Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as seminars, community courses, non-profit fund raisers, corporate functions, or even a big event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and seating, registration numbers, data entry, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily replicate previous events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily set up your event and begin processing online bookings in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 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 the benefits and features of using the 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 site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee 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 literally eliminating the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are facilitating attendees to enrol on their own.
Allowing your customers to do the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more time on creating a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy add ons only if you need extra functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new bookings outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and addons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite their friends who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can remain wholly online, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data you obtain from your event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to end-users through built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many different types of tickets as you need and set different pricing options, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- Customizable Event Designs. Match your web site’s look and feel for your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and components, plus HTML or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with several payment gateways, enabling you to collect booking fees before running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to customize the display settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 comes with three useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of attendees and check in everyone who attends.
- No-Ticket Events. Create events without the requirement for attendees to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all forms of events, not only those that need tickets.
- Private Contact Notes. Record observations about contacts on their profile. Private notes allows you to keep a record of when event attendees contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have interacted with your contacts.
- Draft Events. Draft events allow you to build an event page at your own pace without publishing it to your site. You can keep editing your events until you are ready to publish it to your site, or schedule your event pages to publish at a later time and date.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings to be used throughout Event Espresso, including currency name, currency signs, decimal characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the data gathered from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, devising new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Multiple Event Participant. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or an organization to book multiple attendees at once. You specify how many attendees can enroll in one registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Software Installation Upgrading. Event Espresso provides simple one-click updating to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your software installation compatible with new versions of WordPress.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your business organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Event Reporting. Event reporting gives you data of all of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and how much money has been collected.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for most WP users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 allows for more complex extensions and customizations to the software.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular website traffic when you need to make updates on your site. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: 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 objectives, the company operates on 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 over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an incredible number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow software users to further enhance the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events manager add on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can add as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of these 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 also be customized to show the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart addon is great 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 promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration addon gives potential attendees the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This add-on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories via an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API addon allows other applications, online tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Users – Feedback
Below are a few of the many testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Congratulations on an absolutely fantastic plugin. I’m really impressed with its functionality and add on features and will definitely upgrade my client’s production site to the premium version (when ready for launch) to incorporate all the features. As I have told another client “this plugin is the cat’s meow”.” Pete Mansel
”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
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, event planner, or event management consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow and improve the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress 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 great customer support, as many of its satisfied customers 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
The Event Espresso software provides exceptional support including access to support forums, in-depth 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This option allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This allows you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
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 website.
Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about bugs and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that require managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
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