Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as seminars, community classes, non-profit fundraisers, networking conferences, or even a big event such as a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complicated and time-consuming process. You have to manage calendar schedules, available dates and seating, participant numbers, data processing and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily reproduce similar events, give you more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based site, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily schedule multiple events and begin receiving bookings literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use a range 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 participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been 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 price. The developers aim to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing online presence into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to register by themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you spend more resources on creating a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add ons when you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event sign-ups outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite their friends who may be interested.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can remain wholly online, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data you collect from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that users can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to use in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you gather specific data using custom event registration forms on your web site to prepare a unique experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. Customize your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and components, as well as HTML or CSS.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to administer taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fee components to customers when purchasing tickets. You can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration information for any additional attendees.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily by pre-configuring default pricing.
- 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. you have the option of booking event attendees when they show up, or send in paper-based forms for manual inputting later.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event has reached maximum capacity. You can also make it a requirement wait-listed registrants pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- XML RSS Feeds. Keep your users updated about your events, bring in more visitors and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you build your event over time without displaying it live on your website. You can keep developing your events until you are ready to publish it live to your site, or schedule your event to publish at a later date and time.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. Your organization fields include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, phone number, tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Upload Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that lets you easily import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and import details about events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, custom registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows one person or a group to buy multiple tickets and different types of tickets simultaneously. You decide how many attendees are allowed to register in a single booking session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Attendee Profiles. Manage your customer’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential customers who have not fully paid for their registration with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will address registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the balance they owe, and include links to the event, a payment url and a link where they can download the invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of event types such as free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different kinds of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for event attendees to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that interest your existing customers.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are 100% compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Metabox Management & Organization. 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 meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the mission statement on their web site, 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 mission, the company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including attendee data in notification emails and updates.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a common set of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Addons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow software users to further expand the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display all upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with many datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: 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 Add-on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Editions: This add-on lets you include others in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the ability to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, so others can help you manage your events or the events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add on.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add on adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on gives you the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at the venue door. Customers can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This add on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories using a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you auto-register attendees to a chosen mailing list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the many testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”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, Improve Photography
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, conference planner, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time visiting the forums for useful ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your event registrants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as so many of its satisfied clients attest:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides robust support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you may want to consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license enables you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license option enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to run Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Information
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.
Look up the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about issues and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that involve managing dates and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and reserving seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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