Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings, such as seminars, group classes, non-profit fundraisers, social conferences, or even a large-scale event like a school concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex and time-consuming process. You need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data collection and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate previously-run events, give you more control, create a better client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can download and install an inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin lets you easily schedule your event and start accepting registrations in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform is being revamped using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages 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 current website into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum 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 improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for event attendees to enrol on their own.
Letting your customers to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you invest more resources on delivering a more unique event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a third-party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy addons when you need additional functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new signups outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may be interested.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process remains entirely online, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data you collect from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its customers via built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up multiple ticket types and specify different prices, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- Custom Notification Emails. Easily set up automatic registration and payment confirmation emails to communicate with your attendees.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of ways to manage taxes for an event and report tax fee components to customers when purchasing tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the look and control settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing for the system-default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or send in paper forms for manual inputting later.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can join a waiting list if your event has reached maximum capacity. Additionally, you can specify that wait-listed members pay for their spots if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your event page by encouraging potential customers to interact with you online via commenting and previous participants to post feedback that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public comments are set using the WP built-in commenting settings.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WP. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build beautiful event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event designs, payment processing, list waiting, attendee limits, print-ready ticketing and more.
- 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 upload information about events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, custom registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Venue Manager. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 allows information about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform attendees of the location of your event. The venue record displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue information such as venue capacity, venue website, phone number, venue address, Google map, etc. You can also display all of your venues in various locations of your WordPress theme as well as on a venue listing 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 specific venue.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you network with an expert community of event managers and other plugin users. You can network with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- Attendee Reports. Event reporting provides you with data of the registrations and transactions, enabling you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over the content of your events and how the information displays to your readers.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to create a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for web developers who are diagnosing errors.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: 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 objectives, the company operates on a modular and effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the work of re-entering event details when creating new events.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as a very large number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow plugin users to significantly enhance the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- 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 available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with many datetimes 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 display an event thumbnail instead of a date.
- EE4 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 booking.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon lets you bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add-on is suitable 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 allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives your potential customers the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their shopping cart. With the Multiple Event Registration add on, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events in the same checkout process.
- Events Calendar Addon: This add-on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon allows you to automatically register participants to a particular mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new addons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Below are just some of the testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, concert planner, or event management professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the forums for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent 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
The software provides incredible support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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 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 run your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you will want to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license option allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This license enables you to install Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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.
Search the software’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to notify developers about errors and give 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 booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands of WordPress website owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run an event that involves managing dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
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