Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require handling registrations, such as workshops, training classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, social conferences, or even a big event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event bookings can be a complex and time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate scheduling, dates, participant numbers, data entry, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to participants.
There are lots of benefits 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 duplicate repeat events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered site, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticket Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software lets you easily schedule your event and begin receiving online bookings in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being redeveloped using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages 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 current web site into an automated and fully featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and signups manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to perform the enrolment process by themselves.
Allowing your customers to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more of your time on delivering a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept low by using a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy addons only if you need new features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event registrations any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite their friends who may be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can remain wholly in digital form, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data gathered from your event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its users through standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create multiple ticket types and set prices, ticket quantity limits, and more.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily find your events and add these to their schedule using the calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect booking fees before running the events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to configure the settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing for your system-default ticket.
- Discount & Promotional Codes. Leverage promotional and discount codes to incentivize people to register now, or make your offers more appealing for price-sensitive prospects. This is also practical for helping to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event participants when they show up, or sending in paper-based registration forms for manual registration later.
- No Ticket Events. You can set up events without requiring registrants to book tickets. Use Event Espresso for any kind of event, not just when tickets are for sale.
- Private Notes On Contacts. Keep notes about a contact on their profile. Private notes lets you keep records of when event participants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have interacted with them.
- Search Engine Friendly Page URLs. Keyword rich event page URLs take advantage of your WP Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly web links that use topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your events and improves your search rankings, helping you get a more targeted audience to your events.
- Country Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings to be used to run events, such as currency name, currency signs, decimal characters and places, country codes, regions, and so on.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for many of your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for the next event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Register Multiple Attendees. EE 4 allows a single person or a group to order multiple tickets and different types of tickets at once. You control how many people are able to register in one booking session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Upgrading. Event Espresso provides simple 1-click software installation upgrades to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your plugin installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your site visitors can help increase exposure for your event using social sharing buttons.
- Accurate Event Attendee Manager. You have control of your customers’ date; who has registered, for what event and how much they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an attendee list to Excel for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your customers individually or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows web-based software developers to have more control and options over the content of your event pages and how the information displays to prospects.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you generate a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for web developers when troubleshooting.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 software has been built using 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 provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – streamlines the need to re-enter event information when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Add ons
In addition to an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow plugin users to significantly expand the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events management add on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add on allows you to override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add-on is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And 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 bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at the door. Attendees 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.
- Events Calendar Add-on: This add-on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register participants to a specified autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Here are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”My clients have used Event Espresso for Transportation (Cadet Bus for leave), Parties (tailgates and brewery tours), and Horse-back riding lessons and camps. What a terrific plug-in and fantastic support from Seth!” Nina, Blue Iris Web Design
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, show promoter, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the user forum for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management process and improve the experience of your event registrants.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great end-user support, as so many of its plugin customers attest:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support including 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.
Product Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license option allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
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.
Search the software’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about issues and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support 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 software, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that involve managing dates, times and venues, registering participants, and reserving seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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