Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community courses, charity fundraisers, social events, or even a large-scale event like a trade show, 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 complex and time-consuming process. You may have to manage scheduling, availability, participant numbers, data processing, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event attendees.
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 expenses, help you easily copy settings for previously-run events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can set up a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software lets you easily create an event and start accepting registrations in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online bookings with Event Espresso)
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 multiple event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the software is being revamped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to perform the enrollment process themselves.
Letting your enrollees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you concentrate more of your energy on delivering a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where Event Espresso users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add ons when you need new features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event signups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process can be completed wholly online, reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information you acquire from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to users via standard features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that customers can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Customized Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can collect unique data using custom event registration forms on your web site to create a great experience for your customers.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily find your events and add these to their schedule with the calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to handle taxes for an event and report tax fees to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and display venue details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily by pre-configuring system-default ticket pricing.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track your attendees.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or sending in paper registration forms for manual inputting later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t attend your events.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Keep your site visitors up-to-date about your events, bring in more visitors and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Most Up-To-Date WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create highly aesthetic event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, etc.
- Exportable Information. You can output all the data gathered from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, devising marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Venue Management. The venue manager in EE 4 lets details about a venue to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform site visitors of your event’s location. The venue profile has many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays information like venue seating capacity, venue site URL, telephone number, physical and virtual location, Google map, etc. You can also display all of your event venues in various locations on your WordPress 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 all the events for a given venue.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you interact with an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in an event description.
- Attendee Reporting. Event reports provides you with data of all the registrations and transactions, enabling you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over the content of your event page and how your information displays to readers.
- Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: According to the mission statement 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 software has been built using a modular and highly efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in notification emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add-on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can add as many events in the future as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- 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 display an event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add-on lets you display your events in a variety of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This addon lets you include your staff in the event management process 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 assign them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing staff to help you manage your events or the events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Multi-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 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 Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register participants to a specified autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are just some of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
“I just completed my first event using Event Espresso. I really believe without Event Espresso my event would not have been the success it was.” Cathy Earle, Women Only Weekend
”I’m using it on multiple sites and enjoying it. It’s simple and as others have stated… fast service and real help.” Arlen Nagata
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, seminar planner, or event professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the forums for tips and practical ways to improve your event management process or enhance the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent customer support, as many of its clients 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 great support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Product Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license option lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This edition enables you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Price 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 is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular situation, or to report problems and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you plan to run an event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, registering participants, and selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
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