Skip to content
---

WordPress plugin · free on wordpress.org

The WordPress seating chart plugin for reserved-seat ticketing.

For venues and organizers on WordPress. The SeatLayer Hosted Ticketing plugin puts a real seating chart on a page or post. Visitors see live availability, pick the seats they want, and pay through SeatLayer's managed checkout, with the money going straight into your own payment gateway.

The plugin is free. $0.50 per confirmed ticket, first 25 free.

No subscription and no percentage; your payment gateway charges its own processing fee.

  • Block and shortcode
  • Your own payment gateway
  • Secret key never reaches a browser

Opening Night

Friday · 7:30 PM · The Lantern Theatre

SeatLayer seating chart

Held while you pay

Row C · Seats 6–7

[seatlayer_chart event="your-event" height="640"]

Classic editor or a page builder? The shortcode does the same managed job.

Block settings

Event

Chart height

The dropdown is filled by your server, not the browser. The key that lists these events never leaves WordPress.

  • $0

    for the plugin: free and open source (MIT) on wordpress.org

  • $0.50

    per confirmed ticket, with your first 25 free

  • 200,000

    seats benchmarked on the same seat map

  • 14

    payment gateways, with the money going straight to you

---

From a blank page to a live seating chart

Configure an event, then add the block or shortcode.

Drop the block or shortcode on any page or post. Buyers pick their exact seats and pay through your own payment gateway. All the plugin needs is the event key; a secret key is optional and only fills the event list in the editor. Install it from wp-admin > Plugins > Add New, searching for SeatLayer, or straight from the WordPress plugin directory.

SeatLayer dashboard · new event
EventOpening NightChartThe LanternDateFri · 7:30 PMEvent created · one chart, every later performance

Requirements

It runs on an ordinary WordPress site.

No build step, no bundled dependency tree, and no server extensions. Requests go through WordPress's own HTTP layer, so site proxies and host timeouts apply as they do for every other plugin.

WordPress
6.3+
PHP
7.4+
Editor
Block or classic
Licence
MIT
Account
SeatLayer
Compare this with the SDK and the managed embed
---
Why use the plugin

Three things the plugin does that a pasted embed cannot.

You can paste the embed into a Custom HTML block, but the plugin keeps your key safe, lets editors pick the event from a list, and brings buyers back to the right page after paying.

01 · Credential safety

The secret key stays on the server

Listing your events needs a key that can also create and modify them. The plugin makes that call from WordPress itself, through an admin-only route, so the key is never written into a page a visitor can read.

server-side · never in the browser

02 · No pasting keys

Editors pick an event from a dropdown

Whoever writes the page chooses the event by name in the block sidebar. No copying identifiers between two browser tabs, and no silently-wrong chart because a character was dropped.

[seatlayer_chart event="…"]

03 · The return trip

Buyers come back to the page they bought from

With in-page checkout on, a card payment that leaves for the gateway returns to the exact page holding the chart, read in the browser at load so a cached page cannot send a buyer to the wrong address.

works with cached pages

Good to know

SeatLayer runs the checkout and tickets

The plugin shows your SeatLayer event, and SeatLayer runs the checkout and tickets. You design venues, create events, connect your gateway, and handle refunds and check-in in your SeatLayer dashboard.

---

Before you install anything

The plugin is a client for a hosted service. Here is what leaves your site.

It does not work standalone, so installing it means your pages and your visitors talk to SeatLayer. The same disclosure ships inside the plugin's own readme, and it is the whole list.

Card details go to your payment gateway and never touch your WordPress site or its database.

What the SeatLayer WordPress plugin sends to SeatLayer, and when
WhoWhenSentNot sent
VisitorsOn a page that contains a Hosted Ticketing chart, and only on such a page, the browser loads the managed renderer and asks SeatLayer for the seating layout and live availability. Selecting seats places a hold; buying starts SeatLayer’s managed payment journey through your connected gateway.The event key and the seats selected. At the payment step only, the buyer's email address and, if given, their name.No amount. A payment is started from the hold alone and SeatLayer recomputes the total from its own records. Card details go to your payment gateway and never touch your WordPress site or its database.
Visitors, in-page modeWhen checkout is kept on your site.Additionally the public web address of the page the chart is on, so a returning buyer lands back on it. It is used only if it matches an embed domain you declared in advance, and otherwise ignored.Nothing beyond the row above.
AdministratorsOnly if you saved a secret key, and only inside the block editor.Your server asks SeatLayer for your event list to fill the dropdown. That request carries the key, and the response is projected down to the four fields the dropdown shows.No visitor data.

Deleting the plugin removes its settings, including any saved key. Deactivating deliberately leaves everything alone.

