Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training courses, charity fund raisers, 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?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complex and time-consuming process. You will most likely have to manage scheduling, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily reproduce similar events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can easily install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily set up your event and start accepting online bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event 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 offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as it is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the 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 web site into an automated and 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 seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to enrol by themselves.
Allowing your participants to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more resources on creating a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a third-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy add ons only if you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event sign-ups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process can remain entirely in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information you acquire from event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its users through built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique built-in to site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you set up as many different types of tickets as you need and set unique pricing options, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your events and add these to their schedule using the calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments before running events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional participants.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the likelihood of spamming and bot software programs making false registrations by using reCAPTCHA tools to confirm human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track your participants.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees at the door, or send in paper-based forms for manual registration later.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached the limit of attendees. Additionally, you can specify that wait-listed registrants pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Private Commenting On Contacts. Keep notes about event registrants on their profile. Private notes helps you keep records of when users contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have helped them.
- Optimized For The Latest WP Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build visually enhanced event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Country Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings to be used throughout Event Espresso, including currency name, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, etc.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for your events, you can set up as your default ticket for any new events simply by checking a box.
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WordPress Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add graphic images and format your event descriptions without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any standard WP post.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can network 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+.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can also customize the templates to display event information in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for developers when potential plugin errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s aim is to “empower business and organization leaders with the event registration, ticketing and management tools that maximize the success of events.” To achieve their objectives, the company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Addons
As well as a comprehensive number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand the capabilities of events.
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 an event does not have a featured image, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize many datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add-on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can also be customized to show the event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your web site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template addon is capable of displaying your event lists in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart addon 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 add-on lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning 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 bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at the door. People 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software add on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track registrations, 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.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Below are some of the many testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”It’s been very comprehensive and covers exactly the aspects of event registration that we needed for our site plus some features that we didn’t even need but could still use in the future. Very Excellent Plugin!” Tristan Hall, Area 12:2 Youth Group
”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
”Event Espresso plugin still rocks. Saw you guys were up for the WP Honors too. Glad I paid for it! If you need event management on your WordPress site I recommend Event Espresso.” Patrick Allmond, Focus Consulting
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, show planner, or event management professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time going through the user forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your registrants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive user support, as many of its plugin end-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
Event Espresso provides amazing support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, one-on-one 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to run your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you set up Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on five domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you currently run an event that involves scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, and/or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticketing Registration Software
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