Modern Tribe’s WooCommerce Tickets Review

*A new and better solution has been found. I’ve added the link at the bottom of the post!

This is my review of a booking engine. I’m writing on our blog because I cannot find any other worthwhile platform to leave a review. I hope this helps you.

When building websites we rely on lots of plugins to do lots of different jobs. So when I was building a site that needed a booking engine I started looking for what was available. This is when I came across Modern Tribe’s WooCommerceTickets. On paper, it’s absolutely fantastic. In fact, everything about the first experience is fantastic. It’s easy to set up trips, it’s easy to then send the tickets on to the customers and it even lets you know who will be arriving for which trip.

However, there are 3 huge flaws to WooCommerce Tickets. No one else has really complained about these so it may just be me.

For every example let’s assume we have 100 events throughout the year. Each event is the same thing. We sell 2 different types of tickets. Adult & Child.

Flaw number 1.

What it says on Modern Tribe’s website.

“Limit how many tickets of a given type are available, with a clear SOLD OUT reference on the frontend once they’re gone”

Ok this may be true in one sense. But in reality, it’s not. Let’s say we limit the Adult and Child tickets to 100. That’s great, because you cannot overbook and it gives 100 adults the chance to buy and 100 kids a chance to buy. However, this leaves 200 tickets available. Not good. So, we have to limit the tickets. To what though? We could sell 75 adult and 25 child tickets. But what if 90 adults want to buy a ticket? Well, nothing, we have to keep an eye on every single one of our events (for which we have 100) and change the ticket amounts depending on what sells and what doesn’t. Whilst the statement above is true, it’s not really accurate in the real world. You want both adults and children to have the chance to buy 100 tickets. The solution, only sell one ticket type.

Flaw number 2

The reason I bought the Events Calendar Pro add-on for WooCommerce Tickets was for the recurring events function. We have 100 events that are all the same. The only difference is the day. So, ideally, we would set up one event and the system would duplicate for me. Well, it does do this, which is awesome. But the tickets for day 1, are also the tickets for day 20, 25, 35, 36, 37, 38 in fact, every day. So when the first 100 tickets are sold out, all the events are sold out. The solution, set up 10,000 tickets and hope that you don’t double book. Or, manually set up each event. Which takes around 25 minutes per 10 trips.

Flaw number 3

All of our trips are the same. This should make life easier. However, when a customer buys a ticket, we are not told which event it is for. We are told what time the event was purchase, but not which trip. So we have to trail through 100 different events to check which has sold a ticket and which has not. So again, adding time onto this process. The solution? Name the ticket in a way that you know which event it belongs to. So ‘Adult, May 15th’ Or, use this plugin. It duplicates the ticket email that is sent to the customer. Yes, it means double the emails per booking but at least we now know!

For each issue I have contacted support only to be told to request these items for future releases. Nobody should have to request these items for a paid plugin. These are the basics of a booking plugin. So, if you’re going to build a booking plugin. These are the basics.

1. Ensure that you cannot overbook

2. Make is simple and allow recurring events that are 100% separate

3. The customer and the provider need to know what event has sold a ticket.

WooCommerce Tickets has so much potential. It looks nice, works well on mobiles and fits in nicely with our website design. But these 3 flaws make it impossible to use. So, what is our solution? We are paying a developer to fix these for us. Yes, that’s how good WooTickets could be.

I really hope this post helps. Maybe you don’t need the functions that I’ve listed above and I’m just being really picky. Or, if you do need these function drop me a comment and I’ll send on the updated files for the plugin to make it all work.

Thanks for all the comments. Here is a link to a plugin that actually does the job! WordPress Events

24 Comments on “Modern Tribe’s WooCommerce Tickets Review”

  1. These are three flaws that we haven’t encountered in our use, but can see how much of a pain they must be! We also wish there was an easier way to do checkin’s at the event – some sort of barcode scanning system etc like eventbrite! Also the HTML tickets are horrible for printing large quantities of tickets. PDFs would be much better

  2. Marc, spot on. I ended up paying a developer and the results so far have been awesome over at http://shop.paulpetch.co.nz/

    If i complain in the Modern Tribe forum the thread is closed. If i ask for updates that buyers have been waiting for more than a year for… thread gets closed. Their support is a nightmare and the support staff talk to customers like they are 5 years old.

