Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need managing registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, corporate functions, or even a big event like a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complex process. You may need to manage calendar schedules, dates, registration numbers, data collection and storage, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event attendees.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce repeat events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticketing Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily create an event and begin receiving online bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits 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 existing online presence into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to enrol by themselves.
Letting your customers to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more resources on organizing a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a 3rd-party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase optional add-ons when you need added functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event sign-ups outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with friends who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process remains entirely online, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information collected from event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that users can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from a single event.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Configure automated booking and payment notification emails to communicate with event clients.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments prior to running your events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse contact information throughout other areas of your site.
- 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 comes with three detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of participants and check in everyone who has attended.
- Ticketless Events. List events without the requirement for participants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all forms of events, not only when tickets are for sale.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of social sharing to your event page by encouraging potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and past participants to post feedback that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public comments are specified in the WordPress commenting admin area.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build an event over time without displaying it live on your site. You can work on your events until you are ready to publish it on your website, or schedule your event to publish at a later time and date.
- Country Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings to be used for events, such as currency name, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Exportable Information. You can output all of your information gathered from event customers into Excel or CSV format for creating reports, planning marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Multiple Event Participant. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or people to register multiple participants simultaneously. You control how many attendees are able to enrol in a single registration session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you network with a community of experienced event managers, developers, web designers, web marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can interact 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 attendees and your site visitors can help increase exposure for your event using social media sharing buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple types of events like free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different kinds of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for event registrants to find what they’re searching for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make the events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for basic users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 enables more complex developments and customizations to the software.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you create a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for developers who are troubleshooting.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the mission statement on their web site, 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 mission, the company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – limits the need to re-enter event data when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Add ons
In addition to an incredible number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to further expand the functionality of the event management process.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events management add on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can add as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of these recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to search for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that allow you to bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add on is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives potential customers the ability to book 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 Multi-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.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template addon provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you edit the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also lets web developers design custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software add-on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”I’m using it on multiple sites and enjoying it. It’s simple and as others have stated… fast service and real help.” Arlen Nagata
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, event promoter, or event professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, search the user forum for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management process and enhance the experience of your customers.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as so many of its satisfied plugin clients 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 plugin provides exceptional support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to 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 license option lets you run Event Espresso on five domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current 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 Information
Event Espresso regularly adds 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.
Use the plugin’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about issues and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run an event that requires managing dates and venues, booking attendees, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
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