Do you currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group courses, charity fund raisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event like a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event sign-ups is a complex and time-consuming process. You will most likely need to co-ordinate scheduling, dates, participant numbers, data collection, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce repeat events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based web site, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily schedule your event and begin accepting online registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event attendees to enroll by themselves.
Allowing your customers to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more attention on delivering a more enjoyable event.
More 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 attendees to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a 3rd party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy addons when you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online registrations 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features and addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process is transacted wholly online, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information you acquire from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in no time.
- Custom Event Registration. With Event Espresso you can gather specific information using a custom event registration form on your web pages to plan a tailored experience for your event participants.
- Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your events and add these to their schedule with the calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospects so they can purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and display registrant details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price of your default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event participants and confirm everyone who attends.
- No Ticket Events. List events without requiring registrants to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all forms of events, not just those that accept tickets.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and previous customers to post feedback that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public commenting are configured via the WP commenting settings.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword rich Web links take advantage of your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” urls that have topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your content and is favored by search engines, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your website.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event designs, payment processing, wait lists, limits on attendees, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Bulk Import Event Information. EE 4 provides an advanced importing capability that lets you import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and upload details about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Event Participant. EE 4 allows a single person or people to register multiple participants simultaneously. You can control how many people are allowed to enrol in a single registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Attendee Profiles. Manage each customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized.
- Team Member Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in an event description.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can also customize your templates to display event information in your own custom way.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for developers when diagnosing plugin errors.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: Event Espresso states on their website that their mission is to “empower business and organization leaders with the event registration, ticketing and management tools that maximize the success of events.” To achieve their mission, the software has been built using a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to significantly expand the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add ons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Add on: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If an event does not have a featured image, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name displays the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add-on lets you display your events in a range 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 perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add-on allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives potential attendees the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their cart. With the Multi-Event Registration add on, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events in the same checkout process.
- Events Calendar Add on: This add-on uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add-on: The MailChimp add-on allows you to automatically register participants to a specified mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer
”I searched long and hard to find something that would serve my needs. This is, by far, the most complete and comprehensive solution I have found.” Bill Hepper, We Teach Live
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, festival promoter, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as so many of its satisfied plugin clients confirm:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
The Event Espresso software provides robust support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium support and even a monthly VIP member pass giving 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 a solution you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This license option lets you install Event Espresso on five domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about issues and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run an event that requires managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager Plugin
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