Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as workshops, training classes, non-profit fund-raisers, marketing functions, 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 register to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You may have to manage scheduling, event dates, participant numbers, data collection and admin, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event participants.
There are lots 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 duplicate similar events, give event managers more control, create a better user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered site, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily schedule multiple events and start processing online registrations in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize event registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up 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 your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform 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 learn 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 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 existing website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to enrol themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your energy on creating a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a 3rd party provider. The cost is kept low through a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy addons only if you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event signups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing addons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with others who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can remain entirely in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data you acquire from event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that customers can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great built-in to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to use in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you set up as many types of tickets as you need and set different prices, number of tickets, and more.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Easily set up automatic registration and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event participants.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospective registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and display attendee details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the chance of spamming and bots creating bogus registrations by using reCAPTCHA tools to provide human validation.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event participants and confirm those who attend.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached maximum attendance. You can also specify that wait-list members pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Private Notes On Contacts. Keep notes about contacts on their profile and how you have interacted with your customers. Private notes allows you to keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have assisted your contacts.
- Keyword Rich Event Page Web Links. Keyword-rich event page Web links leverage your WP Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly urls with relevant keywords add to the context of your content and improves your search rankings, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your site.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is currently available in 15+ languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for most of your events, you can easily set one of those tickets as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- Multiple Attendee Registration. EE 4 allows a single person or an organization to enroll multiple attendees at once. You can control how many attendees are able to register in a single registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Records. Manage your attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Team Member Management. Save time and stay 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 an event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different event types such as free and paid, conference speakers and mastermind sessions, different types of courses, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your participants to locate what they’re looking for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make 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 other events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows you to have more control and options over the content of your event page and how the information displays to readers.
- Metabox Management & Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to suit your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: 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 goals, the company operates on a modular and effective 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 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in emails and newsletters.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow software users to significantly enhance the capabilities of the event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- EE4 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 an event does not have a featured image, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events management add-on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to browse for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on allows you to take 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 your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site can have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also view event history and pay for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This add-on lets you include others in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing others 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 parts of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add on.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives potential customers the ability to register for 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 cart. With the Multiple 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.
- Events Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add-on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Here are some of the many testimonials that users 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
”I searched long and hard to find something that would serve my needs. This is, by far, the most complete and comprehensive solution I have found.” Bill Hepper, We Teach Live
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, festival promoter, or event consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the user forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your customers.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its satisfied plugin clients confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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 an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to run your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you should consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This lets you configure Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license lets you set up 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 lets you configure Event Espresso on five domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to notify developers about problems and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of WP users.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you currently run events that require managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and booking tickets, 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 Manager And Registration Software
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