Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need to accept registrations, such as workshops, training classes, not-for-profit fund raisers, marketing functions, or even a large-scale event such as a music festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You need to manage calendar schedules, availability, participant numbers, data collection, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate previous events, give you more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create an event and start accepting online registrations literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize your event registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event participants to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you spend more of your attention on delivering a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a third-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event signups outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process can be transacted entirely online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information collected from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create multiple ticket types and specify separate prices, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- Event Calendar. Registrants can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with several payment gateways, allowing you to collect money prior to running the events.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration information for any additional participants.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily with pre-configured system-default ticket prices.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Set up promotion and discount codes to encourage prospects to take action without delays, or make your offerings more appealing for price-sensitive customers. This is also practical if you want to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to understand who your clients are and how you have done past business with your clients. Your Contact Profile section stores the name, biography, contact information, event registration information, comments, and more about each customer.
- No-Ticket Events. Set up events without requiring attendees to select tickets. Use Event Espresso for any form of event, not only when tickets are required.
- Private Comments On Contacts. Record comments about event registrants on their profile and how you have interacted with your customers. Private notes lets you keep a record of when event attendees contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve helped your customers.
- Works With The Most Recent WordPress Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create aesthetically enhanced event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to be used throughout the plugin and your front-end templates. Your organization data include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, telephone number, VAT/tax number, business logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for many of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 lets information about a venue to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform registrants of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you reuse venue details like venue capacity, venue web address, venue phone number, venue address, map, etc. You can also list all of your event venues in different areas on your WP theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a given venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you engage with a community of experienced event managers, developers, web designers, internet marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential clients who have not paid yet for their booking with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will reference pre-registered customers who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the balance they owe, and include links to the event, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Accurate Event Participant Manager. You control your attendees’ details; who has enrolled, for what event and what amount they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to a CSV file for additional uses, send custom payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your event registrants individually or collectively.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 makes possible more complex extensions and customizations to the plugin.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for normal website traffic when you need to make updates on your site. You can still work on your content during maintenance mode.
- 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 goals, 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 provides you with over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes customer data in confirmation emails and email newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months ahead. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon lets you override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add-on is great 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 directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add-on adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at venues. 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 Calendar Add-on: This add-on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track registrations, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Here are some of the many great testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”I recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, festival promoter, or event management professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time researching the user forum for new ideas and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its end-users confirm:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
Event Espresso provides great support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, email 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons 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. Currently, the software sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds 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.
Search the software’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to report bugs and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you intend to run any event that involves managing dates and venues, registering attendees, and/or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticketing Registration Plugin
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