Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as seminars, training classes, non-profit fund-raisers, marketing functions, or even a large-scale event such as a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You need to manage scheduling, date availability, registration numbers, data collection and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily duplicate previous events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticketing Registration Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily schedule an event and start accepting bookings in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize your event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using the plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
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 And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into an automated and 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 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 practically doing away with the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event participants to enrol on their own.
Letting your participants to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more resources on planning a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a third party service provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add ons only if you need new functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event registrations 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and addons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process can remain wholly in digital form, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data acquired from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its users via standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique built-in to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Forms. With Event Espresso you can gather unique information using custom event registration forms on your web pages to create a customized experience for your clients.
- Custom Confirmation Emails. Configure automatic booking and payment notification emails to communicate with your registrants.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospective attendees and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display registrant details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the default ticket price for your default ticket.
- Promotional Codes. You can leverage promotion and multiple discount codes to encourage prospects to take action without hesitation, or make your events more attractive for others. Also useful if you want to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 lets you know who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached maximum attendance. You can also make it a requirement wait-list attendees pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add social interactivity to your event by encouraging potential customers to ask questions about your event and past customers to post reviews that can help others consider whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public commenting are configured via the WordPress default commenting settings.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your WordPress themes. Organization information include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, email address, phone, VAT/tax number, logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily insert images and create your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- Registrant Records. You can manage each customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily within reach.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential customers who have not paid in full for their registration with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will reference pre-registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the amount owing, and include a link to the event information, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Accurate Attendee Management. You control your attendees’ information; who has enrolled, which event they have registered for and what amount they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an attendee list to a spreadsheet for additional uses, send custom payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your participants individually or all at once.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows developers to have more control and options over your content and how the information displays to site visitors.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for regular site traffic when you need to perform maintenance on your site. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their site, Event Espresso’s aim 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 model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the need to re-enter event information when adding new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Addons
As mentioned previously, 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 lets you display scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template shows the categories in a simple list. Clicking a category name shows all events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files add on allows you to bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add on: 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 offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential attendees 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.
- Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that allows you to change 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 build custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp add-on lets you automatically register attendees to a chosen autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Here are some of the many testimonials that plugin users have written 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 to say that it has been the right choice for me…I’ve been extremely pleased with the way my site is working.” Robin, RobinTime
”I am in love with your product, I work with many educational institutions that hold classes/events and I will definitely recommend this to all of them, the only time I have seen a system this comprehensive and sophisticated is when an organization I worked with paid a programmer nearly $8,000 for a custom solution, and yet still there are features in your registration system that his didn’t have. Thank you so much for your help and patience.” Abdullah J.
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, concert planner, or event management professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the support forum for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your event participants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as many of its users attest:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides robust support that includes access to a support forum, 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 depend on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you may want to consider using one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This license option enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This lets you configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 sites. 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 depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. 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 for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your specific situation, or to report issues and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of WordPress users.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you plan to run any event that requires managing dates and venues, booking participants, or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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