Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need handling registrations, such as workshops, group courses, charity fundraisers, social functions, or even a large-scale event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complex process. You may need to manage scheduling, event dates, participant numbers, data collection and admin, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily reproduce recurring events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP allows you to easily create an event and start receiving bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing applications.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the plugin is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages 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 website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your clients to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more of your attention on planning a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a 3rd-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase optional add-ons only when you need new features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online bookings 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process is performed entirely in digital form, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information acquired from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers through built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of built-in to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up multiple ticket types and specify unique pricing options, number of tickets, etc.
- Event Calendar. Participants can easily see your events and add these to their schedule with the calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of options to handle taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers when purchasing tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s details for any additional registrants.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing for your default ticket.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track all attendees.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event attendees and check in everyone who attends.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can join a waiting list if your event has reached maximum attendance. Additionally, you can specify that wait-listed attendees pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Private Contact Comments. Keep notes about contacts on their profile and how you have interacted with them. Private notes lets you keep records of when event participants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you’ve assisted your contacts.
- Draft Events. Draft events allow you to develop your event page over multiple sessions without publishing it to your website. You can continue editing your events until you are ready to go live, or schedule to publish your event at a future time and date.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso has been translated into 15+ languages, and more translations are being added all the time.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for many of your events, you can easily set one of those tickets as your default ticket for any new events simply by checking a box.
- WordPress WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert graphic images and write your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any standard WP post.
- 1-Click Software Upgrading. Event Espresso provides simple 1-click software installation upgrading to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your software installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event customers who have not paid in full for their booking with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance they owe, and include a link to the event details, a payment link and a link to download a PDF invoice.
- Accurate Participant Management. You have control of your participants’ records; who has registered, which event they have booked and how much 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 Excel for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your registrants individually or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for most WP users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 enables more complex developments and customizations to the plugin.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular website visitors when you need to perform maintenance on your site. You can continue to work on your content during maintenance mode.
- 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 and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to all tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to significantly expand the functionality of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display all scheduled events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events manager addon lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of these recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template shows the categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name shows the events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: Add 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 Files Addon: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart addon is 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 add-on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential customers the ability to register for 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 shopping 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 add on provides you with an easy-to-use system that lets you edit 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 lets developers design their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing software add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track bookings, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Below are some of the many testimonials that satisfied users have written 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
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, conference planner, or event consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the user forum for new ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow or improve the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress 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 support, as so many of its plugin users 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 comprehensive 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you may want to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Pricing 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 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This edition allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details 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 amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
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 plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to report problems and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run any event that requires scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and/or selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
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