Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a dance party, 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 need to manage calendar schedules, available dates and seating, participant numbers, data administration, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event attendees.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily duplicate similar events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can install a very inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticketing Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily create multiple events and start accepting bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as it has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event attendees to enrol themselves.
Letting your customers to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you invest more time on creating a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you an inexpensive 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 you buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase addons when you need new features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event sign-ups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process remains entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-keeping.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information collected from event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to end-users via standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in no time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily find your events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you several ways to handle taxes for your event and report tax fee components to registrants who purchase tickets. You can administer taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and display attendee data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily by pre-configuring default ticket pricing.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 provides three detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event participants at the door, or sending in paper forms for manual submission later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can and can’t attend your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential registrants to ask questions about your event and previous customers to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for commenting are configured via the WordPress commenting section.
- Draft Events. Draft events allow you to develop an event over multiple sessions without displaying it live on your site. You can continue building your event pages until you are ready to publish it live to your site, or schedule to publish your event page at a future date and time.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing, and allows you to automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, attendee limits, printable ticketing and more.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the information gathered from event customers into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, devising marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Multiple Event Participant. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or people to register multiple participants at the same time. Event managers can control how many people are able to enroll in a single registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you engage with an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event registrants who have not made payment for their enrollment with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered participants who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the amount owing, and include a link to the event, a payment url and a link to download the invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple types of events such as free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different kinds of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your attendees to find what they’re looking for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make all events searchable by category, and colour-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that interest your existing customers.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 makes possible more complex extensions and customizations to the application.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you create a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers who are troubleshooting.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, 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 goals, the company operates on a modular and highly effective 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:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in emails and newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Addons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow software users to significantly enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- 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 display an event thumbnail 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 comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that allow you to bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on is great 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 add on lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing addon adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at venues. 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Addon: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on allows you to automatically register participants to a chosen autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe
”Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman, KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer, Improve Photography
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, show promoter, or event management consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow or improve the experience of your attendees.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive customer support, as so many of its clients confirm:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support including 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 giving 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to run and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you should consider purchasing one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This lets you run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license option enables you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its 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 to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to report issues and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of WP users.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues, booking attendees, and selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Registration Software
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