Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as seminars, training classes, non-profit fund raisers, marketing conferences, or even a big event like an art exhibition, 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 complex process. You may be required to co-ordinate calendar schedules, available dates and seating, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate repeat events, give you more control, create a better user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website, you can download and install an inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily schedule multiple events and start receiving bookings in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as it is being rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations and signups manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for attendees to enrol on their own.
Letting your clients to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you spend more of your attention on planning a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a third-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase optional addons only if you need extra features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online signups outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process remains wholly in digital form, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data obtained from your event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up multiple ticket types and specify prices, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects so they can choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WP theme and reuse events information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events fast by pre-configuring default ticket pricing.
- Discount & Promotional Codes. Leverage promotional and discount codes to incentivize people to make a decision now, or simply make your offerings more appealing for others. This is also practical if you want to increase sales of events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event registrants and check-in everyone who has attended.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can join a waiting list if your event is sold out. You can also make it a requirement wait-listed members pre-pay if you plan to expand numbers for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential registrants to ask questions about your event and previous attendees to post feedback that can help others consider whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WP built-in commenting system.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events enable you to develop your event in your own time-frame without publishing it to your website. You can continue editing your events until you are ready to publish it live to your website, or schedule to publish your event at a later date and time.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to be used throughout Event Espresso and your WP themes. Your organization information include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, phone, tax number, your logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Upload Events. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that allows you to upload a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload details about events, datetimes, ticketing details, pricing, registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Event Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows one person or people to book multiple participants at once. Event managers specify how many people can enrol in a single session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Attendee Records. You can manage your attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their information organized and easily accessible.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and website visitors can tell others about your event using social media sharing buttons.
- Transaction Reporting. Event reports gives you data of all of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 enables more complex extensions and customizations to the plugin.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for regular site visitors when you need to perform maintenance on your site. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their web site, Event Espresso’s aim 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 that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as a very large number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these addons 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 the event does not have a featured image, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays event categories in a simple list. Clicking a category name displays all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add on: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add on allows you to bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Versions: This add on lets you involve other users in the event management process and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers permission 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, so others can help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing add on adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at the door. People 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.
- Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template addon gives you an easy-to-use system that lets you 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 enables developers to design their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- JSON API Addon: The new Event Espresso JSON API add on permits other applications, online tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Here are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted 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
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”I’m so excited to fire Eventbrite! Event Espresso has an amazing WP plugin for event management. We’re testing it now & are very impressed! In a nutshell Event Espresso saves us money & does everything Eventbrite did before. :)” Dustin Nay
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, event promoter, or event management professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, search the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as so many of its satisfied customers confirm:
”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
Event Espresso provides incredible support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development support and even a monthly VIP member pass that gives 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 manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider using one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license option allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This license option allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
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 online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to report problems and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, or selling seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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