Do you currently run or plan to run events that require handling registrations, such as workshops, training courses, non-profit fundraisers, marketing functions, or even a big event such as a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You need to co-ordinate event schedules, availability, attendee numbers, data administration, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event registrants.
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 previously-run events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily schedule your event and begin receiving bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups 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 autoresponders.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. 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 the plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event participants to enroll themselves.
Letting your enrollees to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more of your resources on planning a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd party service provider. This is made possible through a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase optional add-ons when you need extra functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event signups 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite their friends who may also be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process is transacted wholly in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data collected from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to users via built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that users can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to site owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many different types of tickets as you need and specify unique pricing options, maximum number of tickets, and more.
- Customizable Event Designs. Create the look and feel you want for your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and components, as well as HTML and CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect booking fees prior to running events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse venue details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the chance of spamming and bot software programs creating bogus registrations with reCAPTCHA option to provide human validation.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track your attendees.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your customers are and how you have done business with your clients. The Contact Profile page records the name, biography, contact details, event registration history, private comments, etc. about each client.
- No-Ticket Events. Set up events without the requirement for attendees to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any type of event, not only those that require tickets.
- Private Contact Notes. Record observations about contacts on their profile and how you’ve interacted with them. Private commenting enables you to keep a record of when event attendees contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have helped them.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop an event in your own timeframe without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your event pages until you are ready to publish it live to your website, or schedule your event page to publish at a future time and date.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso is currently available in 15+ languages, with more languages coming soon.
- Exportable Information. You can output all of your information gathered from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, devising new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WordPress Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert graphic images and write your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post.
- Attendee Records. Manage your attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily accessible.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and website visitors can help publicize your events using social sharing buttons.
- Attendee Reporting. Event reports gives you information of the registrations and transactions, enabling you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over your events and how the information displays to prospects.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you generate a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for web developers who are potential errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: 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 company operates on a model 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 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same group of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Add ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to significantly 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 the event does not have a featured image available, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes many datetime events 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 show the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event pricing when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website will have access to your special events. Members can also input personal information into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Users can also look up event history and make payment for new events.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon 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 lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multiple 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 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 Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template addon gives you a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to modify 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 web developers to design custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on allows you to automatically register participants to a particular mailing list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new addons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”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 a gym owner, presenter, concert promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time visiting the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your registrants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great customer support, as many of its satisfied plugin customers 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
Event Espresso provides great support that includes access to support forums, 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to run your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license option enables you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license allows you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition allows you to configure Event Espresso on five domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Info
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 plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your specific situation, or to notify developers about bugs and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of businesses.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you currently run any event that requires scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Registration System For WordPress
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