Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fund-raisers, marketing events, or even a big event such as a festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event registrations can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You may be required to manage event schedules, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data processing, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily replicate previously-run events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered site, you can easily set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin lets you easily schedule multiple events and begin processing online registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been redeveloped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The Event Espresso 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 read more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling event participants to enroll by themselves.
Letting your participants to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more energy on creating a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add ons only if you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event signups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process remains wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information you acquire from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to end-users through built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Forms. With Event Espresso you can collect unique information using custom event registration forms on your website to plan a tailored experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. You can customize your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and elements, plus HTML and CSS.
- Tax Admin & Reporting Options. Event Espresso 4 provides several options to administer taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers when purchasing tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to configure the display settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for the default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of attendees and check-in those who attend.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event has reached maximum attendance. Additionally, you can make it a requirement waiting list registrants pay for their spots if you plan to expand numbers for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential prospects to ask questions about your event and previous attendees to post reviews that can help others decide whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public commenting are configured via the WordPress commenting admin area.
- Keyword Rich Event Page URLs. Keyword rich URLs leverage your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links with relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your events.
- Multi-Language Plugin. Event Espresso can be run in over 15 languages, and more translations are being added all the time.
- Import Event Information. EE 4 provides an advanced importing capability that allows you to easily import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload details about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Event Venue Management. The venue manager feature in EE 4 lets information about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform site visitors of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes venue details such as venue seating capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, venue location details, Google map, etc. You can also display venue profiles throughout different areas on your WordPress theme and on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
- Automatic Updates. Event Espresso provides simple 1-click plugin upgrades to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Team Member Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can also customize the templates to display events in your own unique way.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over the content of your event pages and how your information displays to site visitors.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you output a log file with debugging data which can be useful for developers when potential plugin errors.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s aim 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 in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to significantly 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 the event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes many datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files add on lets you override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on 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 allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration add-on 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 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 add on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories using a nice graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer 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 plugin, including new addons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Feedback
Here are just some of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, seminar planner, or event consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the forums for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management process or enhance the experience of your event participants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive technical support, as so many of its end-users confirm:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
Event Espresso provides robust support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This edition allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on five domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 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. Currently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Information
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.
Search the software’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular situation, or to report problems and leave feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of businesses.
If you own a WordPress website and you plan to run events that involve managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
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