Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training courses, non-profit fund-raisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a complex process. You may be required to co-ordinate scheduling, event dates, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event registrants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily reproduce previous events, give event managers more control, create a better client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Management & Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily set up an event and start receiving registrations in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software 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 the benefits and features of using this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing online presence into an automated and fully featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for attendees to enroll by themselves.
Letting your clients to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you invest more of your resources on planning a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy add-ons only when you need new features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event sign-ups any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can be kept entirely online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information you collect from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users via standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great built-in to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to use in no time.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily see your events and add these to their schedule with a calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides several ways to handle taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers who purchase tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and display venue data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Leverage promotional and discount codes to encourage people to make a decision now, or make your offerings more appealing for others. Also useful if you want to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of attendees and check in those who have attended.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of engagement to your event by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post feedback that can help others decide whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public commenting are configured via the WordPress commenting section.
- Draft Events. Draft events allow you to develop your event at your own pace without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your event until you are ready to publish it live on your website, or schedule your event to publish at a later time and date.
- Country Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings to be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for your events, you can easily set up as your default ticket for the next event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Register Multiple Event Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or people to order multiple tickets and different types of tickets at the same time. Event managers decide how many attendees are allowed to enrol in one session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Software Installation Upgrading. Event Espresso offers easy one-click upgrades to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your software installation compatible with new versions of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential clients who have not paid yet for their admission with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click. Your invoices will address pre-registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the amount owing, and include a link to the event, a payment url and a link where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different types of events such as free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different types of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to help your participants to locate what they’re looking for. You can display all events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are 100% compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorder the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the mission statement on their web site, Event Espresso’s goal 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 efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to further expand the functionality of your event management process.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display all scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays the categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name displays the events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon lets you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on is great 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 add-on allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at the 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add on: This add-on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon lets you auto-register attendees to a specific mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
”It’s been very comprehensive and covers exactly the aspects of event registration that we needed for our site plus some features that we didn’t even need but could still use in the future. Very Excellent Plugin!” Tristan Hall, Area 12:2 Youth Group
”When you can get a company to expend more money switching systems just to use your plugin…you’ve really accomplished something.” David, House of Prayer
”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
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, seminar planner, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the forums for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as many of its clients confirm:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
The Event Espresso software provides exceptional support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to manage your events.
Product Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you may want to consider downloading one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This edition allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This license lets you configure Event Espresso on five domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific use-case, or to notify developers about problems and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you own a WordPress web site and you plan to run events that involve managing dates and venues, enrolling attendees, and booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
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