Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, corporate events, or even a big event like a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You may have to manage event schedules, available dates and seating allocations, attendee numbers, data administration, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate previous events, give you more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based website, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin allows you to easily set up an event and begin receiving online registrations in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as it has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using the plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating event attendees to register on their own.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more of your resources on creating a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service provider. The cost is kept low through a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy addons when you need extra functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new bookings outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can be completed entirely in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information you obtain from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
- Customizable Event Designs. Customize your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and components, and HTML or CSS.
- Tax Admin & Reporting. Event Espresso 4 provides several ways to administer taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fee components to customers when purchasing tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration information for any added registrants.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly with pre-configured default pricing.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Provide promotional and discount codes to encourage people to register now, or simply make your offers more affordable for others. This is also practical for helping to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees at the door, or sending in paper forms for manual processing later.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached capacity. Additionally, you can specify that wait-listed members pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your event page by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and past participants to post comments that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for comments are set in the WordPress default commenting system.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop an event in your own time frame without displaying it live on your website. You can keep developing your events until you are ready to publish it live on your website, or schedule your event to publish at a later date and time.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso is currently available in more than 15 languages, with more languages coming soon.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for your events, you can automatically set one of those tickets as your default ticket for any new events simply by checking a box.
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert photos and write your content without having to know HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- Automatic Software Installation Upgrades. Event Espresso offers easy one-click software installation upgrading to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Staff Member Management. Save time and keep your business organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Transaction Reporting. Event reporting provides you with data of all of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s aim is to “empower business and organization leaders with the event registration, ticketing and management tools that maximize the success of events.” To achieve their objectives, the software has been built using a modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in notification emails and email newsletters.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to every ticket).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow software users to further enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes many datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template shows categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name shows the events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template addon lets you display your events in a number of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart addon is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add on gives you the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at the venue door. Registrants can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Addon: This add-on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your web site.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Here are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”It’s been very comprehensive and covers exactly the aspects of event registration that we needed for our site plus some features that we didn’t even need but could still use in the future. Very Excellent Plugin!” Tristan Hall, Area 12:2 Youth Group
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”Hello. I wanted to say that I’ve purchased Event Espresso twice now for two different organizations and have had great success with the purchases. Outside of photography, I also build small websites with WordPress as the CMS. I built two websites for two different martial arts organizations who host yearly seminars and tournaments. The plug in has provided a way for attendees to sign up online from both Canada and the United States with ease, and also allowed the organizations to easily manage payments, attendee lists, and many other aspects of the events. Thanks to Seth for creating such a great plug in, and for your constant support!” James Zedd, James Zedd Photography
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, show planner, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent user support, as so many of its satisfied customers confirm:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
Event Espresso provides exceptional support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, priority support and even a monthly VIP member pass that gives you access to community of developers, designers, event managers, publishers and webmasters that use Event Espresso tools, plus faster support response times.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to run and manage your events.
Product Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license lets you run Event Espresso on one domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition allows you to install Event Espresso on five domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration Software For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to report issues and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of event managers.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates and venues, booking participants, and/or selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
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