Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating registrations, such as seminars, community courses, charity fundraisers, marketing events, or even a large-scale event like an art exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a time-consuming process. You may need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, event dates, participant numbers, data collection and storage, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily replicate previous events, give you more control, create a better client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can easily set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily set up an event and begin processing online registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of using this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing online presence into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and 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.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your customers to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more resources on organizing a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add-ons when you need new features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new sign-ups any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features and addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can be performed wholly in digital form, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data obtained from your event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to users through standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that customers can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure as many different types of tickets as you need and set separate pricing options, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- Customizable Event Designs. Create the look and feel you want for your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s template options and elements, and HTML or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospective attendees and let them choose the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional attendees.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the likelihood of spamming and bot software programs making bogus registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA tools that confirm human activity.
- Discount Codes. Set up promotion and discount codes to incentivize visitors to take action without hesitation, or make your offers more affordable for others. This is also practical if you want to sell out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants when they show up, or sending in paper-based forms for manual processing later.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can join a waiting list if your event has become sold out. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-listed attendees pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for the event.
- RSS Feeds. Keep your customers updated about your events, drive quality traffic and expand your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Most Recent Version Of WP. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build beautifully-designed event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used for your events, such as currency name, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, regions, and so on.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the information collected from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, planning marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WP WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add graphic images and stylize your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- Automatic Plugin Updates. Event Espresso offers simple one-click plugin upgrading to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your plugin installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential attendees who have not paid yet for their admission with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance owing, and include a link to the event information, a payment link and a link to download the invoice.
- Event Reporting. Event reporting provides you with information of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over your content and how your information displays to your site visitors.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to suit your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely deleted from your page.
- 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 goals, the software has been built using a modular and efficient 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 40+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Addons
As well as a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display your upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize many datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to browse for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your web site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is 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 right from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration addon gives your 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 Multi-Event Registration addon, 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 event categories via an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API add on gives permission for other software applications, web tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Users – Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, show planner, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time going through the support forum for new ideas and practical ways to improve your event management process or enhance the experience of your customers.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive technical support, as so many of its plugin end-users 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
Event Espresso provides incredible support with access to support forums, in-depth 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to run and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This option lets you run Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional 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 plugin’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to report errors and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates and venues, booking participants, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticketing Registration System
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