Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group classes, charity fund-raisers, social conferences, or even a large-scale event like a music festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event bookings can be a complex and time-consuming process. You may have to manage event schedules, availability, attendee numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to attendees.
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 costs, help you easily reproduce previously-run events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software allows you to easily schedule multiple events and begin receiving online bookings in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing systems.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform 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 read more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even 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 literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to register themselves.
Allowing your customers to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you invest more resources on planning a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service provider. The cost is kept low through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons only if you need extra functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event sign-ups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process remains wholly in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data gathered from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you gather specific data using a custom event registration form on your site to plan a great experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. You can customize your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and parts, as well as HTML and/or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospective registrants and let them purchase the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Smart 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 information for any added participants.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly with pre-configured system-default ticket pricing.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track your participants.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you understand who your customers are and how you have previously engaged with them. Your Contact Profile section stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact information, event registration information, comments, etc. about each customer.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached capacity. You can also specify that wait-listed registrants pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential registrants to interact with you online via commenting and previous attendees to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for comments are configured via the WordPress native commenting settings.
- Keyword Rich Event Page Web Links. Keyword rich event page URLs leverage your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly permalinks with relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and improves your search rankings, helping you bring more traffic to your site.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, attendee limits, printable ticketing and more.
- Exportable Information. You can output all the data collected from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, planning marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Register Multiple Participants. EE 4 allows one person or people to enroll multiple attendees at once. You specify how many attendees are able to enroll in one session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Records. You can manage your attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily within reach.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your site visitors can spread the word about your event using social sharing buttons.
- Attendee Reporting. Quick-view event reports gives you data of all the registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and how much money you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, 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 software has been built using a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with many datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template shows the categories as a simple list. Clicking the category name displays the events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your web site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add-on lets you display your event lists in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Editions: This addon lets you involve your staff in the event management process and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, so others can help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add on adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity 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 the door. 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.
- Events Calendar Add-on: This add-on uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add-on: The Event Espresso JSON API addon permits other software applications, websites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that customers have written 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
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, event planner, 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 registered owner, search the user forum for new ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your participants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent customer support, as so many of its customers confirm:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, email 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you should consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option 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. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to report bugs and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of businesses.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you currently run any event that involves managing dates and venues (offline and online), booking participants, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
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