Do you currently run or plan to run events that require registrations, such as seminars, group courses, non-profit fund-raisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event like an art exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complex process. You need to co-ordinate scheduling, availability, registration numbers, data processing and storage, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for repeat events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily create an event and start receiving registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the plugin is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of using this plugin.
More info:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing online presence into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to enrol by themselves.
Allowing your participants to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more energy on delivering a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a 3rd party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need added functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online bookings 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite other people they know who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is performed wholly in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You own all the data you collect from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of features to website owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), and these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Create the look and feel you want for your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s template options and elements, and HTML and CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospective attendees and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the display of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily with pre-configured system-default ticket prices.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes three detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your clients are and how you’ve previously done business with your clients. The Contact Profile section records the name, biography, contact details, event registration data, comments, etc. about each customer.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached the limit of participants. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-listed registrants pre-pay if you plan to expand numbers for your event.
- Private Comments On Contacts. Record comments about users on their profile and how you have assisted your customers. Private commenting enables you to keep records of when users contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve interacted with your contacts.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop your event in your own time frame without displaying it live on your site. You can continue working on your event until you are ready to publish it to your website, or schedule to publish your event at a later time and date.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event page designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, attendee limits, printable ticketing and more.
- Import Event Data. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that lets you import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, ticketing details, pricing, registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert graphic images and write your event descriptions without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you interact with a community of experienced event managers, developers, designers, marketers and businesses who also use the software. You can network with other Event Espresso users via their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event attendees who have not fully paid for their enrollment with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the balance they owe, and include a link to the event, a payment url and a url to download the invoice.
- Accurate Event Participant Management. You have control of your attendees’ date; who has registered, for what event and how much they 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 event attendee list to a spreadsheet for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your clients on a person-by-person basis or all at once.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general WP users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 facilitates more complex extensions and customizations to the plugin.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to generate a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers who are diagnosing software errors.
- Flexibility, Autonomy 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 objectives, the software has been built using a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in emails and newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a series of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to further expand the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows event categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays the events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template addon can display your event lists in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This addon lets you involve others in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers the ability to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and give them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing others to help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections 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 add-on.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add on adds the capacity to create 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 venues. 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This addon uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API add-on allows other applications, websites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new addons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials that satisfied 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 have been using Event Espresso to run my festival and have been very happy with how it has worked out. They have provided tremendous support and their iPhone app is amazing and easy to use. I suggest using it for your event.” Alex Grant, Byron Spirit Festival
”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
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, seminar promoter, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the support forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your customers.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress 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 customer support, as so many of its plugin customers confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
The Event Espresso software provides amazing support including access to a support forum, comprehensive 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 WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to manage your events.
Product Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you should consider using one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This lets you install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This license option allows you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration System For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a particular situation, or to report bugs 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 preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WP website owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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