Do you currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings, such as workshops, training classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, social functions, or even a big event like a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings can be a complex process. You will probably have to manage event schedules, available dates and seating, attendee numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to participants.
There are many benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate repeat events, give you more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered site, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP allows you to easily schedule multiple events and start processing bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been redeveloped using a different structure to enable 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 migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to register themselves.
Letting your customers to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you spend more of your attention on delivering a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase optional add ons when you need new features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new bookings outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features and add ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process is completed wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information you obtain from event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you gather unique information using a custom event registration form on your site to create a customized experience for your customers.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Customize your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and parts, plus HTML or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with several payment gateways, allowing you to collect registration fees before running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the display settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price of your default ticket.
- Discount Codes. Provide promotion and multiple discount codes to encourage visitors to take action now, or simply make your offers more appealing for others. This is also practical if you want to sell out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event participants when they show up, or sending in paper forms for manual registration later.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can participate in your events.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Keep your users updated about your events, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of prospects with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Search Engine Friendly Page URLs. Keyword rich event page Web links leverage your WordPress site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” urls with relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and improves your search rankings, helping you bring more potential customers to your site.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso has been translated into more than 15 languages, with more languages planned.
- Import Event Information. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that lets you import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, custom registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WordPress Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily insert graphic images and compose and edit your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any other WP post or page.
- Automatic Plugin Upgrading. Event Espresso offers easy 1-click updates to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your plugin installation working with new versions of WordPress.
- Team Member Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in an event description.
- Accurate Event Attendee Manager. You have control of your customers’ date; who has registered, for what event and how much they have paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of attendees to a spreadsheet for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your event registrants 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 higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 allows for more complex developments and customizations to the software.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular website visitors when you need to perform maintenance on your website. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, 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 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 provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in notification emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Addons
As well as an incredible range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to further expand the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these add-ons 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 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can create as many events in the future as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays categories as a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays the events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: This add on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add on is capable of displaying your event lists in a number of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: 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 add on allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration addon 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 shopping 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 Add on: This add-on uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events using an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Addon: The MailChimp addon allows you to auto-register participants to a selected autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”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 an education services provider, teacher, festival planner, or event professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the forums for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its satisfied plugin 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
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, one-on-one 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you will want to consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This license option allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This 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 Edition – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on 5 sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time 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 the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to report issues and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands of event promoters.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that require managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
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