Category: eCommerce Plugins

Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings, such as workshops, community courses, charity fund raisers, social functions, or even a large-scale event such as a festival, 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 time-consuming process. You will probably have to manage scheduling, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data administration, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to participants.

There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate previously-run events, give you more control, create a better client experience and grow your sales.

The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be quite costly.

The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.

Announcing …

Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress

Plugin Description

The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create an event and begin accepting online registrations in minutes.

(Set up multiple events and take online event bookings with Event Espresso)

Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.

Create custom registration forms

You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.

View detailed information about event attendees

Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform is being revamped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Management Software

Plugin Benefits

Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:

Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution

Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing 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 increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.

Basically, you are making it easier for event participants to register themselves.

Allowing your enrollees to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more of your resources on creating a more unique event.

Complete Control Over The User Experience

As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your customers to experience.

Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:

• Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy addons only if you need extra functionality.
• More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event bookings 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing addons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested in attending.
• Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process is performed wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
• All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data you obtain from event participants.

Event Espresso Features

Event Espresso delivers functionality to users through built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.

Event Espresso offers a number of great features to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:

• Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
• Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many kinds of tickets as you need and specify separate pricing options, maximum number of tickets, etc.
• Custom Notification Emails. Easily configure customized automated booking and payment confirmation emails to communicate with event participants.
• Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments before running events.
• Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to configure the display of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
• Spam Protection. Eliminate the likelihood of spamming and bots making bogus registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA settings that provide human authentication.
• Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track attendees.
• Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event participants when they show up, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual registration later.
• No Ticket Events. Set up events without requiring attendees to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any kind of event, not only those that require tickets.
• Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your events by encouraging potential attendees to ask questions about your event and past participants to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for comments are configured via the WordPress commenting admin area.
• Keyword Rich URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links that have relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you bring a more targeted audience to your events.
• 15+ Languages. Event Espresso has been translated into more than 15 languages, and more translations are being added all the time.
• Import Events. EE 4 provides an advanced importing feature that enables you to easily import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and upload details about events, datetimes, ticketing details, pricing, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
• WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert photos and create your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
• Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to an expert community of event managers and other plugin users. You can interact with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
• Social Sharing. Event registrants and your website visitors can help spread the word about your events using social share buttons.
• Accurate Event Participant Management. You have control of your participants’ details; who has enrolled, for what event and how much they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of attendees to a CSV file for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your attendees individually or collectively.

Extra features include:

• Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over the content of your event page and how the information displays to prospects.
• Metabox Management & Organization. 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 completely removed from your workflow configuration.
• Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: 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 mission, the software has been built using a 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:

• Duplicating events – limits the need to re-enter event data when adding new events.
• Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to tickets).
• Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.

Event Espresso Add-Ons

As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the capabilities of managing your event.

Some of these add ons include:

• Events Vector Maps Template Addon: 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 Manager Add on: The Recurring Events manager addon enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
• 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 instead of a 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 post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
• Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon lets you override certain aspects of the plugin.
• Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Versions: This addon lets you include other users in your organization to help manage your events 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 others can 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 areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas 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 Addon: The Multi-Event registration addon gives your potential customers 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.
• Events Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template add on provides you with 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 custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
• 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 bookings, and accept payments from your website.

Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.

For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:

• Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Registration Software

Customer Feedback

Here are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:

”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe

”When you can get a company to expend more money switching systems just to use your plugin…you’ve really accomplished something.” David, House of Prayer

”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan

Plugin Tips

Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, event planner, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.

After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, go through the user forum for useful ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management process or improve the experience of your registrants.

Plugin Support

Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive technical support, as so many of its end-users attest:

”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe

Event Espresso provides amazing support that includes access to support forums, 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.

In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to manage your events.

Plugin 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 need to consider using one of the premium plugin versions below:

• Personal Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
• Everything Licensing – This edition allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
• Developer Licensing – This license option enables you to configure Event Espresso on 5 sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.

Pricing details of 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 prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Registration Plugin For WordPress

Please Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.

Event Espresso – Additional Info

Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.

Look up the software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your specific situation, or to notify developers about problems 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 leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress users.

If you own a WordPress website and you currently run any event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.

For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso

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