Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group classes, non-profit fundraisers, social functions, or even a large-scale event like a school concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a time-consuming process. You may be required to manage calendar schedules, event dates, participant numbers, data collection and admin, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can easily set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily create your event and start accepting registrations literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can employ various 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 bookings with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as the plugin is being rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages 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 or blog into an automated and fully featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even 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 literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to enrol on their own.
Allowing your participants to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more energy on creating a memorable event.
Complete 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 attendees to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible by using a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase optional addons only if you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event bookings 24 hrs a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features and addons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process can be kept entirely in digital form, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information you obtain from event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users through standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of features to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to use in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
- Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your events and add these to their schedule with a calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects so they can choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s information for any additional attendees.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the likelihood of spamming and bots creating false registrations on your web site with reCAPTCHA settings to validate human activity.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with three built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event participants at the door, or send in paper forms for manual processing later.
- No Ticket Events. You can promote events without requiring participants to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any form of event, not only when tickets are required.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and previous customers to post comments that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for commenting are set up using the WP commenting admin area.
- Works With The Most Up-To-Date WordPress Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and also lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event page designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, limits on attendees, print-ready tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for many of your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for all new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Register Multiple Event Participants. EE 4 allows one person or a group to buy multiple tickets and different types of tickets simultaneously. Event managers can control how many people are allowed to enrol in one registration by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage your customer’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and website visitors can help spread the word about your event using social sharing buttons.
- Event Reporting. Event reporting gives you information of all registrations and transactions, enabling you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue has been collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with WordPress.
- Control Box Management & Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reorder the user interface to suit your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely removed from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility 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 goals, 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 provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes customer data in emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to further expand the functionality of your event management system.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: 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 Manager Addon: The Recurring Events manager addon lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays the categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name shows all events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This add on lets you involve other staff in the event management process and give new users the ability 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 capabilities, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain parts of your WP 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 your potential attendees the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their cart. With the Multi-Event Registration addon, 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 Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template addon gives event managers an easy-to-use system that lets you modify the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also allows web developers to build custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon lets you automatically register attendees to a particular autoresponder 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.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Below are just some of the many great testimonials that customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, show planner, or event consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, go through the forums for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your registrants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its satisfied plugin clients confirm:
”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
Event Espresso provides amazing support with 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 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to run your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you will want to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This lets you set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on five domains. Cost 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 depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. 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 for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to report problems and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that require managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, and/or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration System For WordPress
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