Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating registrations, such as workshops, training classes, non-profit fund-raisers, marketing events, or even a large-scale event like a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complex process. You may need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, availability, participant numbers, data administration, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate similar events, give you more control, create a better client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can install an inexpensive and professional online event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create your event and begin receiving bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize your event registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
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 completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using the plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to perform the registration themselves.
Allowing your attendees to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you direct more of your energy on creating a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept low through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy addons when you need new features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing add-ons (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 Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can remain entirely in digital form, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information you acquire from event participants.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create multiple ticket types and specify different prices, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. You can customize your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and components, and HTML or CSS.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to administer taxes for your event and report tax fee components to customers who purchase tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display registrant information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing of your system-default ticket.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Provide promotion and discount codes to encourage people to take action immediately, or make your offers more affordable for price-sensitive customers. This is also practical if you want to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 provides you with the tools to gain a better understanding of who your clients are and how you have previously engaged with your customers. The Contact Profile section stores the name, biography, contact information, event registration data, private comments, etc. about each attendee.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. You can also specify that waiting list registrants pre-pay if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- Event RSS Feeds. Automatically update your site readers, bring in more visitors and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Most Recent Version Of WP. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create aesthetically beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. Organization information include: company name, address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, telephone number, tax number, logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Exportable Data. You can output all the data gathered from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for producing reports, devising new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add photos and stylize your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- Attendee Records. Manage your attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and site visitors can tell others about your event using social media sharing buttons.
- Accurate Attendee Manager. You have control of your customers’ date; who has enrolled, for what event and what amount they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of attendees to a CSV file for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your attendees on a person-by-person basis or all at once.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 permits more complex developments and customizations to the plugin.
- Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reorganize the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely deleted from your page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s goal 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 company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to each ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to further enhance the capabilities 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 Drop-down Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your website 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 lets you bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: 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 addon allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential customers the ability to book 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 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 Add on: This add on uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events in 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 completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds 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:
Customers – Feedback
Below are a few of the many testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is so easy to use yet feature rich and stable. It is a cornerstone of our site and our success.” Fraser Barner, Speaker’s Lab
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, show planner, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time researching the forums for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management process and improve the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its satisfied plugin clients attest:
”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 Event Espresso plugin provides comprehensive support with access to a support forum, 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.
In addition, 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 manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to report issues and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
***