---
Who owns what

You retain the site, gateway account, and customer relationship.

SeatLayer never holds your money: buyers pay into your own payment account. The same seat map is benchmarked at 200,000 seats, so it handles a 300-seat room and a stadium alike.

You own

The page and the commercial relationship

  • The event page, its story, imagery and policies
  • Ticket prices, on-sale timing and buyer support
  • The payment account the money lands in
  • Refunds and cancellations, from the SeatLayer dashboard

SeatLayer handles

Seats, holds, tickets and entry

  • Published seating, live availability and temporary holds
  • Checkout against your connected gateway, and the order record
  • Seat-specific tickets, QR codes, printable PDFs and confirmation email
  • Releasing seats back on sale when it sees a refund

$0.50 per confirmed ticket, first 25 free. The plugin is free. No subscription and no percentage; your payment gateway charges its own processing fee.

See current pricing
Pricing

Pay only when a ticket sells.

Your first 25 tickets are free. After that it is one flat price per ticket, and nothing to pay in a month you sell nothing.

See full pricing
Hosted ticketing · sell on your website

Pay per ticket.

25
first tickets free
$0.50
per ticket after that
$0
a month, no subscription
  • Buyers pay you directly, through your own payment account
  • Stripe, PayPal, Square and 11 more gateways
  • Sell online, at the box office and at the door
  • Embed on WordPress, Wix, Webflow, Squarespace, Shopify or any page

Selling seats on your own site

WordPress plugin questions

15 questions

Yes. The plugin is free and open source (MIT) on wordpress.org. You pay SeatLayer only when you sell: $0.50 per confirmed ticket, and your first 25 tickets are free. There is no subscription and no percentage of the ticket price.

Create your venue and event in SeatLayer, connect your payment gateway, then install the plugin. In the block editor, add the SeatLayer seating chart block and pick your event, or paste the shortcode [seatlayer_chart event="your-event"] into any page or post. Publish the page and buyers can pick seats straight away.

Look for a real seat map rather than a quantity box: buyers should see every seat, pick exact seats, and have them held while they pay so two people never buy the same one. SeatLayer does that on WordPress with a block or shortcode, supports stadium-size venues, and sends payment straight to your own gateway.

No. The block only needs your event key. A secret key is optional and only fills the event list in the editor.

No. A seat is held on SeatLayer's servers the moment a buyer selects it, and only one hold can exist per seat. If they do not pay in time the hold expires and the seat returns to sale.

Yes, for seated events. Buyers choose exact seats on your page, pay through your own connected payment account, and the sale creates the order, so the plugin sells tickets rather than only drawing a chart. It is deliberately narrow: it is not a marketplace or discovery listing, and it is not a general event-management suite. Your payment gateway controls processing fees, applicable taxes, and payout timing; SeatLayer bills Hosted Ticket usage separately. If your site needs to run its own checkout, react to seat selection in code, or sell through an existing cart, the plugin is the wrong tool and the SDK is the right one.

Yes. Use the block in the WordPress block editor, or paste the shortcode into any builder or classic editor that accepts shortcodes, including Elementor.

Yes. Buyers pay through your own connected gateway: Stripe, PayPal, Square, Braintree, Authorize.Net, Checkout.com, Mollie, Razorpay, Tap, Mercado Pago, Xendit, Flutterwave, Paystack or iyzico. The money goes straight to your account.

Into your WordPress database, like any other plugin setting, and it is used only in server-side requests. It is never sent to a browser. Anyone with administrator or database access to the site can read it, so if that is not acceptable, leave it blank and type event keys by hand.

Straight into the payment account you connected. Your gateway sets its own fee and payout timing, and SeatLayer bills its $0.50 per ticket separately.

Yes. The plugin runs on a site that also uses WooCommerce, and the two run side by side rather than through one checkout. Ticket purchases use your own payment gateway and do not create WooCommerce cart items or orders, so seats are not WooCommerce products. Keep using WooCommerce for merchandise on the same site, and use the plugin for seated tickets.

The chart's code is enqueued only on pages that actually contain a chart, so pages without one load nothing extra.

Yes. After payment each buyer gets a confirmation email with a QR code and a printable PDF ticket for every seat, and you can scan them at the door from a phone browser.

Yes. Ticket types and price levels you set on the event appear in the seat picker, so a buyer can choose, for example, one Adult and one Child ticket on two seats.

Yes. The seat picker adapts to the page and supports touch, pinch-to-zoom and a selection summary on mobile.

Didn't find your answer?

Sell tickets on WordPress with reserved seating

Design the venue, create an event, connect your gateway, and drop the block on the page you already send people to.

Create your first event Ask about your setup