Do you currently run or plan to run events that require registrations, such as workshops, training courses, non-profit fund raisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event such as a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings can be a time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate calendar schedules, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data collection and admin, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily replicate previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based site, you can easily set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily create your event and begin accepting online bookings in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution 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 making it easier for participants to register by themselves.
Allowing your participants to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more of your resources on creating a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase addons when you need extra features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online signups outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with others who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process can be completed entirely in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information gathered from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers via built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of built-in to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using a WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with leading payment gateways, enabling you to collect booking fees prior to running your events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to configure the display settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- 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 in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of participants and check in everyone who attends.
- No-Ticket Events. Set up events without requiring registrants to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for any type of event, not only when tickets are needed.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of social sharing to your events page by encouraging potential registrants to ask questions about your event and past participants to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public commenting are configured via the WordPress built-in commenting admin area.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events enable you to develop your event over multiple work sessions without publishing it to your website. You can continue working on your event until you are ready to take things live, or schedule to publish your event at a later date and time.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, regions, and so on.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for most of your events, you can easily set one of those tickets as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- Multiple Event Attendee. EE 4 allows a single person or people to enroll multiple attendees simultaneously. Event managers specify how many people are allowed to register in one registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, software programmers, web designers, marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Team Member Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in an event description.
- Transaction Reports. Quick-view event reports gives you data of all registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over your event page and how your information displays to your prospective customers.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular website traffic when you need to perform maintenance on your website. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, Event Espresso’s objective is to “empower business and organization leaders with the event registration, ticketing and management tools that maximize the success of events.” To achieve their goals, 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 version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in emails and updates.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an incredible number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow plugin users to significantly expand the capabilities of events.
Some of these addons include:
- EE4 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, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events manager add-on lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can schedule as many events in the future as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays categories as a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays all events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add-on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event pricing when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site can have access to these special events. Members can also store personal data into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up event history and make payment for events.
- 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 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 site. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on gives you the ability 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 the venue door. Registrants 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 addon provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you edit 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 their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your web site.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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:
Customer Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
“I just completed my first event using Event Espresso. I really believe without Event Espresso my event would not have been the success it was.” Cathy Earle, Women Only Weekend
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, workshop planner, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the support forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great end-user support, as so many of its end-users confirm:
”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
The Event Espresso software provides exceptional support including access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, one-on-one 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This edition allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license option lets you configure Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about problems and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of event promoters.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that require managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticket Registration Plugin
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