Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as workshops, community classes, charity fund raisers, social events, or even a large-scale event such as a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage scheduling, availability, registration numbers, data administration, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce similar events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based web site, you can easily install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software enables you to easily set up multiple events and start accepting bookings in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as it has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to register by themselves.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more resources on planning a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third party provider. The cost is kept low through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase optional addons only if you need added features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new sign-ups outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can be conducted wholly online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Data. You own all the information acquired from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great built-in to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you set up as many types of tickets as you need and specify separate pricing options, number of tickets, and more.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using a calendar.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to administer taxes for an event and report tax fees to customers who purchase tickets. You can administer taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s details for any additional registrants.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for the system-default ticket.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track all attendees.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event participants and check in those who have attended.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can register for your events.
- RSS Event Feeds. Keep your site readers updated about your events, drive quality traffic and reach a wider number of potential customers with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WordPress. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create beautifully-designed event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing, and allows you to automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event page designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, attendee limits, print-ready tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for your events, you can set up as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert graphic images and format your event descriptions without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage each registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential clients who have not paid in full for their enrollment with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will address pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the balance they owe, and include links to the event information, a payment url and a url where they can download the invoice.
- 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 the page templates to display event information in your own custom way.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for most users, and also extremely robust and customizable for higher end users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 facilitates more complex extensions and customizations to the software.
- Control Box Management And Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, 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 company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the work of re-entering event data when creating new events.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a common set of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of these recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to browse for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your web site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users will have access to your special events. Members can also store personal data into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also look up event history and pay for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you involve other users in the event management process 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 WordPress users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing staff to help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas 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.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Add-on: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at the venue door. Customers 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 event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on gives permission for other software applications, web sites, mobile applications, 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 its plugin, including new add ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials that plugin users have posted 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
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, conference promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time researching the user forum for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your participants.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its clients confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides exceptional support with access to support forums, 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to run and manage your events.
Event Espresso Price
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This license allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you set up Event Espresso on five domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. 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 tools 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 situation, or to report issues and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you plan to run an event that involves managing dates and venues, booking attendees, and/or selling seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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