Do you currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community classes, non-profit fundraisers, networking conferences, or even a large-scale event like a regional festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complex and time-consuming process. You need to manage scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, attendee numbers, data entry, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate repeat events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can install an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily set up an event and begin accepting online bookings in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older EE 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 price. 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, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price levels 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 increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to perform the registration on their own.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you spend more of your attention on organizing a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons when you need extra functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new bookings outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process remains wholly online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data acquired from event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its users through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique built-in to web site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- Custom Confirmation Emails. Set up automatic booking and payment notification emails to communicate with event participants.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to registrants so they can choose 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.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing of your default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track all attendees.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event participants at the door, or sending in paper-based forms for manual processing later.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential attendees to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post feedback that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public comments are set up using the WP default commenting admin area.
- Works With The Most Recent WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Country Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings to be used when hosting your events, such as currency name, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Exportable Information. You can export all of your data gathered from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for producing advanced reports, devising new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WP Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily insert photos and format your event descriptions without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post.
- Registrant Records. You can manage your customer’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your business organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can even customize the templates to display event information in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for most WP users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 enables more complex extensions and customizations to the plugin.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to generate a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers when potential problems.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: According to the mission statement on their web site, Event Espresso’s objective 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 software has been built using a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a common set of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand the functionality of the event management system.
Some of these addons 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, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events management addon allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can schedule as many events in advance as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all of these recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name shows all events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add-on lets you display your events in a variety of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add on is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon allows you to 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 attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential customers the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their cart. With the Multi-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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add-on: This add-on uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track registrations, and accept payments from your web site.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds 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 here:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”I recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462
”Hello. I wanted to say that I’ve purchased Event Espresso twice now for two different organizations and have had great success with the purchases. Outside of photography, I also build small websites with WordPress as the CMS. I built two websites for two different martial arts organizations who host yearly seminars and tournaments. The plug in has provided a way for attendees to sign up online from both Canada and the United States with ease, and also allowed the organizations to easily manage payments, attendee lists, and many other aspects of the events. Thanks to Seth for creating such a great plug in, and for your constant support!” James Zedd, James Zedd Photography
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, conference promoter, or event professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the user forum for useful ideas and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive end-user support, as many of its end-users confirm:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, email 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you may want to consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license option enables you to configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This lets you run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin 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.
Use the plugin’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific use-case, or to report issues and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of WordPress users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run any event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, and/or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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