Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require handling registrations, such as seminars, community classes, charity fundraisers, social functions, or even a large-scale event such as a festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings is a time-consuming process. You will probably have to manage scheduling, dates, attendee numbers, data processing, payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are many benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give you more control, create a better client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can easily set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily create an event and start accepting online registrations in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
Access 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 Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth. 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 the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
More info:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to enroll themselves.
Allowing your participants to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your attention on delivering a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy optional addons when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event sign-ups 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can be completed wholly in digital form, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information obtained from your event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to its customers via standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to use in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up as many different types of tickets as you need and specify different prices, number of tickets, etc.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using a calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments before running your events.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and reuse attendee details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily by pre-configuring default ticket pricing.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or sending in paper-based registration forms for manual processing later.
- Ticketless Events. Set up events without the requirement for registrants to select tickets. Use Event Espresso for all kinds of events, not only those that need tickets.
- Private Comments On Contacts. Keep observations about event registrants on their profile. Private commenting enables you to keep a record of when event attendees contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have assisted them.
- Draft Events. Draft events enable you to build an event over multiple sessions without displaying it live on your site. You can work on your event until you are ready to publish it live on your site, or schedule your event to publish at a future date and time.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to display throughout the plugin and your front-end templates. Organization data include: company name, address, city, state, country, zip code, email address, telephone, tax number, company logo, Facebook URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the data gathered from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for producing advanced reports, devising new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Venue Manager. The venue manager in EE 4 allows details about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform attendees of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you reuse information such as venue capacity, venue web address, phone number, venue location details, map, etc. You can also display all of your event venues on various sections on your theme as well as on a venue listing page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
- One-Click Software Updating. Event Espresso offers simple one-click software installation upgrades to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your plugin installation compatible with new versions of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your site visitors can help publicize your events using social share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events like free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different kinds of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your attendees to find what they’re searching for. You can display all events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your existing customers.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with WordPress.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s goal 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 in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in emails and email newsletters.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to further expand the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: 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 classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template shows the 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: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template addon is capable of displaying your events in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This add on lets you include staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers permission 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 others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts 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.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential attendees the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their shopping cart. With the Multiple 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 Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing software addon, you can completely 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 the plugin, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
Customer Feedback
Here are just some of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, conference planner, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed user, visit the user forum for useful ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as many of its clients attest:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
The plugin provides comprehensive support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to run and manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you should consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This option lets you run Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
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 documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to notify developers about issues and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of companies.
If you own a WordPress website and you plan to run events that involve managing dates and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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