Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need handling registrations, such as seminars, community classes, non-profit fundraisers, networking conferences, or even a big event like a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely need to co-ordinate event schedules, event dates, registration numbers, data collection and storage, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to participants.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily reproduce similar events, give you more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based site, you can easily set up an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily set up an event and begin processing bookings literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence 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 seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to enroll on their own.
Letting your clients to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more energy on creating a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase addons when you need added features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process can remain wholly online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Data. You own all the data you collect from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great built-in to website owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure multiple ticket types and set different pricing options, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- Customizable Event Designs. Customize your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s template options and components, and HTML or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with several payment gateways, allowing you to collect money prior to running 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 registrants.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the risk of spammers and bot software programs making fake registrations on your web site with reCAPTCHA option that confirm human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event participants when they show up, or send in paper forms for manual processing later.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can register for your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your event page by allowing potential prospects to interact with you online via commenting and past customers to post feedback that can help others consider whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for comments are configured via the WP native commenting admin area.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events enable you to build your event over time without publishing it to your website. You can keep developing your events until you are ready to take things live, or schedule to publish your event at a later date and time.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be set up in 15+ languages, with more languages coming soon.
- Upload Events. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that allows you to upload a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Event Attendee. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or a group to purchase multiple tickets and different types of tickets at once. Event managers specify how many attendees are allowed to register in a single registration session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- 1-Click Upgrades. Event Espresso provides easy 1-click software updating to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your plugin installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your site visitors can help publicize your events using social media sharing buttons.
- Event Reporting. Event reporting gives you information of all of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows web developers to have more control and options over your event pages and how your information displays to readers.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for regular website visitors when you need to perform maintenance on your website. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: 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 in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance 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 lets you display all scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add-on is capable of displaying your events in a variety of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add on is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives your potential attendees the ability to register for 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 cart. With the Multiple 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 Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that allows you to edit 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 custom templates using one of the templates included as a source template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin addon, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track registrations, and accept payments from your website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written 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
”I have been using Event Espresso to run my festival and have been very happy with how it has worked out. They have provided tremendous support and their iPhone app is amazing and easy to use. I suggest using it for your event.” Alex Grant, Byron Spirit Festival
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, workshop promoter, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time researching the forums for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive customer support, as so many of its customers 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
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you configure Event Espresso on five sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a specific use-case, or to notify developers about issues and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you currently run events that involve managing dates, times and venues, booking participants, and/or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
***