Do you currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training courses, not-for-profit fund-raisers, networking events, or even a large-scale event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex process. You may have to co-ordinate calendar schedules, date availability, participant numbers, data collection, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to participants.
There are many advantages to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce previously-run events, give you more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticketing Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily schedule an event and start receiving registrations in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed software that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can employ a number 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 event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for event attendees to register themselves.
Letting your customers to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you focus more time on creating a more unique event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase addons only when you need additional functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new sign-ups outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing addons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite their friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process is transacted entirely online, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Data. You own all the data you acquire from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users via standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create as many types of tickets as you need and specify different pricing options, maximum number of tickets, etc.
- Customized Notification Email Message. Easily set up custom automated booking and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with your registrants.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to manage taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fee components to customers when purchasing tickets. You can administer taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s information for any additional participants.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly with pre-configured system-default ticket prices.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of participants and confirm everyone who attends.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can register for your events.
- Private Contact Commenting. Keep notes about users on their profile and how you’ve interacted with them. Private commenting lets you keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal observations, and how you’ve assisted your contacts.
- Keyword Rich URLs. Keyword-rich URLs leverage your WordPress site’s Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly permalinks that include topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you get a more targeted audience to your site.
- Country Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used to host events, including currency name, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Register Multiple Participants. EE 4 allows a single person or a group to purchase multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. Event managers specify how many people can enrol in a single registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, programmers, web designers, marketers and businesses who also use the software. You can engage with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and keep your business organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Attendee Reporting. Event reports provides you with information of all registrations and transactions, enabling you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue has been collected.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for general WP users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 allows for more complex enhancements and customizations to the application.
- Control Box Management & Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And 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 mission, the company operates on a modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes customer data in confirmation emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to each ticket).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow plugin users to further enhance the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these add ons include:
- EE4 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 an event does not have a featured image, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to search for events that occur within a certain date range.
- 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.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users can have access to your special events. Members can also store personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also view past events and make payment for events.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add-on is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add-on allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives potential customers 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 shopping cart. With the Multi-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.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on gives event managers an easy-to-use system that allows you to 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 lets developers build custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin addon, you can easily 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 the software, including new add-ons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
Customer Feedback
Here are a few of the many testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
”When you can get a company to expend more money switching systems just to use your plugin…you’ve really accomplished something.” David, House of Prayer
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, festival promoter, or event professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your registrants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive technical support, as many of its customers confirm:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run your events.
Product Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a specific use-case, or to report problems and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you own a WordPress web site and you intend to run an event that involves scheduling dates and venues, booking participants, or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
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