Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings, such as seminars, community classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event such as a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event registrations is a complicated and time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, availability, registration numbers, data processing, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce recurring events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can easily set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin enables you to easily set up an event and begin receiving registrations literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated 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 emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event participants to enroll on their own.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you direct more energy on organizing a more unique event.
Full 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 clients to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a 3rd party service provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where Event Espresso users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase optional addons only if you need additional functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event signups 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process can remain wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Data. You own all the information obtained from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its users via standard features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that customers can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great built-in to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Custom Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can collect specific information using custom event registration forms on your web pages to prepare a tailored experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. You can customize your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and parts, as well as HTML and/or CSS.
- Tax Admin And Reporting. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to manage taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers who purchase tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse events details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the chance of spammers and bots making fake registrations with reCAPTCHA settings to confirm human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track all attendees.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event attendees and confirm everyone who has attended.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-list members pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add social interactivity to your events by allowing potential prospects to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post feedback that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public commenting are configured via the WordPress commenting settings.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page Web links leverage your Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly urls with topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your events.
- Multi-Language Plugin. Event Espresso is is available in 15+ languages, with more translations coming soon.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the data collected from event participants into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, planning new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Register Multiple Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows one person or people to buy multiple tickets and different types of tickets simultaneously. Event managers control how many attendees can enroll in one session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso provides users with access to an expert community of experienced event managers and plugin users. You can interact with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event registrants who have not paid in full for their enrollment with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will reference pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the balance owing, and include links to the event information, a payment link and a link where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Event Reports. Quick-view event reports provides you with data of all registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money has been collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows web developers to have more control and options over your events and how your information displays to your visitors.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy 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 objectives, the software has been built using a modular and highly effective 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 40+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a common set of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to further expand the capabilities of your event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Grid Template Addon: 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 instead.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with many datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to browse for events that take place in a certain date range.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Addon: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add on lets you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add on 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 offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing addon adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. People can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add-on 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 lets web developers design custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register attendees to a specific mailing list or group within MailChimp.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
Users – Feedback
Below are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin 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
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”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, Improve Photography
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, event planner, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the support forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great end-user support, as so many of its users attest:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides robust support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you should consider downloading one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This option 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.
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 Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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 software’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to report issues and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of WP site owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run an event that involves managing dates, times and venues, enrolling participants, and/or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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