Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings, such as seminars, training courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, social events, or even a big event like a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex and time-consuming process. You may be required to co-ordinate calendar schedules, dates, attendee numbers, data processing and storage, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to participants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for repeat events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software lets you easily set up an event and start processing bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into an automated and fully featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating attendees to perform the sign-up process on their own.
Letting your customers to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more attention on delivering a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a third party service. This is made possible by using a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase addons when you need added functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process can remain entirely online, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-keeping.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data acquired from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers through standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Configure automatic registration and payment confirmation emails to communicate with your attendees.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to registrants and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and reuse attendee information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for the default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event registrants and confirm everyone who attends.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential prospects to ask questions about your event and previous attendees to post reviews that can help others consider whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public commenting are configured via the WordPress commenting section.
- Keyword Rich URLs. Keyword rich event page Web links take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly urls that include topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you bring more potential customers to your website.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event page designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, limits on attendees, printable tickets and more.
- Exportable Information. You can output all the data collected from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, devising marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Multiple Participant Bookings. EE 4 allows one person or a group to register multiple attendees at once. You decide how many people are able to enrol in one registration by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential registrants who have not paid in full for their registration with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will reference registered customers who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the balance they owe, and include a link to the event, a payment url and a link where they can download the invoice.
- Event Reports. Quick-view event reports gives you information of all of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and how much money you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows developers to have more control and options over your events and how your information displays to site visitors.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for normal website traffic whenever you need to make updates on your website. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: 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 and highly efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the need to re-enter event details when adding new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow software users to significantly enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: 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 Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events 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 display the event thumbnail image instead of the date.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site will have access to your special events. Members can also store personal information into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Users can also view event history and make payment for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This addon lets you involve staff in the event management process 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 assign them different permissions with different privileges, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do 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 add-on gives your potential attendees 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 Multiple 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 Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add on gives event managers a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to modify the look and feel of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also allows developers to design their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on permits other software applications, online tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Below are just some of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is so easy to use yet feature rich and stable. It is a cornerstone of our site and our success.” Fraser Barner, Speaker’s Lab
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer, Improve Photography
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, festival planner, or event consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time going through the forums for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event customers.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive end-user support, as many of its 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
The Event Espresso plugin provides great support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to run and manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you should consider using one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This edition allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to notify developers about errors and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of event promoters.
If you own a WordPress web site and you plan to run any event that requires scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticket Registration Software
***