You can sell event tickets on WordPress without paying a per-ticket fee to a ticketing platform. You install a ticketing plugin, connect your own payment processor, and keep what the buyer pays minus the processor’s charge. You also take on hosting, a plugin licence if the plugin needs one, and the admin work that Eventbrite does for you. This guide shows what you pay instead, which plugins can do the job, and how to set up a ticketed event step by step.
Facts about third-party products here were checked on their own websites in October 2026. Fees and plans change often, so confirm anything that affects your budget on each vendor’s pricing page.
In this guide
- What Eventbrite charges, and why people look for an alternative
- What you pay instead when you sell tickets on WordPress
- Which WordPress plugins sell tickets, compared in one table
- How to set up ticket sales on a Reign site, step by step
- Ticket types, capacity, refunds, check-in and confirmation emails
- Tax, and why it stays your job
- When Eventbrite is still the better choice
- Questions people ask
Why do people look for an Eventbrite alternative on WordPress?
Most organisers look for an Eventbrite alternative because the platform charges fees on paid tickets, and those fees grow with every ticket you sell. The attendee also buys on Eventbrite’s pages, not yours, so your brand shares the screen with a marketplace.
Here is what Eventbrite’s own organiser pricing page says. Free events carry no fee. For paid events there is a service fee on each ticket and a separate payment processing fee on each order. By default the buyer pays those fees, though organisers can choose to absorb them when they set up ticket types. We are not quoting figures, because Eventbrite changes them by country and plan. Read the current numbers on Eventbrite’s pricing page before you compare.
The fee itself is not the only reason. A ticket platform gives you a list of buyers inside its dashboard, a checkout it controls, and a look that is mostly fixed. If your events are part of a community, a course or a membership, you probably want ticket buyers to land on your own site, in your own member list, with your own design.
That is the real trade. On Eventbrite you pay a share of each sale for a finished product. On WordPress you pay for the parts separately and assemble them yourself.
What do you pay instead when you sell tickets on WordPress?
You pay four things: a payment processor, hosting, a plugin licence if your ticketing plugin has a paid tier, and your own time. None of them is a per-ticket platform fee set by the ticketing software, though you should check each plugin’s terms on that point.
The payment processor
A payment processor is the company that moves the card payment, such as Stripe or PayPal. It charges you a fee on each payment. That fee exists on Eventbrite too, as the separate processing line, so it is not a cost WordPress adds. Open your processor’s pricing page and read how it charges for your country and card types. Tickera says this plainly on its own site: standard gateway processing fees still apply and go to the gateway, not to Tickera.
Hosting
Your site has to stay up when a ticket sale opens. Ticket releases create a burst of visitors at the same moment, so pick a host with server-side caching and room to grow. Hosting is a recurring cost whether you sell one ticket or a thousand.
The licence
Some ticketing plugins sell tickets in a free version. Others sell the core plugin as a paid product, and many keep extras like check-in apps, extra payment gateways or seating charts for paid add-ons. The table below shows what each vendor says on its own site. A licence is usually a yearly or one-off cost, not a share of each ticket, but check how each vendor bills.
Your time
Eventbrite handles the checkout page, the confirmation email, the attendee list and the door app for you. On WordPress you configure and test each of those. Budget an afternoon for a first event and less for the second.
To compare honestly, add up every recurring cost on each side for the number of tickets you expect in a year, then again at double that number. Fees that scale with ticket count matter most when you sell many tickets. A fixed licence matters most when you sell few.
Which WordPress plugins can sell event tickets?
Several WordPress plugins sell tickets, and they differ mainly in whether they use WooCommerce, which extras sit behind a paid licence, and how they handle check-in. We make Eventonomy, so it is listed first. Every other plugin gets its real strengths and the cases where it is the better pick.
