Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as workshops, group courses, non-profit fundraisers, marketing functions, or even a large-scale event like a festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event bookings can be a complex process. You may have to co-ordinate calendar schedules, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for repeat events, give event managers more control, create a better client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based web site, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily create your event and begin accepting registrations in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing tools.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports 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 has been revamped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for participants to enroll on their own.
Letting your customers to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more of your resources on planning a more unique 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 users to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy add ons when you need added functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event signups any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process can remain entirely in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data you obtain from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure multiple ticket types and specify prices, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- Event Calendar. Attendees can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using a WordPress calendar.
- Tax Admin & Reporting Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of options to administer taxes for your event and report tax fee components to registrants who purchase tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display contact details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the likelihood of spamming and robots creating fake registrations with reCAPTCHA tools to confirm human activity.
- Discount & Promotional Codes. Offer promotion and multiple discount codes to encourage visitors to register now, or simply make your offers more affordable for others. Also useful if you want to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 provides you with the tools to know who your customers are and how they’ve done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is full. You can also specify that waiting list members pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for the event.
- Event RSS Feeds. Keep your users up-to-date about your events, drive quality traffic and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Latest Version Of WP. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso is currently available in more than 15 languages, with more translations coming soon.
- Exportable Information. You can export all of your data gathered from event participants into Excel or CSV format for producing reports, devising new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add graphic images and format your event descriptions without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any standard WP post or page.
- 1-Click Software Updating. Event Espresso offers simple 1-click upgrades to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Staff Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in an event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple types of events such as free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different types of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to help your attendees to find what they’re looking for. You can display all events in a category on an event category page, make the events searchable by category, and colour-code your 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 existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular site traffic when website maintenance is required. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s objective 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 as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes customer data in notification emails and newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to significantly expand the functionality of events.
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 four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events manager addon lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template shows event categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name displays the events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add on lets you bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart addon is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add-on allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential customers the ability to book 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 shopping 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.
- EE4 Events Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template add-on gives event managers an easy-to-use system that allows you to change the look and feel 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 source template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your web site.
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
Here are a few of the testimonials that customers have written about Event Espresso:
”My clients have used Event Espresso for Transportation (Cadet Bus for leave), Parties (tailgates and brewery tours), and Horse-back riding lessons and camps. What a terrific plug-in and fantastic support from Seth!” Nina, Blue Iris Web Design
”When you can get a company to expend more money switching systems just to use your plugin…you’ve really accomplished something.” David, House of Prayer
”I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, show promoter, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the user forum for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its satisfied users attest:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to manage your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This allows you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This license lets you install Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
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.
Use the plugin’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to report problems and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of users.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you currently run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticket Registration Software
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