Do you currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training courses, non-profit fund raisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event such as an arts & crafts, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings can be a time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate scheduling, event dates, registration numbers, data administration, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for recurring events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can install an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create your event and start accepting registrations in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually move completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even 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 manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating attendees to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your customers to do the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you focus more of your attention on delivering a more unique event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third party service. This is made possible by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add-ons when you need added features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event bookings 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is completed entirely in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-keeping.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data you collect from event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many different types of tickets as you need and specify prices, number of tickets, and more.
- Customized Notification Email Message. Configure automated registration and payment confirmation emails to communicate with event participants.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides several options to administer taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fees to registrants who purchase tickets. You can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display registrant data throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the likelihood of spamming and bots creating false registrations on your web site with reCAPTCHA tools to validate human activity.
- Discount Codes. Offer promotion and multiple discount codes to incentivize people to register immediately, or simply make your offerings more affordable for others. This is also practical for helping to increase sales of events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can register for your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your events by encouraging potential attendees to ask questions about your event and past attendees to post reviews that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for commenting are configured via the WordPress commenting section.
- Works With The Most Recent Version Of WP. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build beautiful event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing, and lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event page designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, attendee limits, print-ready tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for most of your events, you can set up as your default ticket for any new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue management feature in EE 4 lets details about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform users of your event’s location. The venue record displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays information like venue seating capacity, venue web address, venue phone number, venue location details, Google map, etc. You can also display all of your venues throughout different parts on your WP theme and on a venue listing page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a given venue.
- Registrant Records. Manage each customer’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event attendees who have not made payment for their admission with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the balance owing, and include links to the event, a payment link and a link where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Transaction Reporting. Quick-view event reporting gives you data of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money you have collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over your events and how your information displays to your site visitors.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely removed from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: 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 goals, 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 comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to every ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to further enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display the upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that occur 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 provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart addon is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is 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 site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential attendees the ability to book 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 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register attendees to a specified mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Here are just some of the testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”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
”I am in love with your product, I work with many educational institutions that hold classes/events and I will definitely recommend this to all of them, the only time I have seen a system this comprehensive and sophisticated is when an organization I worked with paid a programmer nearly $8,000 for a custom solution, and yet still there are features in your registration system that his didn’t have. Thank you so much for your help and patience.” Abdullah J.
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, conference promoter, or event consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time visiting the user forum for useful ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management process and improve the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP development rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as many of its plugin users 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 great support with access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, priority 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to run your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you should consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This license option enables you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license enables you to install Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific 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 website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of WordPress users.
If you own a WordPress website and you intend to run events that require managing 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
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