Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group classes, non-profit fund raisers, social events, or even a big event such as a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups is a complicated and time-consuming process. You need to co-ordinate scheduling, dates, participant numbers, data administration, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event registrants.
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 recurring events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily set up multiple events and begin accepting registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as it is being revamped using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for attendees to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your participants to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your energy on planning a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a 3rd-party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add ons when you need added features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new bookings 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process remains entirely in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data obtained from event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to users through standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that customers can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to website owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in no time.
- Customized Event Registration. With Event Espresso you can collect specific information using custom event registration forms on your web site to plan a unique experience for your users.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Customize your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and components, and HTML and/or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with several payment gateways, enabling you to collect money prior to running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to configure the display settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the chance of spamming and bot software programs creating false registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA features to provide human validation.
- Promotional Codes. Set up promotion and discount codes to encourage people to take action now, or make your offers more appealing for others. Also useful if you want to sell out events close to timelines.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 lets you know who your customers are and how you’ve done past business with them. Your Contact Profile section stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact information, event registration data, comments, etc. about each client.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can and can’t participate in your events.
- Private Commenting On Contacts. Keep observations about event attendees on their profile and how you have interacted with your contacts. Private commenting enables you to keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal observations, and how you’ve interacted with them.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date Version Of WordPress. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build beautifully-designed event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be set up in more than 15 languages, and more translations are being added all the time.
- Exportable Data. You can output all the information collected from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, devising new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Multiple Event Participant. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or an organization to order multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. You control how many attendees are able to enroll in a single session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you interact with a community of experienced event managers, software programmers, web designers, marketers and business owners who also use the plugin. You can network with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event clients who have not paid yet for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will address pre-registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the amount they owe, and include links to the event, a payment url and a url to download the invoice.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can even customize the page templates to display events in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 permits more complex enhancements and customizations to the plugin.
- Control Box Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely removed from the workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: Event Espresso states on their website that their mission 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 company operates on a modular and efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to every ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Add ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further expand the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- 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 an event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown list.
- 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 instead of the date.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template add on lets you display your events in a range of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add on adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue 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 WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp add on allows you to auto-register participants to a specific mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Below are just some of the many testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is so easy to use yet feature rich and stable. It is a cornerstone of our site and our success.” Fraser Barner, Speaker’s Lab
”I searched long and hard to find something that would serve my needs. This is, by far, the most complete and comprehensive solution I have found.” Bill Hepper, We Teach Live
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, event promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the user forum for useful ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management process or enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent user support, as so many of its clients attest:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
The Event Espresso software provides exceptional support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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 an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Product Cost
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you may want to consider using one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you install Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one 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 pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use 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 a specific use-case, or to report issues 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 management software, used by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you currently run an event that involves scheduling dates and venues, enrolling participants, or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager Plugin
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