Do you currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating registrations, such as workshops, community classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You will probably have to co-ordinate event schedules, date availability, attendee numbers, data collection, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily reproduce similar events, give you more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software lets you easily create your event and begin accepting online bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being revamped using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into an automated and fully featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are facilitating attendees to enroll themselves.
Letting your customers to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more attention on delivering a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase addons only if you need added functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event bookings outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process can remain wholly online, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data acquired from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to users through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to web site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily find your events and add these to their schedule with the calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to manage taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fee components to customers when purchasing tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and display contact details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for the default ticket.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Offer promotional and discount codes to encourage people to make a decision without delays, or simply make your events more attractive for others. This is also practical for helping to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to understand who your clients are and how you’ve done business with your customers. Your Contact Profile page stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact information, event registration details, comments, and more about each attendee.
- No Ticket Events. You can create events without making it necessary for participants to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for any type of event, not only those that need tickets.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential customers to ask questions about your event and previous attendees to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public commenting are specified using the WordPress native commenting section.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your WP themes. Your organization data include: organization name, address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, phone, VAT/tax number, your logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Import Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that lets you quickly import a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload information about events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Venue Profiles. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 allows information about a venue to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your website to inform registrants of the location of your event. The venue record has many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you reuse information like venue seating capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, physical and virtual location, Google map, etc. You can also list venue profiles throughout various parts on your WP theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a specific venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, programmers, designers, marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can interact with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your site visitors can help publicize your event using social sharing buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events such as free and paid, conference speakers and mastermind sessions, different kinds of courses, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your registrants to locate what they’re searching for. You can list all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make all events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for most WordPress users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 makes possible more complex developments and customizations to the software.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to create a log file with debugging data which can be useful for web developers who are diagnosing plugin errors.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their site, Event Espresso’s objective 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 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:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the need to re-enter event details when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow plugin users to further enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Add on: 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, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events management add-on lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can add as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays all events associated with that category and closes 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 lets your registrants 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 advantage of the WordPress 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 members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users will have access to these special events. Members can also store personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also view event history and pay for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Versions: This add on lets you involve staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the capacity 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 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 sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas 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.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential customers the ability to book 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 cart. With the Multiple 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 in an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API add-on gives permission for other software applications, web tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Below are just some of the testimonials that plugin users have written 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
“I just completed my first event using Event Espresso. I really believe without Event Espresso my event would not have been the success it was.” Cathy Earle, Women Only Weekend
”At first we looked at CVENT for one of our clients and they wanted $16,000 per year for 3000 event attendees + fees totaling $22k. That is before Staff and Webinar fees. Worst of all we had to prepay the $16k amount even if we never used all 3000 attendees. That was when we looked at Event Espresso and we realized we could build our own event system for less than 16K. For the most part we have been very satisfied with our decision. The real ROI will come next year when they don’t have to pay another 16k-22K! 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 (Long Version), KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, conference promoter, or event management consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time going through the forums for new ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as many of its plugin customers confirm:
”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 with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to run your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license enables you to configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report bugs and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WP site owners.
If you own a WordPress web site and you intend to run events that involve scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
***