Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group classes, non-profit fund raisers, networking events, or even a big event such as a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups is a complex process. You have to manage scheduling, availability, participant numbers, data processing and storage, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate repeat events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based website, you can install a very inexpensive and professional online event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily schedule an event and start processing registrations literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand 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 software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being redeveloped using a different structure to allow for 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 phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about 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:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations and signups manually.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to enrol on their own.
Letting your customers to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more attention on delivering a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a 3rd-party service. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase addons when you need additional functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event registrations outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process remains wholly online, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data you acquire from event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), which these can be managed from a single event.
- Customizable Event Designs. You can customize your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and components, and HTML or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments prior to running your events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary registrant’s information for any added attendees.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the likelihood of spammers and bots making bogus registrations on your web site with reCAPTCHA tools to confirm human activity.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 comes with three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event registrants and check-in everyone who has attended.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can register for your events.
- Private Comments On Contacts. Record observations about contacts on their profile and how you’ve assisted them. Private commenting helps you keep records of when event registrants contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have helped them.
- Keyword Rich Event Page Web Links. Keyword rich Web links take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly urls that use topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you get more potential customers to your website.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso has been translated into over 15 languages, with more languages planned.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for most of your events, you can set up as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by checking a box.
- Event Venue Management. The venue manager in EE 4 lets information about a venue to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your website to inform visitors of the location of your event. The venue profile has many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue information such as venue seating capacity, venue web address, venue phone number, physical and virtual location, map, etc. You can also display venue profiles in various sections on your WordPress theme and on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Automatic Plugin Updating. Event Espresso provides easy 1-click plugin upgrading to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event clients who have not fully paid for their registration with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will address pre-registered participants who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the amount owing, and include links to the event, a payment url and a link where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Accurate Event Attendee Manager. You have control of your attendees’ records; who has registered, for what event and what amount they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to a spreadsheet for additional uses, send customized payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your clients on a person-by-person basis or all at once.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are fully compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Metabox Management & Organization. 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 removed from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their site, Event Espresso’s aim 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 modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a common set of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Addons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow plugin users to further enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display the upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events management add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can schedule as many events in advance as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name shows the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: This add on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Versions: This add-on lets you include your staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the capacity 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 allow them different permissions with different privileges, so others can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain sections 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 addon gives your potential customers the ability to book 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 shopping 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 Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add-on provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you modify 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 web developers design their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration Add-on: The MailChimp add-on lets you auto-register participants to a selected mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Here are just some of the testimonials that satisfied 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 searched long and hard to find something that would serve my needs. This is, by far, the most complete and comprehensive solution I have found.” Bill Hepper, We Teach Live
”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 an education services provider, trainer, show promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the user forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management process and improve the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as many of its satisfied plugin customers confirm:
”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, premium 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 developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you should consider purchasing one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This edition lets you configure Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This license option lets you set up Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to report problems and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of businesses.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run an event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling attendees, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
***