Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require handling registrations, such as workshops, training courses, non-profit fundraisers, marketing events, 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?
Managing event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You have to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and seating allocations, attendee numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are a number of advantages 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 recurring events, give event managers more control, create a better customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website, you can download and install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily schedule multiple events and begin accepting online bookings literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize event registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being revamped using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using 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 site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your clients to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more of your time on planning a better event.
More 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 benefits and advantages include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a 3rd-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy add-ons only if you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event registrations 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with others who may be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process is performed wholly online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data acquired from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to end-users via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great built-in to site owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many different types of tickets as you need and specify different prices, number of tickets, etc.
- Custom Confirmation Emails. Easily set up automatic booking and payment notification emails to communicate with your participants.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with payment gateways, enabling you to collect registration payments before running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows event managers to customize the settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for your system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants when they show up, or sending in paper forms for manual processing later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can attend your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential customers to interact with you online via commenting and previous participants to post reviews that can help others consider whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for comments are configured via the WordPress commenting admin area.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page Web links leverage your WordPress site’s Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly web links with topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your events and improves your search rankings, helping you get more visitors to your site.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. Your organization data include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email address, telephone, VAT/tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Bulk Import Events. EE 4 provides an advanced importing capability that lets you easily import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add images and stylize your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any other WP post.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, developers, designers, marketers and business owners who also use the plugin. You can engage 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 Member Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in an event description.
- Attendee Reports. Event reporting provides you with information of the registrations and transactions, enabling you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and how much money you’ve collected.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Metabox Management & Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 software has been built using a modular and highly 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 40+ additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – limits the work of re-entering event data when adding new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to further enhance the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- EE4 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 Drop-down Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to browse for events that occur within a certain date range.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add-on: This add-on adds 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 Template Add-on: The Custom Template addon lets you display your event lists in a variety of visually exciting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Versions: This add on lets you involve other staff in the event management process and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and give them different permissions with different privileges, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration addon gives potential customers the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their cart. With the Multi-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.
- Events Calendar Add on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API addon enables other applications, websites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
Plugin Users – Feedback
Below are some of the many testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”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 gym owner, teacher, concert promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time visiting the user forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your attendees.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its customers attest:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
The Event Espresso plugin provides comprehensive support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to manage your events.
Product License Pricing
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 will want to consider downloading one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This lets you set up Event Espresso on one site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you set up Event Espresso on five sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration System For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to notify developers about problems and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of companies.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you intend to run events that involve managing dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, and/or booking 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 – Event Management And Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
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