Do you currently run or plan to run events that require handling registrations, such as workshops, group classes, not-for-profit fund raisers, social conferences, or even a big event such as a festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a complex process. You may have to manage event schedules, event dates, participant numbers, data collection and admin, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event attendees.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate previous events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be very costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website, you can download and install an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software lets you easily set up multiple events and start processing online registrations in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing systems.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event attendees to perform the enrolment process themselves.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you concentrate more time on creating a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service. This is made possible by using a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add-ons when you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online registrations any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can remain entirely online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information acquired from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Customized Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you collect specific data using a custom event registration form on your web pages to prepare a tailored experience for your event participants.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Easily set up custom automated booking and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event clients.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of options to manage taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fees to customers when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and reuse contact details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing of your default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 provides three built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your customers are and how you have previously engaged with them. Your Contact Profile page stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact details, event registration information, private comments, and more about each client.
- No Ticket Events. Promote events without requiring registrants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all types of events, not just when tickets are for sale.
- Private Contact Comments. Record comments about event registrants on their profile. Private commenting helps you keep records of when event registrants contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve assisted them.
- Keyword-Rich Event Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your WordPress site’s Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly web links with topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you get more visitors to your site.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to display throughout the plugin and your WordPress themes. Organization fields include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, phone, VAT/tax number, business logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for most of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for any new events simply by checking a box.
- Venue Manager. The venue manager in EE 4 lets information about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform site visitors of your event’s location. The venue record displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes information such as venue seating capacity, venue site URL, telephone number, physical, Google map, etc. You can also display venues throughout different parts in your WordPress theme and on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a given venue.
- Registrant Records. Manage your registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily accessible.
- Staff Management. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in an event description.
- Event Reporting. Event reporting provides you with information of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for most WP users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 facilitates more complex enhancements and customizations to the application.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you create a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for web developers when troubleshooting.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: 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 mission, the company operates on a model 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:
- Email shortcodes that includes registrant data in confirmation emails and email updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to each ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow software users to further expand the capabilities of the event management system.
Some of these addons 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 the event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events management add on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months ahead. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template shows categories as a simple list. Clicking the category name shows all events related to that category and closes any 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 Files Add on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Editions: This addon lets you include other users in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the capacity 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 capabilities, allowing others to help you manage your events or events that others 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 create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your potential attendees the ability to book 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 addon, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events in the same checkout process.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on provides you with an easy-to-use system that lets you edit the look and feel 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 custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add-on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track bookings, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Feedback
Below are some of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have posted 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 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.
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, conference promoter, or event management consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management process and enhance the experience of your event participants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as many of its users confirm:
”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
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, one-on-one 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Product License Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you will want to consider downloading one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option enables you to install 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 License Edition – This edition lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
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.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list 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 if you have questions related to your specific use-case, or to report problems and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands of event promoters.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run any event that requires scheduling dates and venues, registering attendees, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration Plugin For WordPress
***