Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating registrations, such as workshops, group classes, charity fundraisers, corporate functions, or even a large-scale event such as a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event sign-ups is a complex process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, participant numbers, data collection, payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily duplicate previous events, give event managers more control, create a better client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based web site, you can easily install an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily set up an event and begin accepting online bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as the platform has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into an automated and fully featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing 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 increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling attendees to enrol on their own.
Allowing your customers to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more of your resources on creating a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept low through a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need extra functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online sign-ups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite others who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is transacted wholly in digital form, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information you obtain from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in no time.
- Customized Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can collect specific data using custom event registration forms on your web pages to plan a tailored experience for your users.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Configure automatic registration and payment notification email messages to communicate with event attendees.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect money prior to running your events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s details for any added participants.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the likelihood of spammers and bot software programs creating false registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA features to provide human validation.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with three useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants at the door, or sending in paper registration forms for manual processing later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential attendees to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post feedback that can help others consider whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are specified using the WP commenting settings.
- Optimized For The Latest Version Of WordPress. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create beautifully-designed event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be run in 15+ languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the information collected from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for creating reports, implementing new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Register Multiple Attendees. EE 4 allows a single person or a group to buy multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. Event managers control how many attendees can enroll in a single session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Records. You can manage your attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their information organized and easily within reach.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your site visitors can help increase exposure for your event using social share buttons.
- Attendee Reporting. Quick-view event reports provides you with information of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you have collected.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 allows for more complex enhancements and customizations to the software.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular website traffic when site maintenance is required. You can still work on your content during maintenance mode.
- 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 mission, the company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the work of re-entering event details when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
As well as a very large range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to further expand the capabilities of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display all upcoming events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays the events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template addon is capable of displaying your events in a range of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This add on lets you involve others in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the ability 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, allowing staff to help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain sections 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 add on.
- Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing add on adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on 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 the venue door. Customers can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add-on provides you with 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 web developers design their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- JSON API Add on: The new Event Espresso JSON API addon lets other software applications, online tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”My clients have used Event Espresso for Transportation (Cadet Bus for leave), Parties (tailgates and brewery tours), and Horse-back riding lessons and camps. What a terrific plug-in and fantastic support from Seth!” Nina, Blue Iris Web Design
”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
”I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, conference promoter, or event management consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as many of its satisfied plugin end-users 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 amazing support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to run and manage your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license option lets you configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This lets you configure Event Espresso on 5 sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Information
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.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your particular use-case, or to report bugs and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WP site owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, 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 – Event Manager And Registration Plugin For WordPress
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