Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as seminars, group courses, non-profit fundraisers, marketing functions, or even a large-scale event such as a music show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complicated and time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, availability, attendee numbers, data entry, payment processing and sending invoices, 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 recurring events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered web site, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional online event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin lets you easily create your event and start processing registrations in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 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 learn more about the benefits and features of using the 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 existing online presence into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and signups manually.
Basically, you are facilitating event participants to perform the sign-up process on their own.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you concentrate more of your attention on organizing a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy addons when you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new signups outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite others who may be interested.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process is conducted wholly in digital form, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You own all the data you acquire from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its customers via built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of built-in to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create as many kinds of tickets as you need and set different pricing options, ticket quantity limits, and more.
- Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospective registrants and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display events information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly with pre-configured system-default ticket pricing.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 comes with 3 comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of attendees and confirm those who attend.
- No Ticket Events. List events without requiring participants to select tickets. Use Event Espresso for all forms of events, not just those that require tickets.
- RSS Event Feeds. Automatically update your blog readers, drive quality traffic and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WP. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build aesthetically enhanced event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing, and lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event designs, payment processing, wait lists, limits on attendees, print-ready tickets and more.
- Upload Events. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that enables you to import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and import details about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Venue Management. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 lets information about a venue to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your site to inform potential participants of the location of your event. The venue record has many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays details like venue seating capacity, venue website, telephone number, physical, directions map, etc. You can also display venue profiles in different parts in your theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a particular venue.
- Registrant Profiles. Manage your attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and your website visitors can help spread the word about your event using social media share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events like free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different kinds of courses, etc. you can categorize these to make it easier for your attendees to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that interest your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Control Box Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the 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 company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse the same questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to further expand the capabilities of events.
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 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 create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows the categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name shows all events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your web 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 Template Add-on: The Custom Template addon can display your events in a range of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon 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.
- Events Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin add-on, 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: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso rocks! I use it for my dance class registrations. Unlike most dance studios where people have to call or send an email in advance, Event Espresso puts a registration form right there in front of the user and allows me to collect valuable information from the user during the registration process with custom questions such as “Do you have previous dance experience?” or “How did you hear about us?”. It also gives my site a professional look and feel.” Ral, Ral’eau Salsa Dance Company
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”At first we looked at CVENT for one of our clients and they wanted $16,000 per year for 3000 event attendees + fees totaling $22k. That is before Staff and Webinar fees. Worst of all we had to prepay the $16k amount even if we never used all 3000 attendees. That was when we looked at Event Espresso and we realized we could build our own event system for less than 16K. For the most part we have been very satisfied with our decision. The real ROI will come next year when they don’t have to pay another 16k-22K! 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 (Long Version), KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, event planner, or event management professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the support forum for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your event participants.
Product Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as 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
The plugin provides amazing support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to run your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you need to consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This allows you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This license allows you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This option lets you configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. 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 specials being offered. Presently, the software is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional 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 documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific 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 website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you own a WordPress site and you currently run events that require managing dates, times and venues, booking participants, and selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Plugin
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