Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group classes, non-profit fundraisers, corporate functions, or even a large-scale event such as a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You may be required to manage calendar schedules, dates, registration numbers, data collection and admin, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event participants.
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 reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a better customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress lets you easily create your event and begin processing registrations in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event registrations 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 a number of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being revamped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Plugin 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
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site 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.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event attendees to enroll on their own.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you invest more of your time on planning a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible through a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase addons when you need extra features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new bookings 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process can be completed entirely in digital form, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information you acquire from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers via built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that customers can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you configure as many types of tickets as you need and specify separate pricing options, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. You can customize your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and parts, and HTML and/or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with several payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments prior to running events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and display events details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly with pre-configured default prices.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Leverage promotion and discount codes to encourage visitors to make a buying decision immediately, or simply make your offerings more attractive for price-sensitive customers. Also useful for helping to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event attendees and confirm everyone who has attended.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t participate in your events.
- Private Contact Notes. Keep observations about users on their profile. Private commenting helps you keep a record of when event participants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have interacted with your contacts.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your WordPress Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” urls that include topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your events and improves your search rankings, helping you drive more traffic to your website.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be set up in more than 15 languages, with more translations coming soon.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the data collected from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for creating reports, planning marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- WordPress WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add graphic images and stylize your content without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any typical WordPress post or page.
- 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, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Management. Save time and stay 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.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can also customize your page templates to display event information in your own custom way.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to create a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers who are diagnosing application problems.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: 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 software has been built using a modular and efficient model 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:
- Duplicating events – limits 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.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to significantly expand the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Grid Template Add on: 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, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add-on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can create as many events in advance as you like. Event Espresso will then 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 be customized to show the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- 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.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template add-on is capable of displaying your events in a range of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you involve other users in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential customers the ability to register for 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 shopping cart. With the Multiple 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 Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
Testimonials
Here are 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
”I recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, conference planner, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the forums for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive user support, as many of its satisfied plugin customers attest:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
The plugin provides great support including access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to run and manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This option enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. 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. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license option enables you to run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 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 specials being offered. Currently, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration System For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. 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 pages for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about errors and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run any event that requires managing dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
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