Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need to accept registrations, such as workshops, training classes, non-profit fundraisers, marketing functions, or even a big event such as a community fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You may have to manage scheduling, date availability, participant numbers, data collection and admin, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to participants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can easily install an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily create multiple events and start processing online registrations in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize event registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been revamped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software 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.
Learn more here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits 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 online presence into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating attendees to perform the registration themselves.
Letting your clients to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more of your resources on organizing a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need added features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with others who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process is completed entirely online, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data collected from your event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to users via standard features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that users can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many types of tickets as you want and specify separate pricing options, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of options to handle taxes for an event and report tax fees to customers when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display contact details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the risk of spammers and bots creating fake registrations with reCAPTCHA features to authenticate human activity.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees when they show up, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual processing later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can and can’t participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your events page by encouraging potential customers to ask questions about your event and previous customers to post reviews that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for commenting are configured via the WP built-in commenting system.
- Optimized For The Most Recent Version Of WordPress. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build visually attractive event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is being translated into more than 15 languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Exportable Information. You can export all of your data collected from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, devising new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WordPress WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add graphic images and stylize your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- Registrant Records. You can manage your attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your site visitors can help promote your event using social media share 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 page templates to display event information in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over the content of your events and how the information displays to site visitors.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular website traffic when you need to make updates on your site. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 mission, the company operates on a 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:
- Duplicating events – reduces the need to re-enter event details when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Addons
As well as an incredible array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display all upcoming events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events management add-on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can schedule as many future events as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to show the 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 allows you to bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Versions: This add-on lets you involve others in your organization to help manage your events 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 WP users roles and give 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 parts of your WP dashboard and/or certain parts 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.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration addon 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 View Template Addon: The Events Table Template addon gives event managers an easy-to-use system that lets you modify 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 build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon lets you automatically register participants to a particular mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Here are a few of the many testimonials that plugin users 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 recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, conference planner, or event management consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the forums for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as so many of its plugin clients confirm:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
The Event Espresso software provides incredible support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to run your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you will want to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on one domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to run Event Espresso on five domains. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to notify developers about bugs and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of WP website owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
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