You sold a hundred tickets last weekend. Eventbrite kept around two hundred euros. Multiply that across a year of events and you are paying for a small car you never see. The truth is, you do not need a SaaS platform to sell event tickets — you need an event ticket plugin WordPress store owners can install in sixty seconds and own forever. This post walks you through exactly how to do that, with no code, no monthly fees, and no per-ticket cuts.
Watch the 60-second walkthrough above, then keep reading for the step-by-step setup, what to expect on event day, and where the free version ends and Premium begins.
Most ticketing platforms market themselves as “free to start” — and technically they are. The cost shows up at checkout, where the platform takes a percentage plus a fixed fee per ticket sold. Sell a hundred tickets at twenty euros each, and the platform can quietly walk away with two to three hundred euros before you have even printed wristbands.
That model made sense ten years ago when the only alternative was building your own checkout from scratch. It does not make sense in 2026 — not when you already have WordPress, and not when WooCommerce already handles the hard parts: products, payment gateways, taxes, refunds, customers.
The real fix is not switching SaaS platforms. It is bringing ticketing back inside your own site, where the only fees are the ones your payment gateway charges (the same Stripe or PayPal fees you already pay on every other product).
The shortest path is a plugin that plugs straight into WooCommerce, turns any product into a ticket, and gives you a way to scan attendees at the door. That is exactly what Event Tickets with Ticket Scanner does — and the free version on WordPress.org is enough to run a real event.
Here is what gets installed in those first sixty seconds:
[SCREENSHOT: WordPress plugin search showing “Event Tickets with Ticket Scanner” as the first result]
The video above compresses this into a minute. Here is the same flow, written down so you can follow along on a second screen.
Step 1 — Install the plugin. From your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins → Add New, search for “Event Tickets with Ticket Scanner”, and click Install, then Activate. WooCommerce should already be on your site; if not, install that first.
[SCREENSHOT: Plugin “Activate” button right after install]
Step 2 — Create a ticket list. A ticket list is the bucket of unique ticket numbers tied to your event. Open the new Event Tickets menu and create one. Name it after the event so the door staff knows what they are scanning.
Step 3 — Pick your WooCommerce product. This is the part most people overcomplicate. You do not create a separate “event” object. You take the WooCommerce product you would have created anyway — “Summer Festival Pass”, “Saturday Theatre Show”, “VIP Table for Four” — and flip a switch on it.
Step 4 — Enable ticket sales on that product. Inside the product, you will find a Ticket Sales toggle. Turn it on, link it to the ticket list you just created, and save. From this moment, every checkout for that product produces a real ticket with a unique QR code.
[SCREENSHOT: WooCommerce product edit screen with the “Enable Ticket Sales” toggle highlighted]
That is the full configuration. No webhook setup. No third-party account. The customer goes through a normal WooCommerce checkout, pays through whatever gateway you already use (Stripe, PayPal, Klarna — through the standard WooCommerce extensions), and receives an email with their PDF ticket attached as a download link.
This is where most ticketing setups fall apart — and where Event Tickets with Ticket Scanner quietly outperforms platforms that charge ten times more.
Grab your phone. Open the ticket scanner URL in your browser. Use the “Add to Home Screen” option and the scanner installs like an app — full screen, with haptic feedback. No App Store review, no separate download for your staff.
Point the camera at a customer’s QR code. The scanner vibrates, plays a green check, and confirms a valid ticket. Next guest. Scan. Vibration. Voice confirms. The line moves.
For larger teams, the Premium version adds auth-token-based scanner access so volunteers can scan without a WordPress login. But for a community event or a small concert, the free version handles a real door without breaking a sweat.
[SCREENSHOT: Mobile ticket scanner showing a green “Valid” confirmation after a successful scan]
Be honest about what your event needs. The free version is genuinely usable — over a thousand organizers run real events on it, and it sits at a 4.7-star rating on WordPress.org. Use it as long as it fits.
You should consider Premium when one of these becomes a daily friction:
None of these are blockers for your first event. They are the upgrades you reach for once ticketing becomes a meaningful share of your revenue and you want fewer manual steps.
The reason this event ticket plugin WordPress approach holds up over time is that it does not lock you into a separate platform. Your customers, orders, refunds, taxes, and reports stay in WooCommerce. Your tickets are just another product type. If you change themes, swap payment gateways, or scale from fifty attendees to five thousand, nothing about your ticketing infrastructure has to move.
And when you compare it to the alternatives — The Events Calendar with Event Tickets by TEC (no built-in scanner, seating is a paid add-on), FooEvents (seating plan as a paid add-on, no PWA scanner with haptic feedback), or Eventbrite (per-ticket fees, your customer data on their servers) — the math gets clearer fast.
Sixty seconds to install. No per-ticket fees. Your event, your tickets, your money.
Install the free version directly from WordPress.org and run your next event on it: Event Tickets with Ticket Scanner on WordPress.org.
When you are ready for PDF email attachments, team scanner tokens, calendar invitations, multiple ticket templates and the rest of the Premium toolkit, upgrade here: Event Tickets with Ticket Scanner — Premium.
Stop renting your ticketing. Own it — with the event ticket plugin WordPress organizers actually keep using after their first event.