Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as workshops, training classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, corporate events, or even a big event like a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate scheduling, event dates, attendee numbers, data collection and admin, payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event registrants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily replicate previous events, give event managers more control, create a better user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can easily install a very inexpensive and professional online event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress lets you easily schedule your event and begin processing online registrations in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing tools.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as it is being redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually move completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into an automated and fully featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased 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 chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to enroll by themselves.
Letting your participants to do the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more attention on delivering a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a third party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase optional addons when you need added features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online registrations 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is performed entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data acquired from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect specific information using custom event registration forms on your website to prepare a customized experience for your customers.
- Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using a calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to registrants so they can choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration information for any added registrants.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for your system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 provides 3 detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of registrants and check in those who attend.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can attend your events.
- Private Contact Commenting. Keep notes about event attendees on their profile and how you’ve assisted your contacts. Private commenting lets you keep a record of when event registrants contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve helped them.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword-rich URLs take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly urls with topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and is favored by search engines, helping you get a more targeted audience to your events.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to display throughout the plugin and your front-end templates. Organization information include: company name, address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, phone number, VAT/tax number, logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Import Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that lets you upload bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload details about events, datetimes, ticketing details, prices, custom registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WP WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add images and stylize your content without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any other WordPress post.
- Automatic Plugin Installation Updating. Event Espresso provides simple one-click plugin upgrading to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your plugin installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and website visitors can tell others about your events using social media sharing buttons.
- Accurate Event Participant Management. You have control of your customers’ information; who has enrolled, for what event and how much they have paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an attendee list to a spreadsheet for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your registrants individually or as a group.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are completely compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you output a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for web developers when troubleshooting.
- 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 objectives, the software has been built using a 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 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse the same group of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Addons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow software users to significantly enhance the capabilities of the event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display all scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes events with many datetimes into a drop-down 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 also be customized to show an event thumbnail image instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to 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 prices and overriding event pricing when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website can have access to your special events. Members can also input personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also view event history and make payment for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Versions: This addon lets you include others in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, so others can help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain parts of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections 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 add on.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives your potential customers the ability to book 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.
- Events Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories using an attractive graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track registrations, and accept payments from your website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Customers – Feedback
Here are just some of the testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”I searched long and hard to find something that would serve my needs. This is, by far, the most complete and comprehensive solution I have found.” Bill Hepper, We Teach Live
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, conference promoter, or event professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed user, visit the support forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management process or enhance the experience of your registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive end-user support, as so many of its end-users attest:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
The plugin 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.
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 count on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This license option lets you configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition allows you to configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 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 special offers. Currently, the software is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
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 developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s 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 specific use-case, or to notify developers about problems and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of WordPress website owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you plan to run any event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, registering participants, or selling seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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