Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as workshops, training classes, charity fund-raisers, social events, or even a large-scale event such as a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a time-consuming process. You will probably have to manage calendar schedules, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data collection and storage, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate similar 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 own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily create an event and start receiving online registrations in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you complete control of 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 setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about your 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 completely different than the older EE 3, as the software is being revamped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just some 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 or blog into an automated and fully featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating event attendees to complete the sign-up process themselves.
Allowing your clients to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more time on delivering a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a third party service. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add ons when you need extra features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online sign-ups 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite friends who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process remains wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information acquired from event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to end-users via standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from a single event.
- Customizable Event Designs. Match your web site’s design for your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and components, as well as HTML and CSS.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to administer taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers when purchasing tickets. You can administer taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WP theme and reuse events details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing of the system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 lets you know who your customers are and how you’ve done business with your clients. The Contact Profile page stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact details, event registration information, private comments, and more about each client.
- Ticketless Events. You can set up events without requiring registrants to select tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any kind of event, not just when tickets are required.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your event by allowing potential customers to ask questions about your event and past participants to post feedback that can help others consider whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for commenting are set in the WordPress built-in commenting admin area.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date WordPress Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build visually attractive event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of all aspects of your event’s registration and ticketing, and allows you to automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event page designs, payment processing, list waiting, attendee limits, print-ready tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for your events, you can automatically set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Profiles. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 lets information about a venue to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your website to inform potential attendees of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes venue information like venue capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, physical, map, etc. You can also list venue profiles on specific areas in your theme and on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a specific venue.
- Automatic Software Updates. Event Espresso offers easy 1-click plugin upgrades to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your software installation up-to-date with new versions of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event customers who have not paid in full for their admission with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will address registered attendees who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance they owe, and include links to the event, a payment url and a url to download a PDF invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different event types such as free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different types of courses, etc. you can categorize these to make it easier for your participants to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that interest your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for most users, and also extremely robust and customizable for higher end users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 makes possible more complex developments and customizations to the application.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely deleted from your page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: 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 goals, the company operates on 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 includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – streamlines the work of re-entering event details when adding new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a series of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
In addition to an incredible number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to further enhance the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events management add-on lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can add as many future events as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: 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 image instead of the date.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Addon: This add-on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon 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 your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users will have access to these special events. Members can also store personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Users can also view previous events and make payment for events.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on is 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 add on allows you to promote 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 customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives 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 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add on: This addon uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events using an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API add on lets other applications, online tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are just some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”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
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, event planner, or event management consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time visiting the support forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management workflow and improve the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its clients attest:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
The Event Espresso plugin provides robust support with access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to run your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you should consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This edition enables you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 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 is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to notify developers about errors and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands of WordPress users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run an event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, registering attendees, and/or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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