Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings, such as seminars, training classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, social events, or even a big event like a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a complex process. You need to co-ordinate scheduling, dates, registration numbers, data processing, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event registrants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily duplicate repeat events, give you more control, create a better client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can easily install a very inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Management Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily set up an event and start processing bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into an automated and fully featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating attendees to register themselves.
Allowing your participants to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you spend more of your resources on delivering a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd-party service provider. The cost is kept low through a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase optional add-ons when you need added functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online signups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is transacted entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You own all the information acquired from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users via standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to use in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you configure as many kinds of tickets as you need and set unique pricing options, number of tickets, etc.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. Match your web site’s design for your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and parts, as well as HTML and/or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospective registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and reuse events data throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the chance of spamming and robots creating fake registrations with reCAPTCHA tools that confirm human activity.
- Promotional Codes. Set up promotion and discount codes to encourage people to make a decision without hesitation, or simply make your events more attractive for price-sensitive prospects. This is also practical for helping to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your customers are and how you have done past business with them. Your Contact Profile section records the name, biography, contact information, event registration information, comments, and more about each client.
- No Ticket Events. You can promote events without requiring registrants to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for all forms of events, not just when tickets are required.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of interaction to your event pages by allowing potential prospects to ask questions about your event and past customers to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public commenting are set up using the WordPress default commenting system.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date WP Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing, and lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, limits on attendees, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Exportable Data. You can output all of your data gathered from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for creating reports, implementing new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WP WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily insert photos and write your event descriptions without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any typical WordPress post.
- Automatic Updating. Event Espresso offers easy one-click updates to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your software installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your website visitors can help spread the word about your event using social media sharing buttons.
- Accurate Attendee Manager. You control your participants’ records; who has registered, which event they have booked and how much they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to an Excel spreadsheet for additional uses, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your attendees individually or collectively.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical WP users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 permits more complex enhancements and customizations to the software.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to create a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers who are troubleshooting.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: Event Espresso states on their website that their mission 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 company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to every ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you 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 scheduled events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays the categories as a simple list. Clicking the category name displays all events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add on: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- 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 perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right 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 Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential customers the ability to register for 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 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.
- Events Calendar Addon: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events in a nice graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: 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 registrant data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
Customer Feedback
Below are just some of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is so easy to use yet feature rich and stable. It is a cornerstone of our site and our success.” Fraser Barner, Speaker’s Lab
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, event promoter, or event management consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the user forum for new ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management workflow or improve the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great end-user support, as many of its users attest:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
Event Espresso provides comprehensive 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 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 developers with a solid 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 (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This enables you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This option enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This option allows you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to notify developers about issues and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you currently run an event that requires managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
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