Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training courses, non-profit fund-raisers, marketing conferences, or even a big event such as a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings can be a complex process. You may need to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, registration numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are lots of 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 recurring events, give you more control, create a better client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily schedule an event and begin receiving online registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform 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 the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling event attendees to enroll themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you concentrate more of your energy on creating a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service. The cost is kept low by using a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase add ons only if you need extra functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event registrations 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process remains entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information acquired from your event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to website owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many types of tickets as you need and set prices, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. You can customize your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s template options and parts, plus HTML or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospective registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit 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 duplicate the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional participants.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily by pre-configuring default prices.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event participants at the door, or send in paper-based forms for manual registration later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social interactivity to your events by allowing potential registrants to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post feedback that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for commenting are configured via the WordPress built-in commenting section.
- Optimized For The Latest WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create aesthetically beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. The organization data include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email address, telephone, VAT/tax number, company logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Bulk Upload Events. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that enables you to easily import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, custom registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Participants. EE 4 allows a single person or people to enroll multiple participants at once. You control how many attendees are allowed to enrol in a single registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Upgrading. Event Espresso offers simple 1-click updating to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your installation compatible with new versions of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and website visitors can help promote your event using social share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different event types such as free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different kinds of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your participants to find what they’re looking for. You can display all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make all events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers when troubleshooting.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their site, Event Espresso’s objective 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 and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in emails and email newsletters.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to every ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Addons
In addition to a very large array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow plugin users to significantly enhance the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these addons include:
- EE4 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 Drop-down Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that occur within a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on allows you to take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site will have access to these special events. Members can also input personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also view previous events and make payment for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Editions: This add on lets you include others in the event management process and give new users the capacity 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, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain sections 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.
- Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This addon uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are just some of the testimonials that plugin 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
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, workshop planner, or event management professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the support forum for new ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event participants.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive user support, as many of its end-users attest:
”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 comprehensive support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, one-on-one 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 an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to run your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This edition enables you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This enables you to install Event Espresso on five sites. 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 special offers. Presently, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
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 developer when you visit the site.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to report errors and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of businesses.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues, registering attendees, or selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
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