Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings, such as workshops, group classes, charity fund raisers, social functions, or even a big event like an arts & crafts, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event registrations is a time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage event schedules, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data processing and storage, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event attendees.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce similar events, give you more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can download and install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily schedule an event and begin processing bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been revamped using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more:
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 And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing 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 virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event participants to perform the registration themselves.
Allowing your clients to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more attention on organizing a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy optional addons only if you need new features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite their friends who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process remains entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data obtained from your event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Easily set up automated registration and payment notification email messages to communicate with event registrants.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of ways to manage taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fee components to registrants who purchase tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WP theme and reuse venue details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the chance of spamming and bot software programs making false registrations on your web site by using reCAPTCHA option that provide human validation.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event participants at the door, or sending in paper registration forms for manual registration later.
- No Ticket Events. Set up events without the requirement for attendees to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for all types of events, not just when tickets are for sale.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential prospects to interact with you online via commenting and previous customers to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for comments are set up in the WP commenting section.
- Keyword-Rich Page URLs. Keyword rich event page Web links take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly web links with relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and is favored by search engines, helping you get a more targeted audience to your events.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. Your organization data include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, email address, telephone number, tax number, business logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Exportable Data. You can export all of your information collected from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for creating reports, devising new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WordPress Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add images and create your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any typical WP post or page.
- Automatic Updating. Event Espresso provides simple one-click upgrades to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and website visitors can tell others about your event using social media share buttons.
- Attendee Reports. Quick-view event reporting gives you information of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money has been collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are fully compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular website visitors when website maintenance is needed. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And 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 objectives, the company operates on a modular and efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the work of re-entering event information when adding new events.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a common set of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
In addition to a very large array of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these addons include:
- 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 the event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on is included free with any 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 exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add on is 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 directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add on adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. 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 barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add on gives you a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to modify 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 templates provided as a source template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing software add on, you can easily 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: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Here are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso rocks! I use it for my dance class registrations. Unlike most dance studios where people have to call or send an email in advance, Event Espresso puts a registration form right there in front of the user and allows me to collect valuable information from the user during the registration process with custom questions such as “Do you have previous dance experience?” or “How did you hear about us?”. It also gives my site a professional look and feel.” Ral, Ral’eau Salsa Dance Company
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, show promoter, or event management consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the support forum for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management process or improve the experience of your event registrants.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its end-users attest:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides amazing support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 count on to manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to install 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 Edition – This lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This edition allows you to set up Event Espresso on five domains. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report errors and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you currently run events that require managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
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