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Full disclosure: In May 2020 I’ll be getting married to my wonderful fiancé Catherine, and as you can imagine we have loads to organize at the moment.
Update: well, at least that was the plan. But as you can imagine, 2020 turned out quite differently. The wedding still happened though, albeit quite a bit smaller than originally planned!
But back to our main topic:
It’s no secret that the Covid pandemic has completely upended the events industry, forcing businesses, trade fairs, performers and even those getting married to put planned events on hold.
Many have had to pivot and find creative ways to adapt to local restrictions, such as moving events online (hands up those who haven’t attended at least one Zoom wedding or birthday party!).
But, as the world slowly starts coming out of the pandemic, more and more events are now shifting back to being held in-person.
Regardless of whether you’re planning to hold your next event online or in-person, your biggest questions might be:
- How can I promote my event?
- How do I manage registrations/attendees?
- How can I go about selling tickets for it?
To help you in your research, I am here to talk to you about Wix Events and what it can do for your next event.
I like to think that I know most of Wix’s features inside out as I have been studying and reviewing this site builder for more than 5 years.
But to be 100% honest, I’d never paid too much attention to its event features until I needed a website for my own wedding, and an easy system to manage times, dates and guests. By the way, we have a complete guide to creating a wedding website here.
Let me show you my findings!
What is Wix Events?
Wix Events is an app internally developed by Wix that can be added to any Wix site to help with the organization of events such as festivals, workshops, business conferences, private celebrations or even high school class reunions. The system provides registration forms, RSVP collection, promotion tools, a mobile app, guest list management, payment processing and even printable tickets. It’s exhaustive, to say the least!
In addition to that, there’s a solution for online events and Webinars, called Wix Live. You can host up to 3 events for free before you’ll need to upgrade to one of Wix’s paid plans. Another solution, Wix Video, lets you live stream events. And of course, there’s also an integration with Zoom.
By the way, if you want to see a real event-based project managed with Wix, you can check out Yepalo an adventure company based in Barcelona that organizes outdoor activities.
So, let me walk you through what an event creation workflow looks like with Wix and let’s also check out the main features.
Wix Events Pros & Cons
But let’s first start by checking the main pros and cons so you know what to expect.
Pros
- It’s possible to use 90% of the features for free.
- It integrates perfectly with Wix and its system. For example, you’ll be able to use Wix’s email marketing features (even the automations) with it.
- Wix has a bunch of event-focused templates you can use.
- Wix Events is easy to use despite having a full range of features.
- It’s possible to process payments online if you have a Wix Business plan.
- Sell tickets to your event (and have the ability to scan tickets and check-in attendees using Wix’s mobile app)
- Integrations with video conferencing apps for online events
- Multilingual events are possible (more information).
Cons
- Can’t control much of how the event is displayed. For example, you can only add one image.
- The design options for the ‘Thank you’ pages is limited to plain text (e.g. no images or videos can be added).
- You can’t charge in more than one currency for your event tickets.
- It’s not possible to sell tickets offline.
- Once you have a lot of events, it can get a bit slow.
Event Site Creation With Wix
Most likely, you’ll need a place where your attendees (or potential attendees) can get information and complete the registration and purchase process; you need a website.
Wix is an easy-to-use website builder that has a lot of solid features like a blogging system and an ecommerce module. Its templates and designs are top-class, and Wix provides around 100 templates designed for events.
Wix templates for events
With such a large selection, chances are that you will find a template that fits with what you are trying to organize. This will make the whole event website design process much easier.
Note: Wix Events can also be added to any Wix site, so if you have an existing website you’d like to use to organize your event, go ahead and add the Wix Events app.
Create Your Event
Once you have a website with the content and pages that you need for your event, you can make a start by adding the app and creating the event.
All the event features you’ll need are located under the ‘Events’ section of your Wix Dashboard.
Creating an event with Wix Events
It’s pretty cool that you can add the event’s time, location and title. It’s also possible to add a thumbnail that will be shown alongside the event information.
You’ll also have the option to:
- Choose whether your event is a physical or online event
- Add an event schedule
- Connect a video conferencing app (e.g. Wix Live or Zoom)
- Set up groups so that attendees can interact online
Selling tickets
Now, this is where things start to get interesting.
Selling tickets online is made possible with Wix Events; its platform will let you create differently priced tiers (e.g. Bronze, Silver and Gold), and even create discount codes to help persuade potential attendees to make a purchase.
On top of that, it’s also possible to limit the number of attendees, so unlike Eurovision, you won’t overbook your gig. Of course, you can also organize admission-free gatherings.
Selling tickets with Wix Events
The payment will be processed online. Note that Wix charges a 2.5% service fee on ticket sales, which can be charged to the buyer or absorbed as part of the ticket fee. You’ll also have to pay the fee of the payment processor you use (e.g. PayPal, Square, etc).
One limitation is that you will only be able to process payments in one currency. In other words, if you wanted to give the option to attendees to pay in more than one currency (e.g. pick between US Dollars, Euros or Canadian Dollars), you just can’t.
However, I imagine most of us won’t be organizing international events, right?
Keep in mind that to accept payments online with Wix Events, you’ll need a Wix Business Plan, otherwise you’ll be limited to the free Wix Events features (more on this below).
Attendees registration
Of course, you don’t want to have to handle the registrations manually over email or by phone – you are probably already busy figuring out the logistics and supervising the event’s catering.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could create a form that handles the registration process for you?
Right, Wix has such a feature.
