Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings, such as seminars, community classes, charity fund raisers, marketing 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 book to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely be required to manage scheduling, availability, participant numbers, data processing and storage, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate repeat events, give you more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can easily install an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software lets you easily create multiple events and begin accepting online bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: EE 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 enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event participants to enroll on their own.
Letting your enrollees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more of your attention on delivering a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service provider. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase add ons only when you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online registrations 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process remains wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information you obtain from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to end-users via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to website owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many different types of tickets as you need and set separate prices, number of tickets, and more.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. Customize your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and components, as well as HTML or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to registrants and let them purchase the ticket(s) that best fits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WP theme and display registrant information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily with pre-configured system-default ticket pricing.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 provides 3 comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to understand who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- Ticketless Events. You can create events without requiring attendees to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any kind of event, not only those that need tickets.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential customers to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post comments that can help others choose whether or not to register. Moderation settings for commenting are set using the WP native commenting settings.
- Keyword-Rich Page URLs. Keyword rich URLs take advantage of your WordPress Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly urls with topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you get a more targeted audience to your site.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used when hosting your events, including currency, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Bulk Upload Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that allows you to import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Participants. EE 4 allows a single person or people to pay for multiple tickets and different ticket types at the same time. Event managers can control how many people are able to enrol in one session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you interact with a community of experienced event managers, developers, web designers, web marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your information 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 an event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different event types such as free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different types of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for event attendees to locate what they’re looking for. You can display all events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that interest your existing customers.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for basic users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 enables more complex enhancements and customizations to the software.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers who are potential problems.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 objectives, 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 includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the need to re-enter event information when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to all tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Add-Ons
As well as an incredible number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to further expand the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display all upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events manager addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can schedule as many events in advance as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to display the event thumbnail image 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 even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add on lets you display your event lists in a variety of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is 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 lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add-on adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at the door. People can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add on: The Event Espresso JSON API add-on gives permission for other applications, online tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied 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
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, event promoter, or event management professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the support forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as so many of its satisfied plugin users confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides incredible 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 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you should consider using one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition lets you configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This enables you to run Event Espresso on five sites. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation tools 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 problems and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of event managers.
If you own a WordPress website and you currently run any event that requires scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Plugin
***