Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating registrations, such as workshops, group classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, marketing events, or even a big event like a festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complex process. You may need to co-ordinate scheduling, event dates, registration numbers, data entry, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate recurring events, give you more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based digital presence, you can easily set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily create an event and begin accepting online registrations in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin 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 existing digital presence 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 even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling event attendees to enrol by themselves.
Letting your clients to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you focus more time on planning a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a 3rd-party service. This is made possible by using a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy add-ons only when you need additional features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event signups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process can be kept wholly online, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information gathered from event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers through standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of built-in to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create multiple ticket types and set separate prices, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- Custom Confirmation Emails. Configure automatic registration and payment notification emails to communicate with your customers.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with leading payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments before running events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s details for any added participants.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily by pre-configuring default ticket prices.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track your participants.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event attendees when they show up, or send in paper-based forms for manual registration later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can and can’t participate in your events.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Keep your customers updated about your events, bring in more visitors and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date Version Of WordPress. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create beautifully-designed event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is currently available in over 15 languages, with more languages coming soon.
- Upload Event Information. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing feature that lets you upload a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, prices, registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Attendee Enrollments. EE 4 allows an individual or an organization to register multiple participants at once. Event managers specify how many people can enrol in one session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Attendee Records. You can manage each customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your site visitors can help increase exposure for your events using social media sharing buttons.
- Accurate Event Attendee Management. You control your participants’ records; who has enrolled, which event they have registered for 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 an attendee list to a CSV file for additional reports, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your participants on a person-by-person basis or as a group.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows web developers to have more control and options over your events and how the information displays to prospects.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to generate a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers who are potential problems.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And 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 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 in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in notification emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to each ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Add ons
As well as an incredible range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow software users to further expand the functionality of your event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- 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 available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows the categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name displays all events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- 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 allows you to bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon 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 add on allows you to offer 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 customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add on adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at venues. Customers 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add-on: This add-on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin add on, you can easily 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 its plugin, including new addons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
Customer Feedback
Here are some of the many testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso rocks! I use it for my dance class registrations. Unlike most dance studios where people have to call or send an email in advance, Event Espresso puts a registration form right there in front of the user and allows me to collect valuable information from the user during the registration process with custom questions such as “Do you have previous dance experience?” or “How did you hear about us?”. It also gives my site a professional look and feel.” Ral, Ral’eau Salsa Dance Company
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, festival promoter, or event consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the forums for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your registrants.
Product Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its customers confirm:
”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 software provides exceptional support with access to a support forum, in-depth 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you will want to consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license option enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition lets you install Event Espresso on 5 sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 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. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used by thousands of WP website owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates and venues, registering attendees, and/or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager System
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