Do you currently run or plan to run events that require registrations, such as seminars, community courses, charity fundraisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event like an art exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You may have to manage scheduling, availability, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, 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 lower costs, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give you more control, create a better client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based website or blog, you can set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily schedule multiple events and start accepting bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize your event registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as it is being rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
Learn more here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to register themselves.
Allowing your attendees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you direct more attention on creating a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase addons when you need new functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event bookings 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with other people they know who may be interested.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process can remain wholly online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data you collect from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that customers can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great features to web site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
- Customizable Event Designs. Create a unique look and feel for your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s template options and parts, as well as HTML and CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospects so they can purchase the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the display of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for your default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of participants and check-in those who attend.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can and cannot participate in your events.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Keep your website visitors up-to-date about your events, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of potential customers with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword rich event page URLs leverage your Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly web links with relevant keywords enhance the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you get more potential customers to your site.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of all aspects of your event’s registration and ticketing, and lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event designs, payment processing, list waiting, attendee limits, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for your events, you can set up as your default ticket for all new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Venue Management. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 allows information about a venue to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your site to inform users of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes details like venue seating capacity, venue web address, telephone number, venue location details, Google map, etc. You can also list venues on different areas in your theme and on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Attendee Records. You can manage your registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Staff Management. Save time and keep your data organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Accurate Attendee Management. You control your attendees’ records; who has registered, for what event and how much they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an attendee list to Excel for additional reports, send custom payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your event attendees individually or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for most WordPress users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 makes possible more complex enhancements and customizations to the plugin.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for regular website traffic whenever you need to carry out maintenance on your website. You can still work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy 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 software has been built using a modular and highly efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including attendee data in confirmation emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to every ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as a very large number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to further expand the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Grid Template Addon: 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, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can add as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search for events that occur within a certain date range.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add-on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website will have access to your special events. Members can also input personal information into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also look up past events and pay for events.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart addon is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add on adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. 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. Registrants can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events using an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add on allows other software applications, web tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Below are just some of the testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
”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
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, conference promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time going through the forums for useful ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event registrants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great end-user support, as many of its end-users confirm:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
The plugin provides great support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you should consider purchasing one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This license option enables you to install Event Espresso on one site 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 domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Registration Plugin For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to notify developers about errors and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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