Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management Plugin

Event Espresso is a complete event registration and ticketing management automation software solution for WordPress …

Event EspressoDo you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community courses, non-profit fund raisers, social conferences, or even a big event like a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?

Co-ordinating event registrations is a complicated and time-consuming process. You will probably have to co-ordinate event schedules, dates, participant numbers, data collection and storage, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to attendees.

There are lots of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and increase your sales.

The problem is that this can be very costly.

Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can install a very inexpensive and professional online event booking solution.

Event Espresso - Event Manager & Ticket Registration System For WordPress

Presenting …

Event Espresso

Event Espresso

Plugin Description

The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily schedule multiple events and start accepting bookings in minutes.

Event Espresso - WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager Plugin

(Set up multiple events and take online bookings with Event Espresso)

Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.

Event Espresso - WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Management System

Create custom registration forms

You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.

Event Espresso

View detailed information about your event attendees

Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of this plugin.

To learn more about the plugin go 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:

Automated Event Registration Management

Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing online presence into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.

Better Business Productivity

By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the need to process registrations and bookings manually.

Basically, you are facilitating event participants to enrol by themselves.

Allowing your customers to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you direct more of your time on creating a more enjoyable event.

Complete Control Over The User Experience

As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your attendees to experience.

Some additional benefits include the following:

  • Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy add-ons only when you need additional features.
  • Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online signups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with other people they know who may be interested.
  • Green And Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process is conducted entirely in digital form, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
  • Own Your Data. You own all the information you obtain from event participants.

Event Espresso Features

Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.

Event Espresso

Event Espresso offers a number of great features to site owners. Here are just a few of these:

  • Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
  • Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
  • Event Calendar. Attendees can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a WordPress calendar.
  • Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospective registrants and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
  • Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to configure the display settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
  • Default Prices. Set up events quickly by pre-configuring default pricing.
  • Promotional Codes. Leverage promotional and multiple discount codes to encourage visitors to make a buying decision now, or simply make your events more attractive for others. This is also practical if you want to sell out events close to deadlines.
  • Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of attendees and confirm everyone who has attended.
  • No Ticket Events. You can set up events without making it necessary for attendees to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for any form of event, not just those that need tickets.
  • Public Commenting. Add social interactivity to your events by allowing potential registrants to ask questions about your event and previous attendees to post comments that can help others decide whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WP native commenting settings.
  • Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs leverage your WordPress site’s Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly web links with relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your website.
  • Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout the software and your WP themes. Your organization information include: company name, address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, telephone, tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
  • Import Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that lets you easily upload a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and upload information about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
  • Venue Profiles. The venue manager feature in EE 4 allows information about venues to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your site to inform attendees of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays information such as venue seating capacity, venue website, venue phone number, physical, maps, etc. You can also display venue profiles throughout various sections of your theme as well as on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a given venue.
  • Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, web developers, web designers, marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
  • Staff Member Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
  • Attendee Reporting. Event reporting gives you information of all of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and how much money you have collected.

Extra features include:

  • Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are fully compatible with WordPress.
  • Control Box Management & Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the workflow configuration.
  • Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 goals, the company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.

The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 additional features, including:

  • Duplicating events – reduces the need to re-enter event data when adding new events.
  • Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same group of questions for similar events.
  • Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.

Event Espresso - WordPress Event Manager & Registration Plugin

Event Espresso Add-Ons

In addition to a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the capabilities of events.

Some of these add-ons include:

  • Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
  • Recurring Events Dropdown Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events into a drop-down list.
  • Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows the categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name shows the events associated with that category and closes any 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 lets you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
  • Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you involve other users in the event management process and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing others to help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain sections of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add on.
  • Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your 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 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 WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories via an attractive graphical calendar.
  • EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your web site.

Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.

Event Espresso - WordPress Event Manager And Registration Plugin

For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:

User Feedback

Here are some of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted 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

”Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman, KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com

”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

Event Espresso Tips

Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, concert promoter, or event consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.

After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, visit the user forum for useful ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your participants.

Event Espresso - WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Plugin

Support

Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as many of its clients confirm:

”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 robust 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 plugin you can rely on to run and manage your events.

Product Cost

Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you should consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:

  • Personal Licensing – This lets you configure Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
  • Everything Licensing – This lets you install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
  • Developer License – This license lets you install Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $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 sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso

Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.

Event Espresso – Additional Info

Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to remain 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 visit the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report bugs and give feedback.

For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.

We Recommend

Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of WP website owners.

If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run any event that requires managing dates, times and venues, booking participants, or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.

Event Espresso - WordPress Event Manager And Ticket Registration System

For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Software

***