    First thing the developer said when i showed him a list of fixes was WHAT? THESE ARE CORE TO IT WORKING? Yes. Exactly.

    I’m pretty happy now with a fully working booking system- but Modern Tribe are still trying to work it out. Their whole development model seems very suspect to me. I mean how can their team not have considered recurring events and verification to admin and buyer of the event details?

    I’ll never purchase from ModernTribe again.

    1. Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m glad to read these negative comments. I searched everywhere for reviews on this product and everybody seemed to love it. But I still can’t believe that I cannot find these faults listed anywhere else online. Hence my review!

  3. Hi there, i hear you – same thing here.
    I asked a detailed simple catalogue of quesstions in a presale forum – and YES, it all shouls be covered.
    i did not ask much for a plug.-in …
    in fact i am sttruggling with the sold-out message that should be part of the game as its promoted in the WC tickets sale page.
    still got no help for my solution – as stated in a comment – the thread is closed with no further assistance…

    the adaption of styles and fields is a nightmare. i bought bot, calendar pro and WC tickets, for 130 bucks to just do little…

    and yes, i like the simplicity and speed of the plug-ins – but i am not keen to learn php and extras to alter this and that fuctionality that should come with a paid plug-in…

    my 2 cents
    regards
    P.-

  4. Wow!

    I’m about to launch into development of an event booking website, and I thought i had all the proper pieces finally sorted out 🙁

    Argrghhhh!! At least I haven’t paid money to tribe yet. More research to be doneI guess. Perfect since it’s dur this week

    Thanks for the heads up.

  5. Hey Paul !

    I am doing same job as you in France… My website is complete freelance developer solution but i would like to “upgrade” it to wordpress because of so much intresseting features.

    But ! There is no professional solution to use event management in wordpress…all solutions a missing such important features that makes them unusable without a heavy free lance devlopement. I am searching for a solution for almost 2 years now. (exept the new features I would like my website is working pretty well for now)

    I imagine you will not share your solution but how much does it cost you make it work with a fre lance developer ? how long ? ignitewoo is also a disaster but It seems you also use their gift plugin ? I also think you didn’t even try to solve the compatibility problem with wpml ? Thanks if you can share some tricks.

  6. Hi, I’m also building a multi-events website and after trying WooTickets,I encountered the same issues. I’d advise you to try WordPress Events Manager Pro. It actually has all the features that WooTickets claims to have and is generally a great plugin. Their Pro support is nearly instant and they are really helpful. The free version has everything that WooTickets does except coupons and payments, those are available in the paid version.
    However, the plugin has a limited checkout process with only 3 payment gateways. Otherwise, it’s perfect.
    NB: I’m not the developer or related to the devs in any way,I don’t benefit in any way from sales of the plugin.

  7. Thanks for this very informative post…I have been looking at WooCommerceTickets.
    Did you get this sorted or has anyone found a better solution. I have a website selling Private excursion train UK Rail Tours that is in development and really needs a sound solution. It seems like a great plugin EXCEPT these few points!

    Hope to hear from you all.

    Cheers

    John

  8. Thanks for the review. I was just about to purchase WooTickets – but now – nope.

    Still looking for an EventBrite replacement. EB just made some ‘enhancements’ and is really sucking now.

  9. Hey folks! Rob from Modern Tribe here – a customer on our forums linked to this post, and while it’ been up a while, I did want to reply to thank you all for the thoughts. It’s clear that the WooCommerce Tickets solution wasn’t in line with your expectations here and we find this type of feedback really useful so that we can make sure we’re explicitly clear from the offset about what our plugin does and doesn’t do.

    It sounds like there might be some confusion about what this plugin does, though: we tried (and apparently failed) to set expectations from the offset that this plugin is in no way, shape or form attempting to be a bookings solution. We know there is demand for that and have our eyes on how to implement one in the near future; but that’s not what WooCommerce Tickets is all about, and if you are looking for a true bookings solution, it definitely doesn’t qualify to meet that need. All we’re doing with WooCommerce Tickets is tapping into WooCommerce and piggy-backing on their functionality, extending their commerce engine to The Events Calendar by adding a simple ticketing component.

    That said: it’s excellent to hear that you have found a bookings solution that better meets your needs! Using a plugin dedicated to that purpose — instead of bending one that isn’t really meant to accomplish bookings to meet that need — seems like a wise choice. If and when we make progress on our own bookings solution, we’ll definitely make the community aware of it through posts on Twitter and our blog.

