Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings, such as workshops, training classes, non-profit fund-raisers, networking conferences, or even a big event such as an exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings can be a complex and time-consuming process. You will probably have to manage scheduling, dates, registration numbers, data entry, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily duplicate repeat events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be very costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered site, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional online event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticketing Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create multiple events and start accepting registrations literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the platform has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about 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 website:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event attendees to perform the sign-up process by themselves.
Letting your participants to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you concentrate more attention on delivering a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add-ons only when you need added functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new bookings outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process remains wholly online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information obtained from event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers through built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that customers can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- Customizable Event Designs. Customize your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s template options and elements, as well as HTML and CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with several payment gateways, enabling you to collect money before running the events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s information for any added participants.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the default ticket price of the system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes three built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees when they show up, or send in paper forms for manual registration later.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can join a waiting list if your event is full. Additionally, you can specify that wait-listed attendees pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your event pages by encouraging potential prospects to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for comments are specified using the WP commenting system.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events enable you to develop your event in your own timeframe without publishing it to your site. You can work on your event until you are ready to go live, or schedule to publish your event at a later date and time.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to display throughout the software and your front-end templates. Organization fields include: business name, address, city, state, country, zip code, email address, phone number, VAT/tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Exportable Data. You can output all of your data gathered from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for producing reports, implementing new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Multiple Event Participant. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or a group to book multiple attendees at the same time. Event managers control how many attendees are able to register in one session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can network with other Event Espresso users via their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and site visitors can tell others about your event using social share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different event types like free and paid, conference speakers and mastermind sessions, different kinds of courses, etc. you can categorize these to help event registrants to find what they’re looking for. You can list all events in a category on a custom event category page, make the events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that interest your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you output a log file with debugging data which can be useful for web developers who are troubleshooting.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, 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 and efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in emails and newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to further expand the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can schedule as many future events as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can also be customized to display the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site can have access to your special events. Members can also store personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also view past events and make payment for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Editions: This addon lets you involve others in the event management process and give new users the capacity 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 allow them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives your potential customers the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their cart. With the Multi-Event Registration addon, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events in the same checkout process.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add-on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add on: The Event Espresso JSON API addon allows other software applications, online tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Below are just some of the many testimonials that satisfied users have posted about Event Espresso:
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, festival planner, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time visiting the user forum for new ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as many of its customers confirm:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
The software provides great support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, premium 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to run and manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you should consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license option allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to remain 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 setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to report problems and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of businesses.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
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