Do you currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as seminars, community courses, charity fund raisers, networking functions, or even a big event such as a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a complex and time-consuming process. You need to manage scheduling, event dates, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to participants.
There are a number of 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 replicate previous events, give event managers more control, improve client 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-powered website or blog, you can set up a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily create your event and begin accepting online bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for participants to register on their own.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you concentrate more of your energy on delivering a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party provider. This is made possible by using a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase optional addons only if you need additional features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new signups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite friends who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process is transacted wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data gathered from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users via built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique built-in to website owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create as many kinds of tickets as you want and set different prices, number of tickets, and more.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Customize your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s template options and elements, and HTML and/or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospective attendees and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to configure the display settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly by pre-configuring system-default ticket pricing.
- Promotional Codes. Offer promotional and discount codes to encourage prospects to take action immediately, or simply make your offers more attractive for price-sensitive prospects. Also useful for helping to increase sales of events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to understand who your customers are and how you have done past business with them. Your Contact Profile page records the name, biography, contact details, event registration information, comments, etc. about each customer.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can register for your events.
- Private Notes On Contacts. Record notes about users on their profile. Private commenting allows you to keep records of when event registrants contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have helped them.
- Optimized For The Most Recent WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to be used throughout the plugin and your front-end templates. The organization information include: organization name, address, city, state, country, zip code, email, phone, tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for your events, you can easily set up as your default ticket for the next event simply by checking a box.
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily insert photos and format your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any typical WordPress post.
- Attendee Profiles. You can manage each customer’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and your website visitors can help spread the word about your events using social media share buttons.
- Accurate Event Participant Management. You control your participants’ records; who has registered, for what event and what amount they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of attendees to an Excel spreadsheet for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your participants individually or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over the content of your events and how the information displays to your site visitors.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorder the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, Event Espresso’s aim 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 company operates on a modular and efficient 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 over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the work of re-entering event details when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Addons
In addition to an incredible range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to further enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display your upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the 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 be customized to display the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your website uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add-on allows you to bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Versions: This add-on lets you include other users 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 give them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain parts 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.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration addon 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 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 in a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business 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: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
User Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”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
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
”Event Espresso plugin still rocks. Saw you guys were up for the WP Honors too. Glad I paid for it! If you need event management on your WordPress site I recommend Event Espresso.” Patrick Allmond, Focus Consulting
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, concert planner, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, visit the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your participants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as many of its plugin clients confirm:
”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
The plugin provides amazing support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This option lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license option lets you run Event Espresso on five sites. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to report issues and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of businesses.
If you own a WordPress web site and you currently run an event that requires managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, and/or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Plugin
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