Do you currently run or plan to run events that need managing registrations, such as workshops, community classes, non-profit fundraisers, networking conferences, or even a large-scale event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate event schedules, availability, attendee numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate repeat events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered site, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software allows you to easily create multiple events and begin receiving online registrations literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
More info:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution 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 enabling event attendees to register on their own.
Letting your enrollees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you spend more energy on delivering a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a 3rd-party service provider. The cost is kept low through a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add ons when you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online registrations 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can remain wholly in digital form, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data you obtain from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers through built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to WP users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Customized Event Registration Forms. With Event Espresso you can collect unique information using a custom event registration form on your web site to plan a tailored experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event Designs. Match your website’s design for your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and components, as well as HTML or CSS.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of options to administer taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fee components to registrants who purchase tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display contact details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily with pre-configured default ticket pricing.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or send in paper-based forms for manual inputting later.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached maximum capacity. You can also specify that waiting list attendees pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential registrants to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post feedback that can help others choose whether or not to register. Moderation settings for comments are configured via the WordPress built-in commenting section.
- Works With The Most Up-To-Date WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create beautifully-designed event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing, and also lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event page designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, attendee limits, printable tickets and more.
- Exportable Data. You can export all the information gathered from event participants into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, devising marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily insert photos and compose and edit your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any typical WordPress post.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you engage with a community of experienced event managers, software programmers, web designers, web marketers and business owners who also use the plugin. You can engage with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your website visitors can spread the word about your events using social media share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different types of events such as free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different types of courses, etc. you can categorize them to help event participants to locate what they’re searching for. You can list all the events in a category on an event category page, make the events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that interest your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to reorder the user interface to match your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s aim 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 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 over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in notification emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to further expand the capabilities of your 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 your upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays the events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Addon: This add on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template add on is capable of displaying your events in a range of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Editions: This add on lets you include staff 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 WordPress users roles and give them different permissions with different privileges, so your staff can help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives potential attendees 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 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.
- Events Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template addon gives you an 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 build their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register participants to a specific mailing list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
Plugin Users – Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”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
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, event promoter, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, search the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management workflow and improve the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other 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 great end-user support, as so many of its end-users attest:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to run your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This edition allows you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one 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. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about errors and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run any event that requires scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, and/or selling seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Management & Registration Software For WordPress
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