Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings, such as workshops, group classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, marketing 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?
Managing event bookings can be a complex process. You may be required to co-ordinate event schedules, dates, attendee numbers, data entry, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event attendees.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily copy settings for recurring events, give you more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily create multiple events and begin processing online bookings literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing applications.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being revamped using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to enrol themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you spend more energy on organizing a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase add ons only when you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new signups 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features and addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process remains wholly in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data you obtain from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users through standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that customers can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great features to WP users. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect unique data using a custom event registration form on your web pages to create a unique experience for your attendees.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Registrants can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with several payment gateways, allowing you to collect registration fees prior to running your events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the display settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the chance of spamming and robots creating fake registrations on your web site by using reCAPTCHA features to confirm human activity.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants at the door, or sending in paper forms for manual processing later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential prospects to ask questions about your event and past customers to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WP commenting admin area.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build your event page at your own leisure without displaying it live on your site. You can work on your event pages until you are ready to publish it live on your website, or schedule your event pages to publish at a later time and date.
- Country Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings to be used throughout Event Espresso, including currency name, currency signs, decimal characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Import Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that lets you quickly upload a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, custom registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert images and create your content without having to know HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, web developers, web designers, internet marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Member Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of event types like free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different types of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize these to make it easier for event participants to locate what they’re looking for. You can display all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting new events in the categories that interest your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for most WordPress users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 makes possible more complex developments and customizations to the software.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely removed from the workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 software has been built using 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 provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse the same questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as a comprehensive range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these add ons 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 the event does not have a featured image, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays all events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template addon lets you display your events in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- 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 perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add on adds the ability to create 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 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 Calendar Addon: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories in an attractive graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add on: 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 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 the software, including new add ons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
User Feedback
Below are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted 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
”Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman, KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
”Thank you, we just did 2 sell out seminars of 50 attendees in 48 hours using Event Espresso and it was awesome. My wife was able to pick up on the processing backend with ease. You have done a great job on getting this system together – very simple, clear and well laid out With powerful functionality. I am so glad I dumped the old booking application we had and gave Event Espresso a go. Just wanted to say thanks, and thanks for the very patient, friendly and speedy assistance in helping me to get it all set up at the start. Many thanks to you and your team. A grateful customer.” Nicholas de Castella, Emotional Intelligence Trainings
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, conference planner, or event professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time going through the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow and improve the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as so many of its satisfied users confirm:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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 WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to run and manage your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you should consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This license enables you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This edition allows you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to report issues and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of companies.
If you own a WordPress web site and you currently run any event that requires scheduling dates, times and venues, booking participants, and/or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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