Do you currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as seminars, community courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, networking functions, or even a large-scale event like a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings can be a complex process. You will probably have to co-ordinate scheduling, availability, attendee numbers, data collection and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give you more control, create a better client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily set up an event and begin processing online bookings in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event 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 review, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as it is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your participants to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you spend more time on planning a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party provider. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add ons only if you need extra features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online sign-ups any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can be completed wholly in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data acquired from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers via built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that customers can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great built-in to site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration. With Event Espresso you can gather specific data using custom event registration forms on your web site to prepare a great experience for your event participants.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily find your events and add these to their schedule using the calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to registrants so they can choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration information for any added registrants.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly with pre-configured default prices.
- Promotional Codes. Offer promotion and multiple discount codes to incentivize prospects to register now, or simply make your offers more attractive for price-sensitive prospects. This is also practical if you want to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event registrants and confirm those who attend.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. You can also make it a requirement wait-listed attendees pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential registrants to interact with you online via commenting and past customers to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WordPress commenting section.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WordPress. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create visually attractive event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, including currency, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Import Event Information. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing capability that lets you upload bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import information about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WP Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily add images and format your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you engage with a community of experienced event managers, programmers, web designers, internet marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and website visitors can help spread the word about your events using social share buttons.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can even customize the templates to display event information in your own custom way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for normal site visitors whenever website maintenance is required. You can still work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the mission statement 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 objectives, the company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the work of re-entering event data when creating new events.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same group of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Addons
In addition to an amazing array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand the functionality of your event management system.
Some of these add ons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Addon: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If the event does not have a featured image available, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with many datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to browse for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add on lets you override certain aspects of the 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 directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives your potential attendees the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their shopping cart. With the Multiple 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.
- Events Calendar Add on: This addon uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track bookings, and accept payments from your website.
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, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”Hello. I wanted to say that I’ve purchased Event Espresso twice now for two different organizations and have had great success with the purchases. Outside of photography, I also build small websites with WordPress as the CMS. I built two websites for two different martial arts organizations who host yearly seminars and tournaments. The plug in has provided a way for attendees to sign up online from both Canada and the United States with ease, and also allowed the organizations to easily manage payments, attendee lists, and many other aspects of the events. Thanks to Seth for creating such a great plug in, and for your constant support!” James Zedd, James Zedd Photography
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, show promoter, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time researching the user forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management workflow or enhance the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive user support, as many of its users attest:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
The software provides robust support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you will want to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This license enables you to configure Event Espresso on five sites. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – 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.
Look up the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about problems and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of event promoters.
If you own a WordPress web site and you intend to run an event that involves scheduling dates and venues, registering participants, and/or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Management & Registration Plugin For WordPress
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