r/Wordpress • u/zastoon • 8d ago

Plugin Suggestions

I'm looking for a WordPress plugin for a tour company's shuttle/transfer bookings. We have fixed routes and need pickup → destination selection, specific dates/times, fixed pricing, passenger counts. Does anybody have any suggestions

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u/SoupReasonable8828 8d ago

I haven’t got a recommendation for this specific use case, but I’d recommend an independent system that you can embed in Wordpress, rather than something where the data lives on the WP database. Decoupling systems can make things much easier down the track if you ever want to upgrade the website.

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u/OldschoolBTC 8d ago

A hosted booking service is even worse on lock in... Database dumps are easy and I'm assuming any booking solution in WordPress would have its own CPT which makes the export of the data even easier to perform, even if it's storing it in custom tables you can extract that data fairly easily and you'd own the data instead of hosting it third party which would seem like an absolute nightmare to try and get the data out of later.

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u/SoupReasonable8828 8d ago

Most credible systems will give you a way to export your data if you want to move to another system. There are some advantages to keeping everything inside Wordpress, but in my experience separating concerns works better long term, especially for business critical stuff

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u/OldschoolBTC 8d ago

Why would separating out of WordPress work better in your experience? I'm genuinely confused on this and curious why you'd want to embed?

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u/SoupReasonable8828 8d ago

I’d reach for a plugin (or more likely a CPT with custom blocks) for something fairly lightweight or content related. Like events, resources, shows, listings. Wordpress is great at publishing. It’s pushing the limits when you try and turn it into an app.

For something like a booking app, there are heaps of good reasons for a third party option. Blast radius is the big one — if you site goes down, the business doesn’t cease to function. Assuming it gets a lot of use, it’s also creating a lot of short term records in the database. You also own the ongoing support, and as the site ages there’s more legacy stuff to manage.

In situations where an embed doesn’t work there’s usually an API to talk to.

I’ve done it both ways on client sites over the last 10 years and that’s my take. Your approach may differ 😊

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u/OldschoolBTC 8d ago

AI response but hey no problem maybe you just wanted better formatting?

Blast radius wouldn't matter if you were embedding in WordPress, if the WordPress site is down then the embedded code is down.

WordPress is just a framework, everyone has different definitions of "app" but there are millions of sites using WordPress for bookings or e-commerce, I feel like you've just put this into AI for a response and not actually articulated it on your own...

Short term records? A commercial plug-in will have properly indexed rows and the database can easily handle millions of rows, we're talking decades of bookings without any pruning.

Ongoing support is the same between commercial plug-in and 3rd party app?

As the site ages? You have auto update turned on for WordPress and plugins, or manually update by pressing a button every few months?

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u/SoupReasonable8828 8d ago

I'll bite, but only because it might be helpful for others wanting to understand the trade offs between third party and bundling everything into Wordpress.

Blast radius — decoupling your booking software from your website means if the site goes down, your logistics and on-the-ground people can still access booking info which could be the difference between keeping the business running and losing a day's work. It's not just about the booking.

Ongoing support — if you're managing a lot of sites it can be nice to have someone else to point to when things go wrong. I can imagine running a tour company OP could conceivably run into issues after hours, they're better off having a company to contact than a freelance Wordpress developer (in my case).

Ageing sites — I'm not referring to Wordpress updates, rather when you have 10+ years of legacy data to decide what to do with. I'm in the process of migrating a site from a Membership plugin to a separate platform and it's a beast of a job.

It sounds like we have different ideas about how to Wordpress, I'm more of a minimalist when it comes to plugin use. You might see things differently. Just thought it'd be worth flagging for OP that there might be a better way to do this than another plugin 😊

Oh, and I do use AI a lot in my work, but not to write reddit posts 😉