Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require bookings or registrations, such as seminars, community classes, non-profit fund-raisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event like a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a time-consuming process. You will probably need to manage calendar schedules, dates, registration numbers, data processing, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to participants.
There are many benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily replicate similar events, give you more control, create a better customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can easily install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily create your event and start processing registrations in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages 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 existing web site into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to enrol themselves.
Letting your participants to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you focus more of your energy on planning a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a third-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase add ons only when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new registrations 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can remain wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information collected from event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many different types of tickets as you need and set different prices, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. Create a unique look and feel for your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and parts, and HTML or CSS.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to handle taxes for an event and report tax fee components to customers who purchase tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and display events details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the chance of spamming and robots creating fake registrations by using reCAPTCHA tools to authenticate human activity.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track all attendees.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants when they show up, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual submission later.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is sold out. You can also specify that wait-listed registrants pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Private Contact Comments. Keep notes about contacts on their profile and how you have helped them. Private commenting helps you keep records of when event participants contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have assisted your customers.
- SEO Friendly Page URLs. Keyword rich Web links take advantage of your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly permalinks with relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and is favored by search engines, helping you get a more targeted audience to your site.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to display throughout the plugin and your WP themes. Organization fields include: business name, address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email, phone number, VAT/tax number, business logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Exportable Information. You can export all of your data gathered from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, devising new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue manager in EE 4 lets information about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your website to inform potential participants of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes venue details like venue capacity, venue website, telephone number, venue location details, Google map, etc. You can also display venue profiles on specific parts on your WP theme as well as on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Automatic Updating. Event Espresso offers simple one-click software updates to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your installation working with new versions of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event participants who have not fully paid for their admission with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the amount owing, and include a link to the event information, a payment link and a url to download a PDF invoice.
- Accurate Event Participant Manager. You have control of your customers’ date; who has registered, which event they have booked and what amount 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 event attendee list to a CSV file for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your clients on a person-by-person basis or as a group.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 permits more complex developments and customizations to the software.
- Metabox Management & Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reconfigure the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely removed from the page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, Event Espresso’s goal 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 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 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the work of re-entering event information when adding new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse the same questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow plugin users to further enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display your scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add-on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can create as many events in the future as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays event categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name shows the events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- 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 Add-on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that allow you to bypass 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 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 from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration addon gives potential customers 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 shopping cart. With the Multi-Event Registration addon, 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 WP calendar to display events and categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on allows you to auto-register attendees to a specific mailing list or group within MailChimp.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso rocks! I use it for my dance class registrations. Unlike most dance studios where people have to call or send an email in advance, Event Espresso puts a registration form right there in front of the user and allows me to collect valuable information from the user during the registration process with custom questions such as “Do you have previous dance experience?” or “How did you hear about us?”. It also gives my site a professional look and feel.” Ral, Ral’eau Salsa Dance Company
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, workshop promoter, 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 registered owner, go through the forums for useful ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event participants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as many of its satisfied clients attest:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
The Event Espresso plugin provides robust support that includes 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to run your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This license allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This lets you install Event Espresso on one site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This lets you run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list 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 the support forums for questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about errors and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you intend to run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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