Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings, such as seminars, training classes, charity fund raisers, corporate events, or even a big event such as a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings can be a time-consuming process. You need to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data collection, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give you more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based website, you can easily set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create an event and begin accepting bookings literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been redeveloped using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and 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 chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event attendees to enroll on their own.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you invest more attention on delivering a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software 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 requirements of most users) and then purchase add-ons only if you need added features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online registrations 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process remains wholly in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data acquired from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of features to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event Designs. You can customize your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and components, and HTML and/or CSS.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to handle taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fees to registrants who purchase tickets. You can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to configure the display of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the risk of spamming and robots creating fake registrations on your website by using reCAPTCHA tools that provide human authentication.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track all attendees.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you understand who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can join a waiting list if your event is full. You can also make it a requirement wait-list attendees pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Private Contact Commenting. Record observations about a contact on their profile. Private notes helps you keep records of when users contacted you, your internal comments, and how you’ve helped your contacts.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you develop an event over multiple work sessions without publishing it to your site. You can work on your event until you are ready to go live, or schedule to publish your event pages at a later time and date.
- Country Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings that will be used when hosting events, including currency, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, and so on.
- Bulk Import Events. EE 4 provides an advanced importing feature that allows you to easily import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import details about events, datetimes, ticketing details, pricing, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily insert graphic images and create your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any other WordPress post or page.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, programmers, designers, marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can engage with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event attendees who have not made payment for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the balance they owe, and include a link to the event information, a payment url and a url to download the invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different types of events such as free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different types of courses, etc. you can categorize them to help your registrants to find what they’re looking for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make the events searchable by category, and color-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, as well as suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows you to have more control and options over your content and how the information displays to your prospects.
- Metabox Management And 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 removed from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 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 includes over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including participant data in confirmation emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an incredible range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to further enhance the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Grid Template Addon: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If an event does not have a featured image, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events management add on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can add as many future events as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to browse for events that occur within a certain date range.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files add on allows you to override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Editions: This addon lets you include your staff in the event management process 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 capabilities, so others can help you manage your events or 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 parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Add-on: The Ticketing add-on adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds 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 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template addon gives event managers a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you edit 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 build custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- JSON API Add on: The Event Espresso JSON API add-on permits other applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Customers – Testimonials
Below are just some of the many testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”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
”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
”I’m using it on multiple sites and enjoying it. It’s simple and as others have stated… fast service and real help.” Arlen Nagata
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, show planner, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time researching the user forum for useful ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its clients confirm:
”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
The plugin provides robust support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development support and even a monthly VIP member pass giving 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 proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This lets you configure Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This option allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This option enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration System For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific use-case, or to notify developers about problems and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of companies.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling attendees, and/or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticket Registration System
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