| Plugin | How it sells tickets | Check-in | Free or paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eventonomy (made by Wbcom) | Paid tickets through Stripe, PayPal or WooCommerce | Door check-in scanner | Paid tickets and check-in need a paid licence, RSVPs and calendar views are free. Check the product page. |
| Event Tickets | Tickets and RSVPs from the dashboard, with payments through Tickets Commerce and Stripe, PayPal or Paystack | QR-code tickets and a mobile scanning app listed on its site | Free version exists. An Event Tickets Plus licence adds WooCommerce integration and other extras. |
| Tickera | Standalone, or through WooCommerce with a bridge add-on | Checkinera scanner apps with QR codes and barcodes | Sold as paid plans. No free core listed on its site. |
| Event Espresso | Registration and ticket sales with several gateways | Mobile scanning app on the All Access plan, attendance tracking in core | A free version called Decaf exists with basic features. Core and All Access need a licence key. |
| Modern Events Calendar | Booking module, plus a Ticket and Invoice add-on | Check-ins through the Ticket and Invoice add-on | The Lite version has no booking or ticketing. Booking and tickets are in the Pro version. |
| WooCommerce with a ticket plugin | Tickets as products in your store’s cart and checkout | Depends on the ticket plugin | WooCommerce is open source. Ticket extensions vary. |
Eventonomy
Eventonomy is Wbcom’s events plugin. RSVPs with going, maybe and no answers, capacity caps, waitlists and the common calendar views are in the free tier according to its site. Paid tickets through Stripe, PayPal or WooCommerce, built-in tax, booking fees and coupons, and the door check-in scanner need a paid licence. Which attendee and order tools sit in which tier is best checked on the product page. It is the best fit if you want events inside a community site where members RSVP, discuss and buy tickets in one place.
Event Tickets and Event Tickets Plus
Its site describes ticket types with their own price, capacity and sale window, RSVPs, waitlists, QR-code tickets, refunds, attendee exports and branded confirmation emails. It can also sell through WooCommerce, which suits you if events are a small part of an existing store. It is the better pick if you already run The Events Calendar and want the lowest-friction add-on. Read the current terms on the plugin listing too.
Tickera
Tickera is built for ticketing alone. It works standalone or through a WooCommerce bridge, has an offline-capable scanning app, a seating chart add-on and custom PDF ticket templates. Its site states that it takes no commission on ticket sales. It is the better pick when you run venues or many scanned events and want a tool that does ticketing first.
Event Espresso
Event Espresso handles registration as well as tickets, including several attendees per registration and multi-day events. Payments go to your own gateway account. It suits organisers who need registration forms and payment options more than a community around the event.
Modern Events Calendar
Modern Events Calendar is a calendar first. Its booking and ticketing sit in the Pro version, with a Ticket and Invoice add-on for tickets, check-ins and invoices. It accepts payments through WooCommerce, PayPal and Stripe. It suits you if the calendar layout is your priority and ticketing is a feature on top.
WooCommerce on its own
WooCommerce is an open-source store platform. It handles payments, tax settings and a standard cart, and a ticket extension adds the event side. It is the better pick if your tickets sit next to merchandise or other products in one checkout. For broader comparisons, see our comparison of WordPress event calendar plugins and the alternatives to The Events Calendar.
How do you choose between these plugins?
Choose by the way your events fit into your site, not by feature count. Four questions settle most cases.
- Do you run a community or membership site? If yes, use a plugin that lives well beside it. Eventonomy is built for that, and the theme styles it with the rest of the site.
- Do you already sell products in WooCommerce? If yes, a WooCommerce-based ticket plugin keeps one cart and one set of reports.
- Do you need seat selection or heavy door scanning? Tickera lists seating charts and scanner apps as core parts of its product.
- Do you already use The Events Calendar? Then check Event Tickets first.
Whichever you pick, run a test purchase before you announce anything. The first real sale is the wrong time to find a checkout problem.
How do you set up ticket sales on WordPress, step by step?
Install the theme, install your events plugin, connect a payment processor, create a ticketed event, then test a purchase, a refund and a check-in. Follow the order, because each step depends on the one before it. The steps below use Reign with Eventonomy, and the same flow applies to other ticket plugins.
Step 1: Install Reign on a clean WordPress
Install WordPress on your own domain and activate Reign under Appearance, then Themes. Use the Demo Installer to import a demo layout if you want a head start, then replace the demo content. Our guide to installing Reign and importing a demo walks through it. To confirm it worked, open your homepage and check that the header and footer show the demo layout.
Step 2: Install your ticketing plugin
Install Eventonomy, or the plugin you chose from the table. Activate any paid licence your plugin needs for tickets, since the free tier of several plugins covers RSVPs only. To confirm it worked, open the plugin’s menu in the dashboard and check that an Events section appears.
Step 3: Connect your payment processor
Open the plugin’s payment settings and connect Stripe, PayPal or WooCommerce, whichever the plugin supports. Use the processor’s test mode first. To confirm it worked, the settings page should show the connection as active and, in test mode, accept a test card number from the processor’s documentation.
Step 4: Create the event
Add a new event with a title, description, date, time, venue and an image. Add the venue address in full, because attendees look for it. To confirm it worked, open the event page on the front end and read it as an attendee would.
