Do you currently run or plan to run events that require registrations, such as workshops, group classes, charity fund raisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event such as an exhibition, 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 be required to manage scheduling, event dates, attendee numbers, data administration, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event 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 reduce costs, help you easily replicate repeat events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based site, you can install an inexpensive and professional online event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software enables you to easily create an event and start accepting online bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept 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 registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the platform has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
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 emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are facilitating event attendees to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you spend more of your time on organizing a more unique 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 clients to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a third party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy add ons only if you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event signups 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social add ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process can be kept wholly in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information you collect from event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great features to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Customized Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you gather specific data using a custom event registration form on your web site to prepare a tailored experience for your customers.
- Custom Confirmation Email Message. Easily configure customized automatic registration and payment notification email messages to communicate with event attendees.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospects and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and display events information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events fast with pre-configured default prices.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of attendees and check in everyone who has attended.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can join a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. Additionally, you can specify that waiting list members pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for your event.
- RSS Feeds. Automatically update your blog readers, drive quality traffic and expand your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build beautifully-designed event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event page designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, attendee limits, printable tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for many of your events, you can automatically set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by checking a box.
- Venue Management. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 lets details about a venue to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your website to inform registrants of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you reuse venue details such as venue seating capacity, venue web address, phone number, physical, location map, etc. You can also display venue profiles on different sections in your WordPress theme and on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Automatic Plugin Installation Upgrading. Event Espresso provides easy one-click updates to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your plugin installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event participants who have not paid in full for their booking with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will address pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the balance they owe, and include a link to the event, a payment url and a url where they can download the invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events such as free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different types of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your participants to locate what they’re looking for. You can display all events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over your event pages and how your information displays to your prospects.
- Metabox Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely deleted from the workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their site, 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 goals, the company operates on a modular and highly efficient 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.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Add ons
In addition to a very large range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the functionality of the event management process.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with many datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to display an event thumbnail instead of a date.
- 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 registration.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give 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 will have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up past events and pay for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Versions: This add-on lets you include other users in the event management process and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers the ability to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and give them different permissions with different capabilities, so others can help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain sections 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 add-on.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives potential attendees the ability to register for 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 Multi-Event Registration add on, 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 Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories using an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API addon lets other applications, online tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
Testimonials
Below are a few of the many testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, event promoter, or event management professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, go through the support forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its plugin customers 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
Event Espresso provides exceptional support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you will want to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This allows you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This lets you configure Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a specific use-case, or to report issues and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run any event that involves scheduling dates and venues, registering participants, or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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