Do you currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings, such as seminars, training classes, not-for-profit fund-raisers, social conferences, or even a large-scale event like a music show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complex and time-consuming process. You will most likely be required to manage scheduling, availability, participant numbers, data processing and storage, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate repeat events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered web site, you can install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily schedule your event and start accepting online bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing applications.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as it has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages 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 existing online presence into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options 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 practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating attendees to register themselves.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more time on creating a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase optional add ons only when you need added functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new signups 24 hrs a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is kept entirely online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data gathered from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you gather specific information using a custom event registration form on your website to plan a customized experience for your users.
- Custom Confirmation Email Message. Easily configure custom automatic booking and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event attendees.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments prior to running the events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows event managers to configure the display of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the chance of spammers and bot software programs creating bogus registrations with reCAPTCHA tools that confirm human activity.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 provides three useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event attendees and check-in everyone who attends.
- No Ticket Events. List events without requiring participants to select tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any kind of event, not just those that require tickets.
- Private Comments On Contacts. Record observations about a contact on their profile. Private commenting lets you keep records of when event registrants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you’ve assisted your customers.
- Search Engine Friendly URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly permalinks with topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you get a more targeted audience to your site.
- Multi-Language Plugin. Event Espresso is currently available in over 15 languages, with more languages planned.
- Import Event Data. EE 4 provides an advanced importing feature that lets you import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and upload information about events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, custom registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WordPress Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily insert graphic images and stylize your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you interact with an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Accurate Attendee Manager. You have control of your participants’ details; who has registered, which event they have booked and how much they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of event attendees to a CSV file for additional uses, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your registrants individually or all at once.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 permits more complex developments and customizations to the plugin.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for normal site traffic whenever site maintenance is required. You can still work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their website, 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 mission, 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 includes over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – reduces the work of re-entering event data when adding new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Add ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown 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 be customized to show an event thumbnail image instead of a date.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your web site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files addon allows you to bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect 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 directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing add on adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing 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.
- Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on gives you an easy-to-use system that allows you to edit the design 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 build custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp addon lets you auto-register participants to a particular mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add ons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe
”I recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, conference promoter, or event professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management process or improve the experience of your attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent user support, as many of its clients confirm:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
The plugin provides incredible support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a proven 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 a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you may want to consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license allows you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license option lets you configure Event Espresso on five domains. Price 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 specials being offered. Currently, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration System For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to report issues and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress website and you intend to run events that involve scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, and selling tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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