Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling registrations, such as workshops, community classes, charity fund-raisers, social events, or even a big event such as a music show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complex process. You have to manage calendar schedules, date availability, attendee numbers, data collection and storage, collecting payments and invoicing, 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 a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily schedule your event and begin accepting registrations in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution 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 facilitating event attendees to perform the registration themselves.
Letting your participants to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you invest more resources on creating a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a third-party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase optional addons only when you need additional functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process is performed wholly in digital form, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Information. You own all the data you acquire from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great features to website owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to use in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure multiple ticket types and set unique pricing options, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- Event Calendar. Participants can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with several payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments before running the events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration information for any additional participants.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for the system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 provides 3 useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of participants and check-in everyone who has attended.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event has reached capacity. You can also specify that wait-list members pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Automatically update blog readers, bring in more visitors and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build an event page over time without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your event until you are ready to publish it to your site, or schedule your event to publish at a later time and date.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also allows you to automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event page designs, payment processing, list waiting, limits on attendees, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for most of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for any new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Profiles. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 lets details about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform users of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you reuse venue details such as venue capacity, venue web address, phone number, physical and/or virtual location, Google map, etc. You can also list venue profiles in specific parts of your theme and on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a particular venue.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you interact with an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can network with other Event Espresso users via their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Management. Save time and keep your business organized by reusing staff member 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.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different types of events like free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different types of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize these to make it easier for event registrants to locate what they’re looking for. You can list all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that interest your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for normal site visitors when website maintenance is required. You can still work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- 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 that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the work of re-entering event details when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to each ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the functionality of events.
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. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: This add on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you 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 your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website will have access to your special events. Members can also store personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Users can also view previous events and pay 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 for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing addon adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue door. Attendees 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add on: This add on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events in an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on lets you auto-register participants to a specified mailing list or group within MailChimp.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
Customers – Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that customers 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
”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
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, concert planner, or event professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, go through the forums for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your event customers.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as so many of its satisfied clients 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 incredible support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you may want to consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This lets you run Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This edition allows you to run Event Espresso on five sites. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing 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 amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues, booking attendees, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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