Build a WordPress Ticketing System Using a Free WooCommerce Plugin

Want to turn WooCommerce into a WordPress ticketing system? With the right free plugin, you can quickly create and sell PDF event tickets — perfect for boosting sales during Black Friday and Christmas 2025. Discover how to set it up in just a few steps.

Step 1: Install the Plugin That Turns WooCommerce Into a WordPress Ticketing System

In order to add a new feature to the WooCommerce shop, you need to install a free plugin. Flexible PDF Coupons is a versatile plugin that allows you to design, generate and sell PDF WooCommerce tickets. It also allows you to sell Christmas vouchers and Black Friday or  Christmas gift cards.

Please go to your WordPress admin panel and Add new plugin. Type in Flexible PDF Coupons and install the plugin. Don’t forget to activate it afterwards 😉

Before diving into template design, it’s worth thinking about what makes selling tickets different from selling a typical product. Tickets are virtual, one-time-use items tied to a specific event date, which means the usual product page elements — stock levels, shipping, physical variations — mostly don’t apply. What matters instead is making the ticket itself look professional and trustworthy, since it’s often the only tangible thing your customer receives before the event. Getting the template right in the next step is where that trust is built.

After activating the plugin, you can begin to design your PDF WooCommerce tickets and later on sell them as Christmas gifts. Go to the next step:

Step 2: Design Your PDF Ticket Template in WordPress

The plugin has a built in Canva-like graphic design editor. Please go to the new menu in your admin panel Coupons PDF -> Templates -> Add new and design your own ticket template.

Using a simple drag&drop interface, you can add your own images, text, and shortcodes. That is very helpful if you want to design your own Christmas or Black Friday voucher.

You can use the image with the background template which can be downloaded below. It will allow you to quickly design a beautiful ticket template for your clients:

Step 3: Customize Ticket Emails in Your WordPress Ticketing System

By default, the plugin is generating PDF vouchers / gift cards. To use it for selling WooCommerce tickets, you just need to change some phrases that are displayed to the customer in the emails. To achieve this, copy your own translation files to override default phrases:
1. Download the zip package
Download zip package with .mo and .po file

2. Please go to the location on your server: wp-content/languages/plugins and create a new folder: flexible-coupons:

3. Unzip the contents of the package to this folder:

Okay, now your customers will be informed about tickets, not coupons. Great!

Step 4: Enable Automatic PDF Ticket Generation

If you want to fully automate ticket generation workflow, please set the status in the plugin Settings:

This way, the PDF WooCommerce tickets will be automatically sent and generated after a customer completes the payment.

Automating ticket generation isn’t just a convenience feature — it’s what makes selling tickets at scale realistic. Without it, you’d need to manually generate and send a PDF every time someone completes a purchase, which quickly becomes unmanageable during high-traffic periods like Black Friday or a popular event’s on-sale date. Once automatic generation is enabled, the process scales the same whether you sell five tickets or five hundred, with no extra manual work on your end.

Step 5: Configure Ticket Categories and Access Rules

With the ticket, your customers will also get a coupon code for use in your shop. You probably do not want to give customers such a discount for their next purchases, so please create an empty WooCommerce product category:

The coupon code will only work for products in this category. And as it is will be empty, the coupon code won’t be useful for shopping.

Step 6: Create a Ticket Product in Your WordPress Ticketing System

Finally, you can allow your customers to buy the tickets! Please add a new WooCommerce product. Firstly, activate the PDF Coupon checkbox:

Now the product became Virtual and a new tab had appeared: PDF Coupon. Please click that and:

1. Select the template which you created in step 2
2. Select the product category you have created in step 5.

Also, add your own description, images, tags, etc. Simply all the information about the event!

One detail that often gets overlooked when you sell WooCommerce tickets is making sure the empty coupon-restriction category from Step 5 stays genuinely empty over time. If a product accidentally gets added to that category later, every ticket-linked coupon code would suddenly apply a discount to it — an easy oversight that can quietly cost you money. It’s worth a quick periodic check, especially if multiple people manage your product catalog.

What Your WordPress Ticketing System Looks Like to Customers

After publishing the product, the customer will see the WooCommerce tickets on the product list. He will be able to easily purchase it, just like any other product in your shop:

Please remember that the plugin that tickets are virtual products, so no shipping costs will be calculated.

How WordPress Sends PDF Tickets to Customers Automatically

After your customer completes his purchase, the PDF WooCommerce ticket will be automatically generated and sent to his mailbox by email. This is the final effect he will see after receiving the message:

This form of sales is great during Black Friday and Christmas. It is a form of surprise that can be played in a very original way. Your customers can sell vouchers or tickets for Christmas as Christmas presents, and ideally they should get them during the Black Friday period. Keep an eye on our store and take advantage of Black Friday 2024 plugin deals. You can get the PDF Coupons plugin cheaper. You won’t often find such Black Friday deals with us!

It’s also worth testing this delivery flow yourself before your event goes live. Place a test order, confirm the email arrives promptly, check that the PDF opens correctly on both desktop and mobile, and make sure the ticket details (event name, date, price) display as expected. A broken or delayed delivery email is one of the most common sources of customer complaints for digital products, and catching it during setup is far easier than troubleshooting it after tickets are already on sale.

Upgrade Your WordPress Ticketing System With PRO Features

The PRO version of the plugin expands the possibilities of the free edition, helping you sell WooCommerce tickets more effectively and create fully personalized gift cards with a professional touch.

• More gift card personalization options: including image rotation and precise element editing. Learn more about customizing your gift cards in the article
  
  “WooCommerce Gift Card Plugin: How to Customize and Optimize Your Gift Cards”
• PRO shortcodes + custom shortcodes: use ready-made dynamic tags or create your own to display additional data on your PDF gift cards. Read more in the article
  
  “The Ultimate WooCommerce Gift Cards Plugin (personalized templates & custom shortcodes)”
• Gift recipient selection: add fields to your product page (recipient name, email, message) that automatically appear on the generated PDF gift card.
• …and much more: see the full list of differences between the free and PRO versions here:
  
  Free vs PRO feature comparison
  

Add QR Scanning to Your WordPress Ticketing System

If you’ve made it this far, I suppose you might be interested in an add-on for creating and reading QR codes. I’m talking about Event Ticket QR Scanner, an addon for Flexible PDF Coupons PRO.
This addon has already become a bestseller 🔥.

Here’s what this addon can do:

• QR Code Generator – Generates QR codes based on a created coupon.
• QR Code Scanner – Scans QR codes – you don’t need any additional tool for that.
• Admission tickets – Incorporates QR code on the ticket or gift card.
• Mobile and Desktop UX – Designed to be used both on a desktop and mobile.
• Status changes – Automatically changes the status of the coupon when scanned.

Sounds nice? I’ll leave you a direct link to it:

FAQ