    Thanks again to everyone for sharing their thoughts and for helping us improve as team 🙂

    Sincerely,

    Rob La Gatta
    Head of Quality + Support
    Modern Tribe

    1. Thanks for commenting, Rob. Much appreciated. Given the volume of traffic we get on this blog post I would have to say that the wording on your website is what is at fault, rather than the plugin itself. Although, I’m not entirely sure of it’s purpose if overbooking is possible? When reading about it before buying I truly thought it would serve our purpose but I was mistaken. Which wouldn’t be so bad if there was a free trial. Maybe this is the next step? Or a backend demo account?

  10. Hi Marc,
    I would GREATLY appreciate it if you would send me the updated files. I have many of the same event with three tickets attached to each. I need to do one of them as recurring to avoid entering them each individually.

    I use The Events Manager because it uses Woo Commerce as the cart and checkout thus allowing me to sell my other products as well. I tried events manager…nice but no connection to third party carts:/

  11. Nice post,
    I am already using Events Calendar Pro and thought WooTickets would fit nicely. Interested in whether you ended up using http://wp-events-plugin.com/ and how that one worked for you. Ticketing and booking are definitely challenging and wondering if you found a proper alternative.
    thx

  12. Hey,

    I’;m still getting traffic from this post so i thought i’d come read the comments. @Rob seriously? December 2014 you made your comments, and still no recurring events. Nearly THREE? solid years of people asking for it in your support forum and THREE? solid years of promising it and not delivering.

    WTF man. All the best with this attitude.

    As for http://www.shop.paulpetch.co.nz – The issues we have faced are that the customisation needs to be continuously updated with WP updates. The WP event plugin looks like a great solution and i’ll consider that moving forward.

    Cheers

    Paul

  13. I can understand your frustration but would like to but the ‘other’ side as it were. For your first point I can see that you don’t feel the ticket type option offers you flexibility. For my website this is not an issue as each ticket for an event is priced the same (no discounts based on age). I do still use the ticket type feature though to give customers the chance to book the actual room option they want. I’ve tried other event plugins and they also did not offer the flexibility you seek.

    On Point 2 I read some others complaining about recurring events. For me again I don’t need this as to be honest i would not mind entering a recurring event manually each time. Yes it takes more time but I’m still able to add lots of events per hour!

    On Point 3 I too wondered about this. Would adding something like the date of event to SKU field help? Adding something to ticket type description is not ideal but a workaround I guess.

    The trouble with event plugins is everyone wants something different. I prefer when the plugin is kept simple and looks good, even if that means a few features are missing. Until recently I was using Event Espresso and I’m SO glad I don’t have to deal with it anymore. They tried to satisfy every possible demand which no doubt leads to sales but boy what a horrible plugin. It looked awful display wise, poor mobile responsiveness, constant updates with bugs resulting. For me I want something that works, is simple and looks great to my users. I don’t want a huge plugin that looks poor, stops working when updated and tries to work with every payment gateway on planet earth.

    Good luck in your search for an event plugin that does what you need. I hope the Event Manager one by Modern Tribe don’t make the same mistake as Event Espresso and try to offer every feature.

    Gary

  14. Hi,
    I am considering using this plugin, but this review is definitely making me think twice. Is anyone still experiencing these issues, or has it gotten any better? I mean their support, and the functionality of the basics of the plugin.

    I may just go with WP Events Manager, but I already know I will need to customize that some.

    1. These issues will still exist because the plugin was never built to support what we needed. Modern Tribe did comment here which you can read. Thanks for commenting!

  15. Hi I have tried so many events plugins and each has its flaws. The support for The Events Calendar is woeful though so wasn’t game to purchase it. Events Manager I tried to sync with my theme but that was another level of styling which meant more time.
    Has anybody tried Gam Events plugin?
    I do love the look and feel of The Events Calendar plugin from Modern Tribe but does have those problems.
    Out of curiosity, are you still using it or did you go to Events Manager?

    1. We used WP Events. Given the amount of customisation we had to do to make Moderns Tribe’s solution to work (it was, and still isn’t a ticketing solution) was ridiculous. So an hour or two of customisation for WP Events was acceptable.

    1. Hi Brian. Whatever it needed. I can’t remember what in all honesty but they were minor. Probably the way it handled bookings as this is what most clients want customised to themselves.

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