need to do is enter details, like the title of the event, a number of listings to show in the frontend, and keywords if you want the widget to display events in a certain location. 

With the help of a featured widget, you can also choose to display only the featured events on your website. 

Premium Add-ons

WP Event Manager is a free plugin, but there are some add ons you can purchase to increase its functionality.  

1. Calendar

This allows you to display all the future events, where visitors can just hover a specific date to see the additional details. When a user visits your website with a specific date in mind, this elaborative add-on gives users clear visibility of the upcoming events. Hovering over a specific date will reveal a pop up that shows the name, date, and an image that the organizer provides. 

You can also add the calendar in your sidebar as a widget and easily manage it from the admin panel. Apart from that, you can also move the calendar to various locations by adding it to the widget submenu in the admin panel. This 31- day calendar gives good exposures to all your events.

2. Google Maps 

With this feature, users can locate the exact event destination and also find out about other events happening around. The “Events Proximity Search” enables visitors to apply filters and get access to the events in a specified location. A drop-down gives users the option to select the distance units (miles or kilometers) and sort the events based on distance, date, or title. 

A Google map shortcode will display all the events on the map based on category, location, etc. You can also modify the search filters from the backend or decide the presence or removal of the google map on the page. 

3. Sell Tickets

 This add-on combined with Woocommerce is a powerful feature to monetize your website. The organizer can add a ticket, set the availability, and track its performance. You can also set the availability much before the event to let the buyers purchase a ticket in advance. The organizer can set the start and the end date as well as the number of tickets that could be bought. 

The most amazing feature I liked the most was the availability of a fully functional QR code where a customer can easily check-in via their own smartphones.

4. Registrations

With this add-on, the invitees of an event can easily register for an event where you can manage the user list in the admin dashboard. You can also register any user by yourself with a backend registration. All the details of the registered users can be seen on a separate dashboard created by the plugin where you can manage the attendees by applying filters such as their status, time, event, etc. 

5. Zoom 

With this add-on, you can host virtual events by integrating your zoom accounts and creating and managing the events. You can embed these live streams and control the meetings directly from your WordPress dashboard. At the submission form, you can add the link to the zoom meeting. The users will be able to see all the details related to the zoom meeting in the frontend dashboard. 

6. Recurring Events 

If you want to create a batch of similar events at one, then this add-on is the one you must go for. You can easily set and customize the events at once so you don’t have to create one again and again. 

7. Bookmarks 

Adding this add-on to your website helps the users to save the events that they would like to attend.  You can also bookmark the events with personalized notes. 

How to get WP Event Manager?

WP Event Manager is completely free and has 10,000+ active installations. It is available in the official WordPress repository and can be installed and activated just like any other WordPress plugin.

1. From your WordPress Admin Dashboard > Plugins > Add New, search for “WP Event Manager”.
2. Click on the Install Now button to download the plugin. Once downloaded click on the Activate button to activate it.

You can also find the download link on the official website of WP Event Manager. 

How does this WordPress events plugin work?

After you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you’ll be met with the setup wizard of WP Event Manager. 

The plugin automatically creates pages to help you manage the events and showcase them. You can customize these pages later by adding a shortcode wherever you want. Next you can tweak the plugin settings tab if you wish to:

General Settings

If you are using Google Maps, you can grab your Google API key form here. You can also enable or disable the framework to be shown in the frontend. 

Event Listings

Under this tab you can:

• Choose how many listings per page should be displayed
• Hide any event that has expired
• Enable ticket prices categories and even types,
• Change the filtering options for each event.

And various other settings.

Event Submissions

Under this tab, you can modify how the plugin will interact with the users. You can assign the role to the new users, whether they can create an account automatically and choose the registration method. 

Pages

Under the pages tab, you can modify the pages that are automatically created. You can just drop the shortcodes anywhere on the website and start creating the page.

Field Editor

This exclusive feature enables you to modify any field at the event submissions without any coding. It offers flexibility to edit field labels, descriptions, placeholder text in the text box.  All you have to do is go to the Event Manager Tab > Field Editor > Add Field. Fill out the details and click save. It comes so easy for the non-techies as it adds a field within minutes without any coding. 

Support Services

One thing to look for when it comes to free plugins is how responsive the support team is. The developers are doing a pretty good job answering all the queries on the support forum. 

Apart from this, the detailed and in-depth documentation ensures that you don’t have to use any code to use the features provided by WP Event Manager.

Final thoughts on WP Event Manager plugin

WP Event Manager increases the functionality of your website by including the front end submissions forms even in the free version. It is easy to use and takes only minutes to get the plugin going.  The most important feature is the guiding wizard that automatically creates the necessary pages for you. Obviously, you’ll be able to edit them later using shortcodes. 

The premium add-ons also give you an option to add more functionality like calendars, sliders, Google maps and so much more! The plugins already have so much to offer as a free tool but this premium add-ons will do wonders for your website. In addition to that the plugin support and the detailed documentation seems excellent. 

If you are looking for a way to build an event platform or simply trying to list your company events online, WP Event Manager is definitely an option to consider. WP Event Manager scores a solid 4.5 out of 5 ratings from our review experts. Here’re the details:

Features	5/5
Ease Of Use	4/5 (the order of the event options could be better)
Support	5/5
Documentation	5/5
Value For Money	5/5

Have you used WP Event Manager before or any other Events Management plugin for WordPress? We would love to hear your thoughts regarding the plugin in the comment box below!