Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings, such as workshops, group classes, not-for-profit fund raisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a music show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complex process. You need to manage scheduling, available dates and seating, registration numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily schedule your event and begin accepting registrations in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports 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 the plugin is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits 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 current website into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations and signups manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to enrol themselves.
Letting your clients to do the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you direct more of your energy on creating a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a third party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy addons only when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online bookings 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process can be performed wholly online, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Information. You own all the data gathered from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Set up automatic registration and payment notification email messages to communicate with your attendees.
- 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 WP theme and reuse attendee data throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the likelihood of spammers and bots creating fake registrations with reCAPTCHA tools that provide human validation.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you understand who your clients are and how you’ve done past business with them. Your Contact Profile section records the name, biography, contact details, event registration data, private comments, and more about each customer.
- No Ticket Events. Set up events without the requirement for participants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any kind of event, not only those that need tickets.
- RSS Event Feeds. Provide automatic updates to customers, drive quality traffic and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events enable you to develop your event over time without publishing it to your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to go live, or schedule your event to publish at a later time and date.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings to be used in events, including currency name, currency signs, decimal characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, etc.
- Import Events. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that allows you to easily upload bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, prices, custom registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Event Venue Profiles. The venue management feature in Event Espresso 4 allows information about a venue to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your website to inform attendees of the location of your event. The venue record displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays information such as venue capacity, venue website, venue phone number, venue location details, maps, etc. You can also display venues throughout specific locations on your WP theme and on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a particular venue.
- Registrant Profiles. Manage each customer’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily accessible.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events such as free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different types of courses, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for event registrants to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical WP users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 facilitates more complex developments and customizations to the plugin.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for regular website visitors whenever you need to make changes on your site. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, Event Espresso’s objective 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 company operates on a modular and effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including attendee data in notification emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to every ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the functionality of the event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template shows the categories as a simple list. Clicking on a category name shows all events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template addon lets you display your events in a variety of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart addon is great 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 promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration addon gives potential attendees the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their shopping cart. With the Multiple 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 Addon: This add on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on allows you to auto-register attendees to a specific mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman, KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
“Love the plugin, we only use it once a year for a race we have in February. This saved us tons of time in data entry. In addition, we had more runners register than any other year. We attribute that to the ease of registering online. Thanks for your work.” Ed, Friends of Oscar Scherer Park
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, show planner, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the user forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your registrants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great end-user support, as so many of its satisfied clients confirm:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
The Event Espresso plugin provides robust support including access to support forums, 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to run 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 License – This license lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license lets you set up Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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.
Use the software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your specific situation, or to notify developers about bugs and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run an event that involves scheduling dates and venues, enrolling attendees, and/or selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
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