Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as seminars, community courses, charity fund raisers, networking events, or even a large-scale event like a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event bookings can be a complex process. You need to manage scheduling, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data collection and admin, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to attendees.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily reproduce similar events, give you more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can set up a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily schedule your event and start accepting registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. 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.
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many 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 current web site 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.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to enrol on their own.
Letting your clients to do the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more time on planning a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service provider. This is made possible through a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy add ons when you need extra functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new bookings 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process is completed entirely online, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data you collect from event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via standard features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great built-in to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration. With Event Espresso you can collect unique data using custom event registration forms on your web site to plan a great experience for your event participants.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your events and add these to their schedule with the calendar.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 provides several ways to manage taxes for an event and report tax fee components to customers who purchase tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the look and control settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for the system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes three useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or send in paper forms for manual registration later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and cannot attend your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your events page by allowing potential registrants to interact with you online via commenting and previous attendees to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for commenting are set up in the WP default commenting admin area.
- Optimized For The Most Recent WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Multi-Language Plugin. Event Espresso is currently available in 15+ languages, with more languages planned.
- Exportable Data. You can export all of your information gathered from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, devising marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- Register Multiple Attendees. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or a group to buy multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. Event managers specify how many attendees can register in a single registration by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, software programmers, designers, online marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can engage with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Member Management. Save time and keep your information 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.
- Transaction Reports. Quick-view event reporting provides you with data of all the registrations and transactions, enabling you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you have collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows developers to have more control and options over your content and how your information displays to your readers.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you output a log file with debugging data which can be useful for developers who are potential software errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the philosophy stated 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 objectives, the software has been built using 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:
- Live-filtering when searching for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to all tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Add ons
As well as an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow software users to significantly expand the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search for events that take place in 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 post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add on lets you override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart addon is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal 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 from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Add-on: The Ticketing add on adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. 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 Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add on provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you change the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also enables web developers to design their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track registrations, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied 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
”Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman, KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
”I’m so excited to fire Eventbrite! Event Espresso has an amazing WP plugin for event management. We’re testing it now & are very impressed! In a nutshell Event Espresso saves us money & does everything Eventbrite did before. :)” Dustin Nay
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, seminar promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, visit the user forum for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is 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 excellent end-user support, as many of its plugin users confirm:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
The software provides comprehensive support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you should consider purchasing one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a particular situation, or to notify developers about bugs and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of WP users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you plan to run any event that involves managing dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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