Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings, such as seminars, training courses, non-profit fund-raisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event like a community fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings can be a time-consuming process. You will probably have to co-ordinate scheduling, availability, registration numbers, data entry, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, 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 streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give you more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based website or blog, you can install an inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software lets you easily set up your event and begin receiving bookings in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling attendees to register on their own.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more of your resources on planning a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a 3rd party service provider. This is made possible through a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy optional addons when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online registrations 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite their friends who may be interested.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process remains entirely online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data obtained from event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers through built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), which these can be managed from a single event.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Create the look and feel you want for your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s template options and parts, as well as HTML or CSS.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to handle taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fees to registrants who purchase tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to configure the look and control settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the likelihood of spamming and robots making bogus registrations on your site by using reCAPTCHA tools to confirm human activity.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your customers are and how you have done business with them. The Contact Profile section stores the name, biography, contact details, event registration history, private comments, etc. about each customer.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can join a waiting list if your event has reached maximum attendance. You can also specify that waiting list attendees pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Automatically update your users, bring in more visitors and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Latest WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create beautiful event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to be deployed throughout the plugin and your front-end templates. Organization information include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, telephone number, VAT/tax number, logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for many of your events, you can easily set one of those tickets as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add images and write your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you network with an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and website visitors can help promote your event using social share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events like free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different types of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to help event attendees to find what they’re searching for. You can display all events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular website traffic whenever you need to make updates on your website. You can continue to work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: 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 as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in confirmation emails and updates.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a common set of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Addons
In addition to a very large number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to further expand the functionality of your event management process.
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, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays event categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name displays all events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: This add on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add-on is capable of displaying your event lists in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on 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 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 manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your 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 shopping 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 Addon: This add-on uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API addon allows other applications, websites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Below are some of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”My clients have used Event Espresso for Transportation (Cadet Bus for leave), Parties (tailgates and brewery tours), and Horse-back riding lessons and camps. What a terrific plug-in and fantastic support from Seth!” Nina, Blue Iris Web Design
”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
”I am in love with your product, I work with many educational institutions that hold classes/events and I will definitely recommend this to all of them, the only time I have seen a system this comprehensive and sophisticated is when an organization I worked with paid a programmer nearly $8,000 for a custom solution, and yet still there are features in your registration system that his didn’t have. Thank you so much for your help and patience.” Abdullah J.
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, conference planner, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, visit the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its plugin end-users attest:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to run and manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you will want to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This license option allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This license option enables you to install Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration System For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to notify developers about errors and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of WP users.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that involve managing dates and venues, booking participants, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
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