Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings, such as workshops, community courses, non-profit fund raisers, social functions, or even a large-scale event like a school concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex process. You will most likely be required to co-ordinate event schedules, date availability, registration numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based site, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and professional online event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily create multiple events and begin accepting online registrations in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing online presence into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating attendees to perform the registration process themselves.
Allowing your participants to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more resources on organizing a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy optional add ons only when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online sign-ups 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 share your information with their friends who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is completed entirely in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information you collect from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great built-in to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you collect unique information using custom event registration forms on your web pages to create a tailored experience for your clients.
- 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 several ways to handle taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers who purchase tickets. You can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s information for any added attendees.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price of the system-default ticket.
- Promotional Codes. Leverage promotion and discount codes to incentivize visitors to make a decision immediately, or make your events more appealing for others. This is also practical for helping to increase sales of events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of participants and check-in everyone who attends.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can register for your events.
- RSS Event Feeds. Keep your users updated about your events, bring in more visitors and expand your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date Version Of WordPress. The EE 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 Application. Event Espresso is is available in more than 15 languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Exportable Data. You can export all the information gathered from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for producing reports, devising marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Venue Manager. The venue manager in EE 4 allows details about venues to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your website to inform registrants of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays information like venue capacity, venue website, telephone number, venue address, Google map, etc. You can also list venue profiles on specific locations in your WP theme as well as on a venue listing page on your site where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a given venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso provides users with access to an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and your site visitors can tell others about your events using social media sharing buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different event types such as free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different kinds of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize these to help event registrants to locate what they’re looking for. You can list all the events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over the content of your events and how your information displays to prospects.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular website traffic whenever you need to perform maintenance on your site. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: 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 highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – reduces the work of re-entering event details when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to every ticket).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to further enhance the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events management addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can create as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name shows all events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template add on is capable of displaying your events in a range of visually exciting ways.
- 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 addon lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add-on adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at the venue door. Registrants 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on gives permission for other software applications, online tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Customers – Testimonials
Here are a few of the many testimonials that 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
”This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, workshop promoter, or event management consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, visit the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow or improve the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent user support, as many of its users 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 software provides comprehensive support with access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to run your events.
Product Cost
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticket Registration Software 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 author when you visit the website.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about issues and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing management software, used by thousands of WP website owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues, registering participants, or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager Plugin
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