Do you currently run or plan to run events that need managing registrations, such as seminars, group courses, charity fundraisers, corporate functions, or even a large-scale event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings can be a time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, dates, attendee numbers, data administration, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily create multiple events and begin accepting registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize event registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as it is being redeveloped 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 pricing. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based 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.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to enrol themselves.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you concentrate more attention on organizing a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service. This is made possible by using a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase add ons when you need added functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new signups outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process is kept wholly in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data obtained from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you gather specific data using custom event registration forms on your web site to create a customized experience for your users.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily find your events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects so they can purchase the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional attendees.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the likelihood of spammers and robots making false registrations on your site by using reCAPTCHA tools to provide human authentication.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track event participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event participants and check in those who attend.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached maximum capacity. You can also specify that waiting list registrants pay for their spots if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- RSS Event Feeds. Provide automatic updates to site readers, drive quality traffic and expand your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop an event over multiple work sessions without publishing it to your site. You can continue developing your event pages until you are ready to take things live, or schedule your event to publish at a future time and date.
- Multi-Language Application. Event Espresso is is available in more than 15 languages, with more translations coming soon.
- Exportable Data. 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..
- Venue Manager. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 lets details about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your website to inform users of your event’s location. The venue record displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes venue details such as venue seating capacity, venue site URL, telephone number, physical, map, etc. You can also list venue profiles in various parts of your theme as well as on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a specific venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, software programmers, designers, online marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can interact 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+.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your site visitors can help create a wider exposure for your events using social share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple event types like free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different kinds of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize these to help event registrants to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make the events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that interest your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with WordPress.
- Metabox Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from the workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: 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 model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Add ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to further enhance the functionality of managing an event.
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 the event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events manager add-on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can add as many events in advance as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays the categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays all events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your web site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take full 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 pricing when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users will have access to these special events. Members can also add personal information 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 view event history and make payment for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Editions: This add-on lets you include staff in the event management process and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and assign them different permissions with different privileges, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing addon adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the door. Registrants can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories via an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp addon lets you auto-register attendees to a selected mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
Plugin Users – Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”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
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, show planner, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time researching the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow or improve the experience of your event registrants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its users attest:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
The software provides comprehensive support that includes access to a support forum, 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 an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you should consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This option enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license enables you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Registration Software For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about bugs and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you intend to run events that involve managing dates and venues (offline and online), booking participants, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticket Registration System For WordPress
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