Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group classes, charity fundraisers, social conferences, or even a large-scale event like a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings is a complex process. You will probably need to co-ordinate event schedules, event dates, registration numbers, data collection and storage, payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate previously-run events, give you more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based site, you can set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily set up your event and begin accepting online bookings in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the plugin is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth. 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 EE 4, 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 a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to register on their own.
Letting your participants to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you spend more of your energy on creating a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party provider. This is made possible by using a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase addons when you need new features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new registrations outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process is kept wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information gathered from event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its users via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to use in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- Custom Confirmation Emails. Set up automated registration and payment notification email messages to communicate with your customers.
- Tax Admin & Reporting Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of ways to administer taxes for an event and report tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s information for any added participants.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily with pre-configured default pricing.
- Discount Codes. You can leverage promotion and discount codes to incentivize prospects to make a decision without delays, or simply make your events more attractive for others. Also useful for helping to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event registrants and confirm everyone who has attended.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is full. You can also make it a requirement wait-list members pre-pay if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential customers to ask questions about your event and past attendees to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public commenting are set using the WordPress built-in commenting system.
- Keyword Rich Event Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your WordPress Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly urls that include topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and improves your search rankings, helping you drive more traffic to your website.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is currently available in 15+ languages, and more translations are being added all the time.
- Exportable Information. You can export all of your data gathered from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for producing reports, devising new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- Venue Profiles. The venue manager feature in EE 4 lets information about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your website to inform users of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you reuse venue information such as venue seating capacity, venue site URL, phone number, physical and/or virtual location, maps, etc. You can also display all of your venues on specific locations of your theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
- Attendee Records. Manage each customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily accessible.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and website visitors can help spread the word about your event using social sharing buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple types of events like free and paid, conference speakers and mastermind sessions, different kinds of courses, etc. you can categorize them to help your attendees to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting new events in the categories that interest your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to create a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for developers who are troubleshooting.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the need to re-enter event details when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to significantly expand the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display your scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays the events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on allows you to take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event pricing when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site can have access to your special events. Members can also store personal information into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also look up event history and pay for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Editions: This add-on lets you include staff 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 WordPress users roles and give them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain sections of your WP 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.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing addon gives you the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing 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.
- Events Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events in an attractive graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing software add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”Thanks to you and the rest of the team for Event Espresso – Every time I get a signup for an event, I think about how much time EE saves me – and signups happen while I’m out on the water teaching kayaking, not answering the phone. :-)” Tue Brems Olesen, OnAdventure
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
“Love the plugin, we only use it once a year for a race we have in February. This saved us tons of time in data entry. In addition, we had more runners register than any other year. We attribute that to the ease of registering online. Thanks for your work.” Ed, Friends of Oscar Scherer Park
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, concert promoter, or event professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time going through the user forum for new ideas and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your registrants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great end-user support, as so many of its end-users attest:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
The plugin provides amazing support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, email 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you will want to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license option lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price 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 online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to report issues and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of businesses.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run any event that involves managing dates, times and venues, booking attendees, and/or selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticket Registration System For WordPress
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