Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as seminars, group classes, charity 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 bookings can be a complex and time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage calendar schedules, event dates, participant numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be very costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can download and install an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create your event and begin receiving registrations in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as it has been rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price 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 increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to register themselves.
Allowing your attendees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more attention on organizing a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a third-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy optional add ons only when you need new features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event signups outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and addons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite their friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process remains wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information acquired from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), which these can be managed from a single event.
- Customized Notification Email Message. Set up automatic booking and payment notification emails to communicate with your attendees.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect booking payments prior to running events.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and reuse events information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily with pre-configured default pricing.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. You can also specify that wait-listed members pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- XML RSS Feeds. Provide automatic updates to users, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of potential customers with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Keyword-Rich Page URLs. Keyword-rich URLs take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links with relevant keywords enhance the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you bring a more targeted audience to your events.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso is is available in 15+ languages, with more translations coming soon.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the information collected from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for producing reports, planning marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Register Multiple Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows one person or an organization to pay for multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. Event managers decide how many attendees can enroll in one session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Records. Manage your attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and website visitors can help publicize your event using social media share buttons.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can even customize your page templates to display events in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows web developers to have more control and options over your event page content and how your information displays to site visitors.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular site traffic whenever website maintenance is required. You can still work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: 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 mission, the software has been built using a modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the need to re-enter event details when adding new events.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same group of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Addons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to show the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that allow you to override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This add on lets you involve staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the ability 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 assign them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing others to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain parts of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections 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 & Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add on gives you the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. Registrants 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template add-on provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you modify the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also allows web developers to build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
Testimonials
Here are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted 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
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, concert planner, or event management professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, visit the support forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management process and improve the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WP plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great customer support, as so many of its clients confirm:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
Event Espresso provides incredible support with access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, priority 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to manage your events.
Event Espresso Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you will want to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This license option enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This license lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to notify developers about errors and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress site and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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