Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling registrations, such as workshops, training classes, non-profit fund-raisers, marketing functions, or even a big event like a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You will probably have to manage event schedules, availability, registration numbers, data collection, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give you more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website, you can easily install an inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily schedule multiple events and start accepting registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt 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 price. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages 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 website into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for event attendees to perform the registration process on their own.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more of your energy on organizing a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd party provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase addons only if you need additional functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online bookings outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process is transacted wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information you collect from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that customers can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many kinds of tickets as you need and set different prices, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Set up automatic registration and payment notification email messages to communicate with your attendees.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospects and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse registrant details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for the default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes three built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of registrants and check in everyone who attends.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. You can also specify that wait-listed registrants pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and past customers to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public comments are specified in the WordPress commenting settings.
- Optimized For The Most Recent Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create aesthetically beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be run in 15+ languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Exportable Information. You can export all of your information collected from event customers into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, planning new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Register Multiple Attendees. EE 4 allows an individual or an organization to buy multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. You specify how many people can register in a single registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- One-Click Upgrading. Event Espresso offers easy one-click software installation upgrading to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation up-to-date with new versions of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential registrants who have not made payment for their admission with a standard but personalized invoice with one click. Your invoices will reference registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the amount owing, and include a link to the event information, a payment url and a link where they can download the invoice.
- Attendee Reports. Quick-view event reports provides you with data of all registrations and transactions, allowing you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you’ve collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over your content and how the information displays to readers.
- Control Box Management & Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your page.
- 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 objectives, the software has been built using 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 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the work of re-entering event information when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow users to significantly expand the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with multiple 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 also be customized to display an event thumbnail image instead of the date.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your site is featured on 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 Addon: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that allow you to override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Versions: This add-on lets you involve others in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission 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 allow them different permissions with different privileges, allowing others to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-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 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 Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template addon provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that lets you change 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 design their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track registrations, and accept payments from your website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Here are just some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, concert planner, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the forums for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management process or enhance the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WP plugins and themes that follow standard WP development rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its users confirm:
”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 great support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to run and manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you may want to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license option enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This option allows you to run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
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 to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular situation, or to notify developers about errors and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WP website owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues, registering participants, and/or booking seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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