Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as seminars, community classes, non-profit fund-raisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complicated and time-consuming process. You may need to co-ordinate scheduling, availability, attendee numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily replicate similar events, give event managers more control, create a better user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based web site, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin enables you to easily create an event and start processing bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing solutions.
View detailed information about your event attendees
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 EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as it is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
Learn more 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:
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 site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event participants to perform the registration themselves.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you direct more of your attention on delivering a more unique 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 participants to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a third party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need added functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online registrations 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process is completed entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data obtained from event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great built-in to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- Custom Notification Emails. Easily set up customized automatic booking and payment notification email messages to communicate with event attendees.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with leading payment gateways, enabling you to collect money prior to running events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse contact information throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the risk of spamming and robots making bogus registrations on your web site with reCAPTCHA features to authenticate human activity.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Offer promotional and multiple discount codes to incentivize prospects to make a purchasing decision immediately, or simply make your events more appealing for others. Also useful if you want to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of attendees and confirm everyone who attends.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t register for your events.
- Private Commenting On Contacts. Keep comments about event participants on their profile and how you’ve helped your customers. Private commenting enables you to keep records of when event participants contacted you, your internal observations, and how you’ve helped your customers.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date WP Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create beautifully-designed event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to display throughout the software and your front-end templates. Organization fields include: business name, address, city, state, country, zip code, email address, phone, VAT/tax number, company logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Upload Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that enables you to import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import details about events, datetimes, ticketing details, prices, registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily insert graphic images and create your content without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any standard WordPress post.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage your registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event participants who have not made payment for their booking with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will reference registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the balance owing, and include a link to the event information, a payment url and a url to download the invoice.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can even customize your templates to display events in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow developers 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. You can pause registrations for regular site traffic when website maintenance is required. You can continue to work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility 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 company operates on a modular and highly effective 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 over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Add ons
In addition to an amazing array of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to further enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Addon: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If the event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months ahead. You can create as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will 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 browse for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users can have access to these special events. Members can also input personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up event history and pay for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Editions: This add on lets you include staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different capabilities, so others can help you manage your events or the 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 sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add on gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at the door. Attendees can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Add on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin addon, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are just some of the many testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso rocks! I use it for my dance class registrations. Unlike most dance studios where people have to call or send an email in advance, Event Espresso puts a registration form right there in front of the user and allows me to collect valuable information from the user during the registration process with custom questions such as “Do you have previous dance experience?” or “How did you hear about us?”. It also gives my site a professional look and feel.” Ral, Ral’eau Salsa Dance Company
”When you can get a company to expend more money switching systems just to use your plugin…you’ve really accomplished something.” David, House of Prayer
”I’m so excited to fire Eventbrite! Event Espresso has an amazing WP plugin for event management. We’re testing it now & are very impressed! In a nutshell Event Espresso saves us money & does everything Eventbrite did before. :)” Dustin Nay
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, event planner, or event professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your attendees.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress 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 great customer support, as so many of its plugin customers confirm:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
The software provides great support including access to a support forum, comprehensive 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to run your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you may want to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This license allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to report bugs and leave 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 WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress web site and you plan to run any event that requires managing dates and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and/or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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