Step 5: Add ticket types and capacity
Create the ticket types you want, set a price and a quantity for each, and set sale start and end times. See the next section for how to think about them. To confirm it worked, reload the event page and check that each ticket type shows the right price and the right number remaining.
Step 6: Set up emails and policies
Write the confirmation email text, add your refund policy to the event page, and add contact details for questions. To confirm it worked, buy a test ticket and read the email that arrives.
Step 7: Place the event in your menus and pages
Add the event calendar to your main menu and feature the event on a page people already visit. If you run a community, link the event from the Space where members talk. Our guide to running community events on a Reign site covers the community side in more depth. To confirm it worked, click through from the homepage to the checkout in three clicks or fewer.
Step 8: Test the whole flow on a phone
Open the site on a phone, buy a test ticket, open the confirmation email and find the ticket. Then test a refund and a check-in. To confirm it worked, you should have one ticket in the attendee list and, after the refund, none. Our pre-launch checklist lists further things to check before you go live.
Step 9: Switch from test mode to live
Switch the processor out of test mode and make one small real purchase yourself. To confirm it worked, check that the payment reaches your processor account and the order reaches your attendee list.
What ticket types should you offer?
A ticket type is a version of a ticket with its own price, quantity and sale window. Offer as few as your event needs. Most events work with two or three.
Common choices are a standard ticket, an early-bird ticket that closes on a set date, and a member or student ticket. A free ticket is also a ticket type, and it still counts toward capacity. Event Tickets lists early bird, general, student and member-only tiers as examples on its site, which is a fair template for how organisers split them.
Name each type so a stranger can tell the difference. “Standard” and “Early bird, ends 1 March” are clear. “Tier A” and “Tier B” are not.
If you run a membership, you may want a member ticket at a different price. Whether a plugin can restrict a ticket type to members depends on the plugin, so check its documentation. Our guide to building a paid community with Stripe shows how to tie paid access to member status.
How does capacity work?
Capacity is the maximum number of tickets you will sell. Set it per ticket type and, where the plugin allows, for the whole event. The venue’s legal and safety limit is the ceiling, so check it with the venue before you set a number.
Two settings help. A stock countdown tells buyers how many tickets remain. A waitlist captures people when the event sells out, so you can offer spots that come free. Eventonomy lists capacity caps and waitlists for RSVPs, and Event Tickets lists waitlists and a stock countdown, according to their own sites.
Leave a small margin if the event has guests, speakers or sponsors who do not buy tickets. They still use space.
How should you handle refunds?
Decide your refund policy before you open sales, then write it on the event page. Buyers should see it before they pay, not after.
A clear policy answers three questions: can someone cancel, until when, and what do they get back. A common pattern is a full refund up to a set date, and no refund after it, except when you cancel the event. That is a pattern, not a rule, and the right policy depends on your costs.
Refunds also touch your processor. Refunding a ticket in your plugin should refund the payment through the same processor, but check what your processor does with its own fee when you refund, since the policy differs by processor. Read that on the processor’s site. Event Tickets lists refunds in its attendee tools, and Eventonomy’s site lists orders and refunds under its paid ticketing tools.
To confirm your setup works, refund one test ticket and watch both the attendee list and the processor dashboard.
How does check-in work at the door?
Check-in means confirming at the door that a ticket is real and has not been used. Most plugins give each ticket a QR code, and staff scan it with a phone or a scanner.
Eventonomy lists a door check-in scanner in its paid tools. Tickera describes scanner apps that work offline and sync later. Event Tickets and Event Espresso also list mobile scanning on their own sites. Whichever you use, test the scanner on a phone in the actual venue if you can, because mobile signal is often poor inside buildings.
Two habits help. Print a backup attendee list with names, in case a phone fails. And keep one person on the door whose only job is to resolve problems, so the queue keeps moving.
What should the confirmation email contain?
The confirmation email should say what the buyer bought, when and where the event is, and how to get in. It should also carry the ticket itself, or a link to it.
Put the essentials near the top: event name, date, start time, venue and the ticket. Then add the practical details: parking or transport, what to bring, who to contact. Add your refund policy as a short line with a link.
Event Tickets says each order triggers a branded confirmation email and that paid tickets include a ticket to scan. Check that your plugin does the same, then send yourself a test and open it on a phone. If it lands in spam, fix your email delivery before the event, not on the day.
Use a transactional email service, which is a service built to send automated mail, instead of your host’s default mail. Community notifications and ticket emails depend on it.
Who is responsible for tax on ticket sales?
