Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as workshops, training classes, not-for-profit fund-raisers, networking conferences, or even a large-scale event like a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will probably have to manage scheduling, date availability, attendee numbers, data entry, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily replicate recurring events, give event managers more control, create a better client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily create multiple events and start receiving bookings in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details go here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your customers to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more of your time on organizing a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a third-party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add ons only when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event registrations outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with their friends who may be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process remains wholly in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data you acquire from your event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospective attendees so they can purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration details for any added registrants.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spamming and robots making bogus registrations on your website by using reCAPTCHA tools to confirm human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track event participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of attendees and check in those who attend.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is full. You can also make it a requirement waiting list registrants pre-pay if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- Private Contact Commenting. Keep observations about a contact on their profile. Private commenting helps you keep a record of when event participants contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve interacted with your contacts.
- Works With The Most Up-To-Date Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create beautifully-designed event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings to be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency name, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Bulk Upload Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that enables you to upload a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Event Attendee. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or an organization to buy multiple tickets and different types of tickets at once. You specify how many attendees are allowed to enrol in one registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you interact with a community of experienced event managers, developers, designers, marketers and business owners who also use the plugin. You can network with other Event Espresso users via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Member Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in an event description.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can even customize your page templates to display event information in your own custom way.
Extra 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 web developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 makes possible more complex developments and customizations to the plugin.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you create a log file with debugging data which can be useful for web developers when potential software errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s goal 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 in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the need to re-enter event data when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to further expand the capabilities of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- EE4 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 available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays event categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name shows the events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: This addon adds 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 booking.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take full advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users will have access to your special events. Members can also store personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also look up event history and make payment for events.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on is great 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 add on lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Add-on: The Ticketing add-on gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling 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 Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Addon: The MailChimp add-on lets you automatically register attendees to a selected mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
Plugin Users – Feedback
Below are just some of the testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”I searched long and hard to find something that would serve my needs. This is, by far, the most complete and comprehensive solution I have found.” Bill Hepper, We Teach Live
”At first we looked at CVENT for one of our clients and they wanted $16,000 per year for 3000 event attendees + fees totaling $22k. That is before Staff and Webinar fees. Worst of all we had to prepay the $16k amount even if we never used all 3000 attendees. That was when we looked at Event Espresso and we realized we could build our own event system for less than 16K. For the most part we have been very satisfied with our decision. The real ROI will come next year when they don’t have to pay another 16k-22K! 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 (Long Version), KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, festival promoter, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your customers.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its satisfied users attest:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
The plugin provides amazing support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you need to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This edition lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. 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 tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report bugs and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress web site and you intend to run events that involve scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, and/or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
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