Do you currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community courses, charity fund raisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a community festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event sign-ups is a complex process. You have to co-ordinate scheduling, event dates, registration numbers, data administration, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give event managers more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered site, you can download and install an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily create an event and begin processing bookings literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing tools.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been redeveloped 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 price. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of using this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event attendees to enrol on their own.
Allowing your clients to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more resources on creating a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons when you need extra functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new registrations 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can be conducted entirely in digital form, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data acquired from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users through standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that customers can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- Customized Confirmation Emails. Easily configure customized automated booking and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with your clients.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with several payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments prior to running events.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary registrant’s information for any added attendees.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the default ticket price of your system-default ticket.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up door registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event attendees and confirm those who have attended.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached maximum capacity. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-listed members pre-pay if you plan to expand capacity for your event.
- RSS Event Feeds. Automatically update your site visitors, bring in more visitors and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to be used throughout Event Espresso and your WordPress themes. Your organization data include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email address, phone, VAT/tax number, business logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Exportable Information. You can output all the information gathered from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, devising new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add images and write and edit your content without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any WP post or page.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso provides users with access to an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and keep your business 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 Attendee Manager. You control your participants’ records; who has registered, which event they have registered for and how much they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of attendees to a CSV file for additional reports, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your attendees individually or all at once.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over the content of your events and how your information displays to site visitors.
- Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely removed from your workflow configuration.
- 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 mission, the company operates on 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 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to each ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Addons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these add ons 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 an event does not have a featured image available, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: This add-on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart addon is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect 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 add on lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration add-on 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 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 Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template add on provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to change the look and feel of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also allows developers to design their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add on enables other software applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Below are some of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”My clients have used Event Espresso for Transportation (Cadet Bus for leave), Parties (tailgates and brewery tours), and Horse-back riding lessons and camps. What a terrific plug-in and fantastic support from Seth!” Nina, Blue Iris Web Design
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
“Love the plugin, we only use it once a year for a race we have in February. This saved us tons of time in data entry. In addition, we had more runners register than any other year. We attribute that to the ease of registering online. Thanks for your work.” Ed, Friends of Oscar Scherer Park
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, conference promoter, or event consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, visit the forums for new ideas and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your attendees.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent user support, as so 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 Event Espresso plugin provides robust support including access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to run and manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on five domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration System 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 developer when you visit the site.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to notify developers about issues and share 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 preferred WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of WordPress website owners.
If you own a WordPress site and you intend to run events that involve managing dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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