Again, you can also limit the number of spots your event has, after all, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Personally, I love the form builder. It allowed me to collect responses from my wedding guests without having to chase them up. For example, I have a field where they can input their allergies or dietary requirements, and they can tell us which part of the wedding they’d like to attend.
Wix Events form builder
Wix Events has several field types you can choose from. You will be able to use fields like text, dropdown menus, multiple-choice options, checkboxes or even pre-designed fields for phone numbers or an option to bring additional guests.
It allows you to customize your thank you message and you can even show an ‘Add to Calendar’ button which will add the event to the user’s calendar. For marketing ninjas, you can also show social media sharing options so your event gets some visibility outside your website.
Wix Events ‘Thanks You Message’ page
I would like to see an option to add another page as your ‘Thank you’ page. In other words, if you wanted to create a specific page that will be shown after someone has registered, you won’t be able to, instead, you are limited to what the Wix Event ‘Thank You Message’ page can show (which is basically just text).
Emails and confirmations
Conveniently, Wix integrates email marketing features so you can communicate with your audience automatically (or manually if you need to).
Getting notified every time someone fills in a form will make your life easier, as it provides an excellent picture of the registered guests and how the event is doing. But, of course, for larger events, you could have a daily report of the sign-ups or even turn them off completely if needed.
Wix Events notification options
However, what I truly love is being able to also send confirmation emails. This will allow you to communicate relevant information to your guests. In our case, I used it to send some information about our wedding location (e.g. accommodation and directions).
And to make sure that no one misses your event, reminders can be sent 1, 3 or 7 days before the event is due (or even 30 mins or 1 hour before).
Schedule reminders with Wix Events
Overall, the information that you can add to your confirmation and reminder emails needs to be simple as its editor only accepts plain text (see screenshot above). I wish they had a more advanced email editor.
On the bright side, you can use Wix’s email marketing tool to create more visual emails or even use Wix’s email marketing automation tools to send emails after certain actions are completed.
For example, if you organized a festival last year you could tag the attendees as ‘already attended’ and set up an email campaign to promote the new festival, maybe you’d like to send them a little discount to show you appreciate their loyalty.
Manage your guests
Wix Events offers a way to manage your guest list. You will be able to see all the people who RSVPed and what their answers were. It’s also possible to add guests manually and even send email marketing campaigns using Wix’s editor.
On top of that, it’s also possible to export your guest list in a CSV format if you needed to get more creative with spreadsheets (e.g. use filters).
I would say that its system for managing attendees is simple but solid. However, it probably won’t cut it for larger events that need more features and have thousands of participants.
Holding online events
As I mentioned earlier, Wix offers several options for hosting and streaming online events. Wix Live, its video conferencing solution, lets you host online meetings (for up to 25 participants) and webinars (for up to 250 participants). Listeners will be able to watch and comment, while meeting attendees can speak and share screens (much like with Zoom).
Wix Live is free for up to three events – but if you have a paid Wix plan, you get even more. Events can be recorded and downloaded for up to 7 days.
Hosting an online event via Wix Live
Then, there’s also Wix Video – Wix’s own video player. It lets you livestream for up to 10 minutes if you’re on a free plan, or up to 3 hours if you’re on a paid Wix plan. This is handy for streaming performances, for example, or workshops that don’t require attendees to participate.
Finally, if you’d prefer to hold your online events/meetings through the tried-and-tested Zoom, there’s also a native integration for that – setting it up is fairly easy to do. Note that while you can’t set up a Zoom webinar directly within Wix, there are workarounds.
How much is Wix Events?
You’re probably wondering how much Wix Events will cost you.
Let’s find out!
Wix offers a freemium model of this app, meaning that the basic version is free and if you need certain features you’ll need to sign up for a paid version of the website builder.
But Wix is very generous. The only feature that’s not included in the free version is selling tickets online, the rest you’ll be able to use for free.
In short, you only need a premium version of the app (which costs around $20/month) when you need to process payments online, get a custom domain or need more advanced capabilities.
As I mentioned earlier, this event app is included in Wix’s Business plans – the ones that you need to purchase if you are going to process any payments online.
For instance, if you go for the Core plan, it’ll cost you $27 a month if you opt for a yearly subscription – check out this link for a 10% discount.
Who is Wix Events For?
As I’ve been saying throughout this article, I am a big fan of Wix Events, but, of course, it won’t be the best tool to organize every event. Here are some cases where I would recommend using Wix Events:
- You have a Wix site or you are considering creating your event website with Wix. If you were thinking of using WordPress, most likely Wix Events doesn’t make sense for you.
- Your event isn’t a really big one (I would say more than a couple of hundred attendees). I can see how larger events would have more advanced needs (e.g. a website with advanced databases or complex pricing structures).
- Managing many events with Wix (let’s say 30 or 40) can be challenging as it can be slow at times.
- You will only be able to charge for the event tickets in one currency, so those needing to offer a multi-currency checkout will find this to be an issue. That said, users should still be able to use their credit card or PayPal to pay for the tickets even if it’s not their currency.
Wix Events: Last thoughts
I think Wix did a great job, and I do believe the Wix Events app is one of its best Business focused apps. I mean, you can actually organize events really easily with it.
It’s a good solution for organizing small to medium events if you already have a Wix website or if you need a quick way to create a site and organize the event.
Additionally, Wix comes with dozens of website templates for events and you can use other Wix features like email marketing or the Wix membership options for your event.
But, of course, we need to be realistic and accept that Wix should not be used for huge events. There’s no way you can get the next Burning Man set up using Wix.
And as I’ve already mentioned, international events that need to support multi-currency payments, won’t be a good match for Wix.
> Organize your event for free with Wix
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