Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group courses, charity fund-raisers, social events, or even a big event like a dance party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event bookings is a time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, availability, attendee numbers, data administration, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily replicate previously-run events, give you more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticket Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily set up an event and begin receiving online registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the software is being redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details go here:
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:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating attendees to enroll themselves.
Allowing your clients to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you spend more of your energy on creating a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy addons when you need additional features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can remain entirely in digital form, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information you collect from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to end-users via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great built-in to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to start accepting registrations in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you set up multiple ticket types and specify unique pricing options, ticket quantity limits, and more.
- Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your events and add these to their schedule using a WordPress calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of options to manage taxes for an event and report tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display registrant information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing for your default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 comes with 3 comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants at the door, or send in paper registration forms for manual submission later.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can and cannot attend your events.
- Private Commenting On Contacts. Record comments about users on their profile and how you’ve assisted them. Private notes allows you to keep a record of when event registrants contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have interacted with your contacts.
- SEO Friendly URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly urls with relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you get more traffic to your site.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing processes, and lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event page designs, payment processing, list waiting, limits on attendees, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Exportable Data. You can output all of your data gathered from event customers into Excel or CSV format for producing reports, devising marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Register Multiple Event Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or people to book multiple attendees at once. You decide how many people are able to enroll in a single booking session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Plugin Upgrading. Event Espresso provides simple 1-click upgrading to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your software installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff 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.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of event types such as free and paid, conference speakers and mastermind sessions, different kinds of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to help event registrants to find what they’re searching for. You can list all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your existing customers.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you create a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for web developers who are troubleshooting.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the philosophy stated on their 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 as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in confirmation emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to each ticket).
- Default payment status.
Addons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand the capabilities of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: 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 Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events manager addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that occur within a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon lets you bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Editions: This add-on lets you involve others in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas 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.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing add on gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the door. Registrants can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template addon provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you 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 allows web developers to design their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin add-on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track registrations, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Below are just some of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
”Event Espresso plugin still rocks. Saw you guys were up for the WP Honors too. Glad I paid for it! If you need event management on your WordPress site I recommend Event Espresso.” Patrick Allmond, Focus Consulting
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, conference promoter, or event professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as many of its clients confirm:
“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
Event Espresso provides robust support with access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you need to consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This option lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This license option allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its 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 pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to report bugs and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues, booking attendees, and/or selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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