Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need handling registrations, such as workshops, community courses, non-profit fundraisers, social conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a dance party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate scheduling, availability, registration numbers, data processing, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily replicate previous events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can download and install a very inexpensive and professional online event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily create an event and begin receiving registrations literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: 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 EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into a fully-featured and automated 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 a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to register on their own.
Allowing your participants to do the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you direct more of your time on delivering a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a third-party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy optional addons only when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online registrations 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite their friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process remains wholly in digital form, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data acquired from event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its customers via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Custom Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you collect unique information using a custom event registration form on your website to create a tailored experience for your clients.
- Custom Confirmation Email Message. Easily configure automated registration and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event participants.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you several ways to administer taxes for an event and report tax fee components to customers when purchasing tickets. You can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows event managers to customize the display settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spammers and robots making false registrations on your web site by using reCAPTCHA features to provide human authentication.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 comes with three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of attendees and check in those who have attended.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social interactivity to your events pages by encouraging potential customers to ask questions about your event and past participants to post feedback that can help others choose whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public comments are set up using the WordPress commenting system.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop an event page over time without displaying it live on your website. You can keep building your event pages until you are ready to publish it to your site, or schedule your event to publish at a later date and time.
- Country Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings to be used in your events, such as currency name, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, and so on.
- Import Events. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that lets you import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Event Venue Management. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 lets information about a venue to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your website to inform registrants of your event’s location. The venue record has many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes information like venue seating capacity, venue web address, phone number, venue location details, Google map, etc. You can also display venue profiles throughout various areas on your WP theme as well as on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a given venue.
- Automatic Plugin Installation Updating. Event Espresso provides simple one-click plugin installation updating to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your plugin installation up-to-date with new versions of WordPress.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and keep your data 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 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.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for most users, and also extremely robust and customizable for higher end users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 permits more complex extensions and customizations to the application.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for normal site traffic when site maintenance is needed. You can continue to work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated 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 goals, the company operates on a modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including participant data in emails and email newsletters.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an incredible array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display your scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes many datetime events 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 the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your web site uses 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 add-on lets you take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users will have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Users can also look up previous events and pay for future events.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add-on is suitable 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 site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add on adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue door. Attendees can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to modify the look and feel 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 their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a source template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing software add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track registrations, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Here are just some of the testimonials that plugin users 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
”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’m so excited to fire Eventbrite! Event Espresso has an amazing WP plugin for event management. We’re testing it now & are very impressed! In a nutshell Event Espresso saves us money & does everything Eventbrite did before. :)” Dustin Nay
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, festival planner, or event management consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your event registrants.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as many of its plugin clients confirm:
”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
Event Espresso provides great support with access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, one-on-one 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 WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This edition lets you set up Event Espresso on one site 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 one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This edition allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
Event Espresso regularly adds 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 documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to report problems and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of WordPress website owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you plan to run an event that requires scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling participants, and booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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