Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as workshops, group courses, charity fund-raisers, social conferences, or even a large-scale event like a dance party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a complex process. You may be required to manage scheduling, event dates, attendee numbers, data collection, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily copy settings for recurring events, give you more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based site, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily set up your event and start receiving bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize your event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits 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 digital presence into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling attendees to enrol on their own.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more resources on planning a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a third-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy addons only when you need new functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event bookings any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process remains wholly online, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information you collect from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its customers via standard features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you collect specific data using a custom event registration form on your web site to prepare a customized experience for your users.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. You can customize your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and parts, as well as HTML and CSS.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to administer taxes for your event and report tax fees to registrants when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing of the default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 provides three useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of participants and check-in those who attend.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has become sold out. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-listed registrants pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- XML RSS Feeds. Provide automatic updates to your website readers, drive quality traffic and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop your event page over time without displaying it live on your site. You can keep working on your event until you are ready to take it live, or schedule your event to publish at a future time and date.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be set up in 15+ languages, with more languages planned.
- Exportable Data. You can output all the information gathered from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for producing advanced reports, implementing marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Venue Profiles. The venue management feature in Event Espresso 4 lets information about a venue to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform potential attendees of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue information such as venue seating capacity, venue web address, telephone number, venue address, maps, etc. You can also list venues in different areas in your WP theme and on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Automatic Software Installation Updates. Event Espresso provides easy 1-click plugin updating to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential participants who have not paid in full for their booking with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered customers who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the amount they owe, and include links to the event information, a payment url and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Accurate Event Participant Manager. You have control of your customers’ details; who has enrolled, for what event and how much they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to an Excel spreadsheet for additional reports, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your participants individually or collectively.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are fully compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Metabox Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their site, 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 mission, 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 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in confirmation emails and newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to significantly expand the functionality of your event management process.
Some of these add ons include:
- 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 Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with many 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 be customized to show the event thumbnail image instead of a date.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files addon allows you to bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add on is great 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 addon allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential attendees 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 Multi-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 Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template addon provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you edit 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 build custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API add-on allows other software applications, web tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
Customer Feedback
Below are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users 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
”I have been using Event Espresso to run my festival and have been very happy with how it has worked out. They have provided tremendous support and their iPhone app is amazing and easy to use. I suggest using it for your event.” Alex Grant, Byron Spirit Festival
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, workshop planner, or event professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the user forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your customers.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent customer support, as many of its clients attest:
”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
The plugin provides incredible support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This lets you set up Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This edition allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This option allows you to configure Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Information
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.
Look up the software’s online documentation pages 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 problems and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress web site and you currently run any event that requires scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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