Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings, such as seminars, training courses, charity fund raisers, networking conferences, or even a big event like an exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event bookings can be a complex and time-consuming process. You may be required to manage scheduling, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data processing and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily replicate previous events, give event managers more control, create a better user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based web site, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily create your event and start accepting online registrations in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing software.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as it is being rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of using this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations and signups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event participants to complete the registration process on their own.
Letting your customers to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more energy on creating a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add-ons when you need additional features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new sign-ups 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process can remain entirely in digital form, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data you obtain from event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that customers can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Configure automated registration and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with your customers.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to registrants so they can choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to customize the look and control settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the chance of spammers and bot software programs making fake registrations with reCAPTCHA tools that confirm human activity.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of registrants and check in those who attend.
- No Ticket Events. You can create events without the requirement for participants to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for any kind of event, not only those that need tickets.
- Event RSS Feeds. Keep your customers up-to-date about your events, bring in more visitors and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Latest Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to be used throughout Event Espresso and your WP themes. Your organization fields include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, telephone, VAT/tax number, business logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Upload Event Data. EE 4 provides an advanced importing capability that enables you to easily import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and upload information about events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, custom registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Event Attendee. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or people to enroll multiple attendees at the same time. Event managers specify how many people can register in a single registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso provides users with access to an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can network with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential participants who have not made payment for their booking with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the amount owing, and include links to the event, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Accurate Event Attendee Management. You control your attendees’ details; who has registered, for what event and how much they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an attendee list to an Excel spreadsheet for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your attendees individually or collectively.
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 100% compatible with WordPress.
- Control Box Management & Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated 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 goals, the software has been built using a model 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:
- Duplicating events – reduces the need to re-enter event data when creating new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse the same group of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Add ons
As well as a very large array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the capabilities 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 upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add-on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can also be customized to show an event thumbnail 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 also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take full advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users can have access to your special events. Members can also store personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also look up event history and pay for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Versions: This addon lets you involve your staff in the event management process and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers the ability to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff to help you manage your events or the events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add on.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add on gives you the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. Attendees 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.
- Events Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that allows you to edit the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also lets developers design custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon allows you to auto-register participants to a selected mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
Customers – Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman, KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
”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
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, show promoter, or event professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the forums for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your customers.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great customer support, as many of its satisfied users confirm:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
The Event Espresso software provides amazing support with access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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 an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you will want to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This edition lets you install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license option allows you to set up Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
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 website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. 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 pages to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about bugs and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that involve managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and/or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
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