Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as seminars, community classes, non-profit fund-raisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a community fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings can be a time-consuming process. You have to manage calendar schedules, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event participants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily duplicate previously-run events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based web site, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software lets you easily set up your event and start accepting registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being revamped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are facilitating attendees to perform the registration themselves.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more energy on organizing a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible through a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy optional addons only when you need added features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event bookings 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can be transacted wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data you acquire from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to website owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many kinds of tickets as you need and set different pricing options, ticket quantity limits, and more.
- Customizable Event Designs. Match your web site’s look and feel for your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and elements, as well as HTML and CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that best fits their needs.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration details for any added attendees.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spamming and robots creating bogus registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA settings that confirm human activity.
- Discount Codes. Offer promotional and discount codes to encourage visitors to register now, or simply make your offerings more affordable for others. Also useful for helping to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of attendees and check in everyone who attends.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can attend your events.
- Private Contact Comments. Keep observations about users on their profile and how you have interacted with them. Private notes enables you to keep records of when users contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have assisted them.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. The organization information include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, phone, tax number, company logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Import Event Data. EE 4 provides an advanced importing feature that lets you import a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and import details about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Event Venue Management. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 allows information about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform users of the location of your event. The venue profile has many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes information like venue seating capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, physical and virtual location, directions map, etc. You can also display venue profiles on various locations on your WP theme and on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
- Automatic Plugin Updating. Event Espresso offers easy one-click plugin updating to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your software installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential attendees who have not paid in full for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with one click. Your invoices will reference 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 link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple types of events such as free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different types of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your participants to find what they’re searching for. You can display all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make the events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, as well as suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for basic WP users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 permits more complex developments and customizations to the software.
- Control Box Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And 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 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 includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow plugin users to further enhance the functionality of your event management system.
Some of these add-ons 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, it will use a default image.
- 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 shows event categories as a simple list. Clicking the category name shows all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add-on is capable of displaying your events in a variety of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Editions: This addon lets you involve your staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the ability 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, so others can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WordPress 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 addon.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the door. Customers 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 Calendar Add-on: This add on uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories in an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add-on: The MailChimp add-on allows you to auto-register participants to a chosen mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
“I just completed my first event using Event Espresso. I really believe without Event Espresso my event would not have been the success it was.” Cathy Earle, Women Only Weekend
”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
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, conference promoter, or event professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time visiting the support forum for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management process and enhance the experience of your event customers.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP coding guidelines. 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 clients confirm:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
Event Espresso provides robust support with access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, email 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This edition enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This option lets you configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license option allows you to set up Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
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.
Use the plugin’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to report problems and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run an event that requires managing dates, times and venues, registering participants, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
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