Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need to accept registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fund raisers, social events, or even a large-scale event like a music show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You need to manage event schedules, available dates and seating allocations, attendee numbers, data processing, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily copy settings for previously-run events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily create your event and start accepting bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize your event registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been revamped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
For more details go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to enrol themselves.
Letting your customers to do the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more energy on organizing a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party provider. This is made possible by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase optional add ons only when you need added functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online bookings outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features and addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process remains entirely online, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data you collect from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers through standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of features to website owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up as many different types of tickets as you need and set different prices, maximum number of tickets, and more.
- Custom Confirmation Email Message. Set up automated registration and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with your customers.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with several payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments before running your events.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s details for any added attendees.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily with pre-configured default pricing.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track event participants.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you know who your clients are and how you’ve done business with them. Your Contact Profile section stores the name, biography, contact information, event registration history, private comments, etc. about each registrant.
- No-Ticket Events. You can promote events without making it necessary for participants to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for any kind of event, not just when tickets are needed.
- XML RSS Feeds. Automatically update customers, drive quality traffic and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Keyword Rich Event Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page Web links take advantage of your WP Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly web links that have relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and is favored by search engines, helping you bring more visitors to your events.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used when hosting events, such as currency, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, etc.
- Import Events. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing capability that lets you import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, custom registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WordPress Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add photos and create and edit your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any typical WP post or page.
- Attendee Records. Manage each attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and site visitors can help publicize your events using social share buttons.
- Accurate Attendee Management. You have control of your customers’ information; who has registered, for what event and what amount they’ve 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 an attendee list to Excel for additional reports, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your attendees individually or collectively.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are fully compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for developers when troubleshooting.
- 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 software has been built using a model 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 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in notification emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to every ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Addons
In addition to an incredible array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance the functionality of managing your 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. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a drop-down 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 be customized to show the event thumbnail image instead of the date.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: This add on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add on lets you display your events in a range of visually exciting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This add on lets you involve staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission 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 give them different permissions with different privileges, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain sections of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts 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 addon.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing addon adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue door. Customers can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add-on: This addon uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track bookings, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are just some of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, seminar promoter, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time going through the forums for new ideas and practical ways to improve your event management process or improve the experience of your customers.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent customer support, as many of its satisfied end-users attest:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
The software 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 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to manage your events.
Product Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider using one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option enables you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This edition lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This lets you run Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticket Registration System For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about bugs and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run an event that involves managing dates, times and venues, registering participants, or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Registration Plugin
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