Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community courses, charity fundraisers, social events, or even a large-scale event like an arts & crafts, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event sign-ups is a time-consuming process. You will most likely be required to manage event schedules, dates, registration numbers, data collection and admin, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for previously-run events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based digital presence, you can easily install an inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily set up an event and start receiving online registrations in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up 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 your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim 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 of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into an automated and fully featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing 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 doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to enrol by themselves.
Letting your customers to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more of your time on creating a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept low by using a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy optional addons only if you need added features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event registrations outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process is conducted wholly in digital form, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data collected from your event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that customers can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure multiple ticket types and specify different pricing options, maximum number of tickets, etc.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Registrants can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using a calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospective registrants and let them purchase the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and display contact information throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the likelihood of spamming and robots making bogus registrations with reCAPTCHA tools that provide human authentication.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track all attendees.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or send in paper forms for manual inputting later.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is full. Additionally, you can make it a requirement waiting list attendees pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- RSS Feeds. Automatically update customers, drive quality traffic and reach a wider number of prospects with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft Events. Draft events enable you to develop an event page in your own time-frame without displaying it live on your site. You can continue developing your event until you are ready to go live, or schedule your event pages to publish at a later date and time.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the data collected from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, planning marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WP WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add images and format your event descriptions without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you interact with an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can network with other Event Espresso users via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event customers who have not paid yet for their registration with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will address pre-registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the balance owing, and include a link to the event details, a payment url and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events such as free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different kinds of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize these to make it easier for your participants to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make the events searchable by category, and colour-code 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.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for general WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 enables more complex enhancements and customizations to the plugin.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to generate a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for web developers who are troubleshooting.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s goal 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 company operates on a modular and effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to each ticket).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as an amazing array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display your upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events management add-on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can add as many events in advance as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add-on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can also be customized to show the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media add-on 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 lets you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Editions: This addon lets you include other staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission 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 allow 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 a user does not have access to certain sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain parts 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 addon.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: 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 the venue 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 Calendar Addon: This add-on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories using a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add on: The Event Espresso JSON API add-on gives permission for other applications, web sites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are some of the many testimonials that customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Thanks to you and the rest of the team for Event Espresso – Every time I get a signup for an event, I think about how much time EE saves me – and signups happen while I’m out on the water teaching kayaking, not answering the phone. :-)” Tue Brems Olesen, OnAdventure
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”Thank you, we just did 2 sell out seminars of 50 attendees in 48 hours using Event Espresso and it was awesome. My wife was able to pick up on the processing backend with ease. You have done a great job on getting this system together – very simple, clear and well laid out With powerful functionality. I am so glad I dumped the old booking application we had and gave Event Espresso a go. Just wanted to say thanks, and thanks for the very patient, friendly and speedy assistance in helping me to get it all set up at the start. Many thanks to you and your team. A grateful customer.” Nicholas de Castella, Emotional Intelligence Trainings
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, festival promoter, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the forums for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management process and improve the experience of your attendees.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its users confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides robust support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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 an established team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to run your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you should consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This license option lets you run Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price 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 the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a particular situation, or to report issues and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run an event that involves managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticketing Registration Plugin
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