Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training courses, non-profit fund-raisers, networking events, or even a large-scale event such as an exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a time-consuming process. You may need to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data processing, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily duplicate previously-run events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered site, you can easily install an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticket Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily schedule an event and begin processing online registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software 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 pricing. The developers aim to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits 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 website into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event attendees to complete the registration process by themselves.
Letting your customers to do the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more attention on creating a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service provider. This is made possible through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons when you need new functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event bookings outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process is completed wholly in digital form, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data gathered from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers via built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration Forms. With Event Espresso you can gather specific data using custom event registration forms on your site to create a customized experience for your users.
- Event Calendar. Registrants can easily find your events and add these to their schedule using the calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of options to manage taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fees to registrants who purchase tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s details for any added participants.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily with pre-configured system-default ticket prices.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of attendees and confirm those who attend.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached the maximum number of attendees. Additionally, you can specify that wait-listed registrants pre-pay if you plan to expand numbers for your event.
- Private Contact Comments. Record observations about users on their profile. Private notes allows you to keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve interacted with your contacts.
- Optimized For The Most Recent Version Of WP. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build aesthetically beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout Event Espresso and your WordPress themes. Organization information include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, email address, telephone number, tax number, logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the data collected from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, planning new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add graphic images and stylize your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any other WordPress post.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, developers, designers, marketers and business owners who also use the software. 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+.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and website visitors can help spread the word about your events using social sharing buttons.
- Accurate Participant Management. You have control of your customers’ information; who has enrolled, which event they have booked and how much they have 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 a spreadsheet for additional uses, send customized payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your attendees individually or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for regular website traffic whenever you need to perform maintenance on your site. You can continue to work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: 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 software has been built using a modular and highly efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes registrant data in notification emails and email newsletters.
- 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.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow plugin users to further enhance 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 an event does not have a featured image, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events management add on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can schedule as many events in advance as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to browse for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users will have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also look up past events and make payment for future events.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add-on 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 promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue door. 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 Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add on provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you edit the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also enables developers to build their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- JSON API Addon: The new Event Espresso JSON API addon enables other software applications, websites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an Application Programming Interface (API).
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, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”Thanks to you and the rest of the team for Event Espresso – Every time I get a signup for an event, I think about how much time EE saves me – and signups happen while I’m out on the water teaching kayaking, not answering the phone. :-)” Tue Brems Olesen, OnAdventure
”I have to say that it has been the right choice for me…I’ve been extremely pleased with the way my site is working.” Robin, RobinTime
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, festival planner, or event management professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time going through the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive technical support, as many of its satisfied plugin users attest:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
Event Espresso provides amazing support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to manage your events.
Product 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 functionality, however, you need to consider using one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This edition lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This lets you install 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 allows 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.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
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 developer when you visit the website.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s online documentation tools to find 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 bugs and leave feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of companies.
If you own a WordPress website and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates and venues, registering participants, or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
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