Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training courses, charity fundraisers, networking functions, or even a large-scale event such as an exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You have to manage event schedules, available dates and seating, attendee numbers, data processing, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to participants.
There are many advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily duplicate repeat events, give you more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based web site, you can easily install an inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily schedule an event and start processing online bookings in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing solutions.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings 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 spend more of your energy on organizing a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase addons when you need new features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new bookings 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features and addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process can remain wholly online, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information obtained from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that users can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to WP 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 EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), and these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Create a unique look and feel for your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s template options and elements, as well as HTML or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments before running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to customize the settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing for your default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 provides three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of attendees and check-in those who have attended.
- No-Ticket Events. Create events without the requirement for registrants to book tickets. Use Event Espresso for any kind of event, not just those that accept tickets.
- Private Comments On Contacts. Keep notes about event registrants on their profile and how you have interacted with them. Private commenting enables you to keep records of when event registrants contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have assisted your contacts.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop an event page at your own pace without displaying it live on your site. You can work on your event pages until you are ready to publish it on your site, or schedule to publish your event page at a future date and time.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing, and also lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event designs, payment processing, list waiting, attendee limits, printable tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for many of your events, you can easily set up as your default ticket for the next event simply by checking a box.
- Venue Management. The venue manager in EE 4 lets details about a venue to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your site to inform visitors of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you republish venue details such as venue capacity, venue website, phone number, physical and/or virtual location, map, etc. You can also display all of your venues in different locations of your theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Registrant Records. Manage your registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily within reach.
- Staff Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- 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 also customize the page templates to display events in your own unique way.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are 100% compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Control Box Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely removed from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: 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 model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to each ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Addons
In addition to a very large number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display your upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events management add-on enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. 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 of your 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 be customized to show an event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: 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 Addon: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add on is 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 addon lets you manage the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing addon gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the capacity 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. Customers 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add-on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories via an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add on allows other applications, web sites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are just some of the many great testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”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
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, concert planner, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its plugin clients attest:
”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
The software provides robust support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you will want to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This allows 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 Licensing – This license option allows you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends 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 Registration And Ticket Manager
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your particular situation, or to report problems and share feedback.
For all 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 manager software, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run any event that requires scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, and/or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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