Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings, such as seminars, community courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, networking events, or even a big event like a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex process. You need to manage scheduling, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data collection, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate similar events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily create an event and start accepting online registrations in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use a range of 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 registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into an automated and fully featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price levels 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 virtually eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to perform the registration themselves.
Allowing your customers to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more energy on creating a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a third party service provider. This is made possible through a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase add-ons only when you need added functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online signups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with others who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can remain entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information you acquire from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you collect specific information using custom event registration forms on your website to plan a customized experience for your customers.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your events and add these to their schedule with the calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with leading payment gateways, enabling you to collect registration fees before running the events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows event managers to customize the display of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Default Prices. Set up events fast with pre-configured system-default ticket prices.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants when they show up, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual inputting later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can and can’t participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social interactivity to your event page by encouraging potential registrants to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post comments that can help others choose whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for comments are set in the WordPress default commenting admin area.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date WordPress Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create visually attractive event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso is is available in 15+ languages, with more languages coming soon.
- Upload Events. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that allows you to easily upload bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Event Venue Management. The venue manager in EE 4 allows information about a venue to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform attendees of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes details like venue seating capacity, venue web address, phone number, physical, map, etc. You can also display all of your venues on various sections in your WordPress theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Attendee Profiles. You can manage your registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event attendees who have not fully paid for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the amount they owe, and include a link to the event, a payment url and a link where they can download the invoice.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can also customize the templates to display event information in your own unique way.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows web-based software developers to have more control and options over your content and how your information displays to site visitors.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: According to the philosophy stated on their site, Event Espresso’s goal is to “empower business and organization leaders with the event registration, ticketing and management tools that maximize the success of events.” To achieve their goals, the software has been built using a modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes registrant data in emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the functionality of your event management process.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display the scheduled events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events management addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can schedule as many events in the future as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template shows the categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name shows the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- 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 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 addon you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event pricing when your 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 booking form. Users can also look up past events and pay for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Versions: This add-on lets you include staff in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, so your staff can help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain areas of your WordPress 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.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives potential attendees 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 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.
- Events Calendar Add-on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing software add on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track registrations, and accept payments from your web site.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
Customer Feedback
Below are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”I have been using Event Espresso to run my festival and have been very happy with how it has worked out. They have provided tremendous support and their iPhone app is amazing and easy to use. I suggest using it for your event.” Alex Grant, Byron Spirit Festival
”I’m using it on multiple sites and enjoying it. It’s simple and as others have stated… fast service and real help.” Arlen Nagata
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, event planner, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its satisfied plugin users attest:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
Event Espresso provides robust support including access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, email 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 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 your events.
Event Espresso Price
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you should consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This allows you to run Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin 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 online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to notify developers about errors and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of WP users.
If you own a WordPress site and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, and/or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Software
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