Do you currently run or plan to run events that require registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fund-raisers, corporate conferences, 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?
Managing event registrations is a time-consuming process. You may have to manage event schedules, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data entry, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily reproduce recurring events, give you more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can install an inexpensive and professional online event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily create your event and start processing registrations in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for attendees to complete the enrolment process on their own.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more resources on delivering a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a 3rd-party service. This is made possible by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy addons only if you need added features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event bookings outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can be performed wholly in digital form, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information collected from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great built-in to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect specific data using custom event registration forms on your site to plan a unique experience for your attendees.
- Customized Notification Email Message. Configure automated booking and payment confirmation emails to communicate with event attendees.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments prior to running the events.
- 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 registrant’s details for any added registrants.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing 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 attendees.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of participants and confirm those who attend.
- No Ticket Events. List events without requiring participants to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for any type of event, not only when tickets are needed.
- Private Contact Comments. Keep notes about event registrants on their profile and how you’ve interacted with your customers. Private notes enables you to keep records of when users contacted you, your internal observations, and how you’ve interacted with your contacts.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build an event at your own leisure without displaying it live on your website. You can continue working on your events until you are ready to publish it live to your site, or schedule to publish your event at a future time and date.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also allows you to automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, attendee limits, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for most of your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by checking a box.
- Venue Profiles. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 allows information about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform users of your event’s location. The venue record displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you add information like venue capacity, venue website, phone number, venue address, maps, etc. You can also display venue profiles throughout different areas of your WP theme and on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you interact with an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event attendees who have not paid yet for their enrollment with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the balance owing, and include a link to the event information, a payment link and a link to download a PDF invoice.
- Accurate Participant Manager. You control your attendees’ information; who has enrolled, which event they have registered for and how much they have paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of event attendees to a spreadsheet for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your clients on a person-by-person basis or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general WP users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 facilitates more complex developments and customizations to the plugin.
- Control Box Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: 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 goals, the software has been built using a modular and effective 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:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the work of re-entering event details when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to all tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display all upcoming events by location. 4 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 multiple datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give 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 will have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up past events and pay for future events.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add on is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add-on allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add-on adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at the door. Customers 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- Events Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that allows you to change 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 web developers to design custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track bookings, and accept payments from your web site.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Below are some of the many testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”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
”At first we looked at CVENT for one of our clients and they wanted $16,000 per year for 3000 event attendees + fees totaling $22k. That is before Staff and Webinar fees. Worst of all we had to prepay the $16k amount even if we never used all 3000 attendees. That was when we looked at Event Espresso and we realized we could build our own event system for less than 16K. For the most part we have been very satisfied with our decision. The real ROI will come next year when they don’t have to pay another 16k-22K! Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman (Long Version), KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, concert promoter, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent customer support, as many of its customers attest:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
Event Espresso provides great support including access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition lets you set up Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on five domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds 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 plugin’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular situation, or to report 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 manager software, used by thousands of WP users.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you intend to run any event that requires scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, and booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
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