Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings, such as workshops, group classes, charity fund raisers, marketing functions, or even a large-scale event like a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event registrations is a complicated and time-consuming process. You need to manage scheduling, dates, registration numbers, data collection and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce similar events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily set up your event and begin accepting online bookings literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed software that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing solutions.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and 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 literally doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for event participants to enrol by themselves.
Letting your clients to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more attention on creating a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a third party service provider. The cost is kept low through a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase optional addons when you need new features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new registrations any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may be interested.
- Green Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process remains wholly online, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data gathered from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users via standard features (these are included with the software) and additional features that users can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of features to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
- Event Calendar. Customers can easily find your events and add these to their schedule using a calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to registrants and let them purchase the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary registrant’s information for any added registrants.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly by pre-configuring default prices.
- Promotional Codes. Leverage promotional and multiple discount codes to incentivize people to take action now, or make your offers more affordable for others. Also useful for helping to sell out events close to timelines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 lets you understand who your customers are and how you have previously done business with them. The Contact Profile section stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact information, event registration data, private comments, etc. about each attendee.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can register for your events.
- XML RSS Feeds. Provide automatic updates to customers, drive quality traffic and widen your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build your event page at your own pace without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your event until you are ready to publish it to your site, or schedule your event to publish at a future date and time.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing, and allows you to automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event page designs, payment processing, wait lists, attendee limits, printable tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for your new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Register Multiple Event Attendees. EE 4 allows an individual or an organization to buy multiple tickets and different types of tickets simultaneously. Event managers specify how many people are allowed to register in a single booking session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- One-Click Updates. Event Espresso offers simple 1-click software updates to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your plugin installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in your event description.
- Accurate Event Participant Management. You have control of your attendees’ date; who has enrolled, for what event and how much they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an attendee list to an Excel spreadsheet for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your customers individually or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for general WP users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 makes possible more complex extensions and customizations to the plugin.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for regular website visitors when you need to make changes on your website. You can still work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, 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 software has been built using a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes customer data in emails and updates.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Add ons
In addition to a very large number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to significantly expand the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add-ons 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 the event does not have a featured image, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events management add-on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many events in the future as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name displays all events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your website is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add-on can display your events in a variety of visually exciting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This add-on lets you involve your staff in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: 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 bar codes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. Customers 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template add-on gives event managers an easy-to-use system that allows you to change the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also allows web developers to build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on allows you to automatically register participants to a specified mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Customers – Testimonials
Below are some of the many testimonials that plugin users 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 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
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer, Improve Photography
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, workshop planner, or event professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, go through the forums for useful ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event customers.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as so many of its end-users attest:
”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
Event Espresso provides exceptional support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, priority 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 solution you can depend on to run and manage your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This edition allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license option allows you to run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
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 website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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.
Use the software’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your specific use-case, or to report issues and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress site and you plan to run events that require managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, and/or booking seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
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