Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling registrations, such as workshops, training classes, not-for-profit fund-raisers, social events, or even a big event such as a music festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complex and time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate scheduling, event dates, participant numbers, data administration, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give you more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can install an inexpensive and professional online event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticketing Registration Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily set up an event and start accepting online bookings in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing tools.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been revamped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform 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 the benefits and advantages of using this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits 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 current website or blog into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity 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 improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to enrol by themselves.
Letting your clients to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you concentrate more of your resources on organizing a more unique event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase optional add ons when you need new functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new registrations 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process remains wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data you obtain from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to end-users via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you gather unique data using a custom event registration form on your web pages to create a great experience for your attendees.
- Customized Notification Emails. Configure automated registration and payment notification email messages to communicate with your participants.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of ways to handle taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for the system-default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to know who your clients are and how you’ve previously engaged with your customers. The Contact Profile section stores updated records like the name, biography, contact details, event registration information, private comments, etc. about each client.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential customers to interact with you online via commenting and past customers to post comments that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for comments are configured via the WordPress built-in commenting settings.
- Draft Events. Draft events allow you to develop an event at your own leisure without displaying it live on your site. You can work on your events until you are ready to publish it live on your website, or schedule to publish your event at a future time and date.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event page designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, limits on attendees, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Exportable Data. You can output all the data gathered from event participants into Excel or CSV format for producing advanced reports, implementing marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Register Multiple Event Attendees. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or people to buy multiple tickets and different types of tickets at once. Event managers can control how many people can register in one registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to an expert community of experienced event managers and plugin users. You can interact with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event clients who have not paid in full for their booking with a standard but personalized invoice with one click. Your invoices will address pre-registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the amount owing, and include a link to the event, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Attendee Reports. Event reporting provides you with data of the registrations and transactions, allowing you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue has been collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows developers to have more control and options over the content of your event pages and how your information displays to prospects.
- Metabox Management & Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely removed from the workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: 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 goals, the company operates on 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 provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including participant data in confirmation emails and email updates.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a common set of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Add-Ons
As well as an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance 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 Management Add-on: The Recurring Events management addon lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can create as many future events as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- 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 also be customized to display an event thumbnail image instead of a date.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even 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.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Versions: This add on lets you include your staff in the event management process and give new users permission 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 give them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff to help you manage your events or the events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain parts 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 addon gives your potential customers 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 shopping 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories in an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you auto-register attendees to a specific mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials that 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
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”I’m so excited to fire Eventbrite! Event Espresso has an amazing WP plugin for event management. We’re testing it now & are very impressed! In a nutshell Event Espresso saves us money & does everything Eventbrite did before. :)” Dustin Nay
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, workshop promoter, or event management professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management process or enhance the experience of your event customers.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its clients attest:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.
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 solution you can count on to run your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you need to consider downloading one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This edition allows you to configure 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 License – This option lets you set up Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license lets you run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Cost 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 depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Info
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.
Look up the software’s documentation pages 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 your specific situation, or to report issues and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run events that require managing dates and venues, enrolling attendees, or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management Software
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