Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as workshops, group classes, non-profit fundraisers, corporate events, or even a big event like a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings can be a time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate event schedules, availability, registration numbers, data processing, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event registrants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate previous events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticket Registration Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software enables you to easily create an event and start receiving bookings in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ a range of 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 autoresponders.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been 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 price. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into an automated and fully featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to perform the registration by themselves.
Allowing your customers to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you concentrate more resources on planning a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy optional add ons only if you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process can remain entirely in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data acquired from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its users through built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect unique data using a custom event registration form on your web pages to prepare a unique experience for your customers.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. You can customize your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and elements, as well as HTML and/or CSS.
- Tax Admin And Reporting. Event Espresso 4 gives you several ways to handle taxes for an event and report tax fees to registrants when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the display settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing of the system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event attendees and check in those who have attended.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can join a waiting list if your event has reached the limit of participants. You can also make it a requirement waiting list attendees pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for your event.
- Private Commenting On Contacts. Keep comments about a contact on their profile and how you have assisted your customers. Private commenting allows you to keep records of when users contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have helped your customers.
- Optimized For The Latest WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout Event Espresso and your WordPress themes. Your organization fields include: business name, address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, telephone, VAT/tax number, company logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Upload Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that lets you import a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, custom registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WP Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily insert graphic images and stylize your event descriptions without having to know HTML or CSS, just like any typical WP post or page.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage each attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and website visitors can tell others about your event using social media sharing buttons.
- Event Reporting. Quick-view event reports gives you information of all of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over the content of your event page and how your information displays to prospective event attendees.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular website traffic whenever website maintenance is needed. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s goal 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 modular and effective 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 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to every ticket).
- Default payment status.
Add ons
As well as an incredible range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to further expand the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events manager add-on lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can add as many events in the future as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all 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 a date.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files add on allows you to override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Versions: This addon lets you include other staff in the event management process 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 WordPress users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, so others 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 WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multi-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 Multi-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.
- Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template addon provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that allows you to change 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 lets developers build custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track bookings, and accept payments from your 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, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
”Thanks to you and the rest of the team for Event Espresso – Every time I get a signup for an event, I think about how much time EE saves me – and signups happen while I’m out on the water teaching kayaking, not answering the phone. :-)” Tue Brems Olesen, OnAdventure
”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
“Love the plugin, we only use it once a year for a race we have in February. This saved us tons of time in data entry. In addition, we had more runners register than any other year. We attribute that to the ease of registering online. Thanks for your work.” Ed, Friends of Oscar Scherer Park
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, conference promoter, or event management professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, visit the user forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its end-users 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
Event Espresso provides exceptional support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you need to consider downloading one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This license allows you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticket Registration System For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional Information
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.
Use 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 report bugs and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates and venues, registering participants, or selling seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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