You are. Selling tickets on your own site makes you the seller, and any sales tax, VAT or other rules that apply to ticket sales in your country or state are yours to apply and report.
Plugins can help with the mechanics. Eventonomy lists tax, booking fees and coupons in its paid checkout, and WooCommerce lists tax tools on its site. A plugin can calculate a rate, but it cannot tell you which rate applies to you, whether tickets to your event are taxable, or what to file and when.
Check your local rules, and talk to an accountant who knows your area before you sell your first ticket. This guide is not tax or legal advice.
What do you do about discount codes and booking fees?
Offer discount codes through your plugin’s coupon tool, and decide whether to add a booking fee at all. A coupon is a code that reduces the price for a buyer. A booking fee is an extra charge added at checkout to cover costs.
Eventonomy lists booking fees and coupons as built-in checkout tools in its paid tier. You are not required to charge a booking fee. Many organisers include the processor cost in the ticket price so buyers see one number. If you add a fee, say so clearly before checkout, because a surprise at the last step costs sales.
How do you promote a ticketed event on your own site?
Promote it where your audience already spends time: your homepage, your email list, your community and your social profiles. On your own site, you bring the audience yourself.
This changes how you plan. Start earlier, post more than once, and give people a reason to buy now, such as an early-bird deadline. Our guide to launching a community to its first 100 members covers the same habits for building an audience from nothing, and our piece on monetizing an online community puts events next to other ways to earn.
If your site has a large audience, you can also sell ad space around the events page. See how to sell ad space in a WordPress community.
What mistakes do organisers make when they leave Eventbrite?
- Skipping the test purchase. A checkout that fails on launch day costs more than any fee.
- Forgetting the processor setup. Some processors need business details verified before they pay out, and that can take days.
- Underestimating traffic. A ticket release sends a burst of visitors. Check your hosting plan before the sale opens.
- Hiding the refund policy. Put it on the event page and in the email.
- Ignoring email delivery. Confirmation emails that land in spam turn into support requests.
- Assuming the plugin handles tax. It calculates a rate you set. The rule is still yours to find.
- Moving everything at once. Run your next event on WordPress, and keep Eventbrite for events that already have tickets sold.
When is Eventbrite still the better choice?
Eventbrite is the better choice when you want a marketplace to find buyers for you, when you run one event a year and do not want a website project, or when you need the platform to carry the checkout and support for you. Its strength is discovery and simplicity.
WordPress is the better choice when you run events regularly, already have an audience, want ticket buyers to become members, or want the checkout to look like your brand. A reasonable middle path is to keep Eventbrite for one-off events open to the public and run your own events on WordPress. You do not have to pick one for good.
Why use Reign for a site that sells tickets?
Reign gives the event pages and the rest of your site one look. It is a WordPress community theme from Wbcom Designs, with five header layouts, colour tokens and dark mode, all set without code. It styles Wbcom plugins such as Eventonomy, BuddyNext and Learnomy without add-ons, so an event page, a community Space and a course page look like one site. See what you can build with Reign for the range.
If you also run a community, BuddyNext at buddynext.com adds the member side: profiles, Spaces, messages and a moderation queue. It is optional, and Eventonomy works without it.
Questions people ask
What is the best WordPress event tickets plugin?
It depends on your site. Eventonomy suits a community site, Event Tickets suits owners of The Events Calendar, Tickera suits ticketing-first setups with scanning, and WooCommerce-based plugins suit stores. Use the four questions above and test one before you commit.
Can I sell tickets on WordPress for free?
Free ticketing exists in some plugins, but you still pay for hosting and a payment processor, and often a licence for extras such as check-in. Free RSVPs for free events are the cheapest case. Add up every cost before you call it free.
Is there really no per-ticket fee on WordPress?
The ticketing software does not have to take one, and Tickera says on its site that it does not. Your payment processor still charges on each payment. A small number of plugins mention platform fees on some gateways, so read each plugin’s current terms.
How do I scan tickets at the door?
Use a plugin with QR-code tickets and a scanning tool, then test it in the venue. Eventonomy lists a door check-in scanner in its paid tools, and Tickera lists its Checkinera apps. Keep a printed attendee list as a backup.
Do I have to collect tax on tickets?
That depends on where you and your buyers are and what kind of event it is. Check your local rules and ask an accountant. Plugins can apply a rate, but they cannot decide which rate is correct.
Reign is the theme behind the setups in this guide, so the site looks like yours. See the Reign theme page for features and demos, or try the BuddyNext live demo to click around a working community first. For the events plugin itself, visit eventonomy.org and check the product page for what each licence includes.