Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training courses, non-profit fundraisers, networking functions, or even a big event such as a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You have to manage event schedules, event dates, participant numbers, data administration, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event participants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily replicate similar events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based site, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily schedule an event and begin processing bookings in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Customize 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 for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate 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 migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using the plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to complete the enrolment process by themselves.
Allowing your customers to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you focus more of your energy on organizing a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users pay for 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 outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can remain wholly in digital form, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Information. You own all the data you acquire from event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many different types of tickets as you need and specify prices, number of tickets, and more.
- Custom Confirmation Emails. Easily configure automatic registration and payment confirmation emails to communicate with your attendees.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments before running your events.
- 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 chance of spammers and robots making fake registrations on your web site with reCAPTCHA option to validate human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track your participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event registrants and check-in everyone who attends.
- No-Ticket Events. Create events without making it necessary for registrants to book tickets. Use Event Espresso for all forms of events, not only those that require tickets.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your event by encouraging potential prospects to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post reviews that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for comments are set up using the WordPress commenting system.
- Keyword Rich URLs. Keyword rich event page Web links take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links that include topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you bring a more targeted audience to your website.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is currently available in 15+ languages, with more translations planned.
- Upload Event Information. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing capability that enables you to easily upload bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and upload information about events, datetimes, ticketing information, prices, registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Event Attendee. EE 4 allows a single person or a group to enroll multiple attendees simultaneously. You control how many attendees are able to register in one session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Plugin Updates. Event Espresso provides easy 1-click software installation updates to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your software installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential attendees who have not paid in full for their enrollment with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will reference registered attendees who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the balance they owe, and include a link to the event information, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Event Reporting. Event reports gives you information of all 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’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows developers to have more control and options over the content of your events and how the information displays to your site visitors.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you output a log file with debugging data which can be useful for web developers who are potential errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their site, 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 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 comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – streamlines the need to re-enter event information when creating new events.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a group of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Addons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events management add on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to search for events that take place in a certain date range.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add on: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website can have access to these special events. Members can also enter personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also view past events and make payment for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This add on lets you involve other users in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and give them different permissions with different capabilities, so others can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add on.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add-on adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue door. People 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template add on provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that allows you to change the look and feel of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also allows developers to build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software add-on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials that users 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
”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 a motivational speaker, trainer, workshop promoter, or event management consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time going through the user forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event registrants.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its satisfied plugin end-users attest:
”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, knowledge base 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 an established team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to run your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you need to consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This option allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This edition allows you to configure Event Espresso on five domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about errors and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WP site owners.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues, registering participants, and reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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