Do you currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings, such as workshops, group classes, charity fund-raisers, corporate conferences, or even a big event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a time-consuming process. You have to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and seating allocations, participant numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce repeat events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based web site, you can set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin enables you to easily set up an event and begin accepting online registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future 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 Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages 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 online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for participants to perform the registration on their own.
Allowing your participants to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more time on creating a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a third party service. The cost is kept low through a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add ons when you need new features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event registrations 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process can remain entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Information. You own all the data you obtain from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that customers can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Customized Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you collect unique information using custom event registration forms on your web pages to prepare a great experience for your users.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. You can customize your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and elements, and HTML or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with several payment gateways, enabling you to collect money before running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows event managers to configure the display settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly by pre-configuring default ticket prices.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to understand who your clients are and how you’ve done business with your clients. The Contact Profile section stores the name, biography, contact information, event registration data, private comments, and more about each customer.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event is sold out. Additionally, you can make it a requirement waiting list registrants pre-pay if you plan to expand capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential customers to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for comments are configured via the WP commenting system.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events allow you to build an event page at your own pace without displaying it live on your site. You can work on your event until you are ready to go live, or schedule to publish your event at a future date and time.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete 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 designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, attendee limits, print-ready tickets and more.
- Exportable Data. You can output all of your data gathered from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, planning marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Event Venue Management. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 allows details about a venue to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform registrants of the location of your event. The venue profile has many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes details like venue capacity, venue site URL, phone number, physical, map, etc. You can also list all of your venues on different sections on your theme and on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a specific venue.
- Attendee Records. Manage each attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily within reach.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and site visitors can tell others about your events using social sharing buttons.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can even customize your templates to display event information in your own custom way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are fully compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers who are potential software errors.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: According to the mission statement 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 mission, 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 over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to further expand the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Add on: 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, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events manager addon lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can schedule as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all of these recurring events.
- 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 an event thumbnail image instead of the date.
- 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 Add-on: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: 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 add-on allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing add on adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the capacity 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 barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Add on: This add on uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events using an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add on: The Event Espresso JSON API add on lets other software applications, websites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Below are some of the many testimonials that satisfied users 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
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”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, presenter, concert planner, or event management consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the support forum for useful ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow or improve the experience of your registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great customer support, as many of its satisfied plugin end-users 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, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, premium 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 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 editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This edition enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to notify developers about bugs and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you own a WordPress web site and you plan to run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues, booking attendees, or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management System
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