Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community classes, charity fund-raisers, social events, or even a large-scale event such as a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event registrations is a complex process. You have to co-ordinate event schedules, event dates, registration numbers, data entry, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give you more control, improve 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 run a WordPress-powered web site, you can install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin lets you easily create your event and begin receiving online registrations in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize your event registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the software has been revamped using a different structure to enable future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually move completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations and signups manually.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to register by themselves.
Letting your clients to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you spend more of your time on organizing a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase optional add ons when you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event signups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing addons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process remains entirely in digital form, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information you obtain from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to end-users through built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that users can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great built-in to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create as many types of tickets as you want and set prices, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- Custom Confirmation Emails. Easily configure custom automatic booking and payment confirmation emails to communicate with event clients.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with several payment gateways, allowing you to collect money before running the events.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration details for any added participants.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing of your system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with three detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of attendees and check-in those who attend.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has become completely sold out. Additionally, you can make it a requirement waiting list registrants pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential registrants to ask questions about your event and previous customers to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public comments are set in the WP built-in commenting section.
- Keyword-Rich Event Page URLs. Keyword rich URLs take advantage of your WordPress site’s Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly permalinks with relevant keywords enhance the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you get more potential customers to your events.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is currently available in 15+ languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for many of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for any new events simply by checking a box.
- Multiple Attendee Bookings. EE 4 allows one person or a group to order multiple tickets and different ticket types at once. Event managers can control how many attendees are allowed to register in one registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Updating. Event Espresso offers easy one-click updates to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your software installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your site visitors can help increase exposure for your event using social sharing buttons.
- Accurate Participant Manager. You control your attendees’ records; who has registered, 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 an event attendee list to Excel for additional uses, send custom payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your registrants individually or collectively.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are fully compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely deleted from your page.
- 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 mission, the company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – streamlines the need to re-enter event data when adding new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a series of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as a very large array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance the functionality of your event management process.
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 the event does not have a featured image, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events management add on lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can add as many events in the future as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows categories as a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays all events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your website uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take full advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site can have access to your special events. Members can also add personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Users can also view event history and make payment for events.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add-on 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 addon lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing addon adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at venues. People 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 Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Customers – Feedback
Here are just some of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is so easy to use yet feature rich and stable. It is a cornerstone of our site and our success.” Fraser Barner, Speaker’s Lab
”I have been using Event Espresso to run my festival and have been very happy with how it has worked out. They have provided tremendous support and their iPhone app is amazing and easy to use. I suggest using it for your event.” Alex Grant, Byron Spirit Festival
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, conference planner, or event consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, search the user forum for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management process or improve the experience of your attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive customer support, as so many of its satisfied plugin customers confirm:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
Event Espresso provides exceptional support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license lets you install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This edition allows you to set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to report problems and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of companies.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that require managing dates and venues, enrolling attendees, or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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