Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as workshops, community classes, non-profit fundraisers, corporate functions, or even a big event like a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a complex process. You may be required to co-ordinate event schedules, dates, participant numbers, data entry, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily replicate recurring events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily set up your event and begin processing online bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into an automated and fully featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and signups manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to enroll on their own.
Letting your customers to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more energy on delivering a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase optional add ons only when you need added features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new signups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with other people they know who may also be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process remains entirely online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Data. You own all the information you acquire from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that customers can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration. With Event Espresso you can collect specific data using a custom event registration form on your web pages to plan a tailored experience for your event participants.
- Customized Notification Emails. Configure automatic booking and payment notification emails to communicate with event participants.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments before running the events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional attendees.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily with pre-configured default prices.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 provides 3 useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event registrants and check-in those who have attended.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is full. Additionally, you can specify that wait-list attendees pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Event RSS Feeds. Provide automatic updates to your users, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of prospects with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events allow you to develop your event page over multiple sessions without displaying it live on your website. You can keep developing your events until you are ready to go live, or schedule to publish your event pages at a future date and time.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing processes, and lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event page designs, payment processing, wait lists, attendee limits, print-ready tickets and more.
- Upload Event Information. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing capability that enables you to easily import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Event Participant. EE 4 allows one person or people to register multiple participants at once. You specify how many people are allowed to enrol in a single registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to an expert community of experienced event managers and plugin users. You can interact with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and website visitors can help publicize your events using social media share buttons.
- Accurate Participant Manager. You have control of your customers’ records; who has registered, which event they have registered for and how much they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to Excel for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your registrants on a person-by-person basis or all at once.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with WordPress.
- Control Box Management & Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 objectives, the company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
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.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same group of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a very large range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events management add-on lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can schedule as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name displays the events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add-on: 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 registration.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing 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 enter personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Users can also look up past events and make payment for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Editions: This add-on lets you include other users in the event management process 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 WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff to help you manage your events or the events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain parts of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This add on uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events in a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software addon, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track bookings, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Here are just some of the many great testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”I searched long and hard to find something that would serve my needs. This is, by far, the most complete and comprehensive solution I have found.” Bill Hepper, We Teach Live
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, event promoter, or event consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the forums for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP development rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as so many of its plugin customers attest:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
Event Espresso provides great support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you will want to consider downloading one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin 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.
Look up the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to report problems and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you currently run any event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling participants, and reserving tickets or 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 Registration And Ticketing Manager Software
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