Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as seminars, group courses, charity fund-raisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event like a festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complex and time-consuming process. You will probably need to manage calendar schedules, dates, participant numbers, data processing and storage, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give you more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered web site, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin lets you easily create multiple events and begin accepting bookings in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online registration 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.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the software is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to perform the registration themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you invest more attention on creating a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd party provider. The cost is kept low through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add ons only when you need new features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event sign-ups outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process can be completed entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information you collect from your event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that users can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great features to web site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event Designs. You can customize your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and elements, plus HTML or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with payment gateways, enabling you to collect money prior to running events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and display events information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly by pre-configuring default prices.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track your participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of registrants and check in everyone who attends.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can register for your events.
- Private Comments On Contacts. Keep comments about contacts on their profile and how you’ve helped your contacts. Private notes allows you to keep records of when event attendees contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have assisted them.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword-rich URLs take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links with topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you drive more traffic to your website.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to be used throughout the software and your WordPress themes. Organization information include: company name, address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email, phone number, tax number, business logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Exportable Information. You can output all of your information gathered from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for producing reports, devising marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Register Multiple Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or a group to book multiple participants at once. You specify how many people are allowed to enrol in a single booking session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Upgrades. Event Espresso offers easy 1-click plugin installation upgrading to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your software installation compatible with new versions of WordPress.
- Staff Management. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Accurate Participant Management. You control your participants’ records; who has registered, which event they have booked and what amount they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of attendees to a spreadsheet for additional uses, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your clients individually or collectively.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for general users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 enables more complex enhancements and customizations to the application.
- Control Box Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reconfigure the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from the page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their website, 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 that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes registrant data in notification emails and email newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add ons
As well as a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow plugin users to further expand the functionality of your event management process.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display all upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events manager addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can schedule as many events in advance as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template shows the categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name displays all events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- EE4 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.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on allows you to take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users will have access to your special events. Members can also store personal data into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Users can also look up event history and pay for events.
- 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 ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add-on lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives your 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 View Template Addon: The Events Table Template addon provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to 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 developers build their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a source template.
- JSON API Add on: The Event Espresso JSON API addon gives permission for other applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have written 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
”This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
”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, show promoter, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the forums for tips and practical ways to improve your event management workflow and improve the experience of your event registrants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its clients attest:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
Event Espresso provides robust support with access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to run your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you need to consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This edition enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to report errors and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of companies.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you plan to run events that involve managing dates and venues, booking participants, and/or selling seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management Software
***