Do you currently run or plan to run events that require registrations, such as seminars, community classes, non-profit fund raisers, corporate functions, or even a big event such as a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event registrations can be a complex process. You have to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data processing and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are lots of 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 copy settings for similar events, give event managers more control, create a better client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be very costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can download and install an inexpensive and professional online event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily set up an event and start receiving online bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages 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 existing online presence into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for participants to perform the registration on their own.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more attention on creating a more unique event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a 3rd-party service. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy add ons only when you need new functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process can remain entirely in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-keeping.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data gathered from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users via standard features (these are included with the software) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to use in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you collect specific data using a custom event registration form on your web site to prepare a great experience for your attendees.
- Event Calendar. Registrants can easily see your events and add these to their schedule with the calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospects and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the display of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the likelihood of spammers and bot software programs making false registrations with reCAPTCHA option that validate human activity.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with three built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of participants and confirm everyone who attends.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event has reached maximum attendance. You can also specify that waiting list registrants pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and previous attendees to post feedback that can help others choose whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are set up in the WordPress commenting admin area.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build your event page at your own leisure without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to take things live, or schedule to publish your event at a later date and time.
- Multi-Language Application. Event Espresso can be run in more than 15 languages, with more languages coming soon.
- Upload Event Data. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that lets you easily upload a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, custom registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WordPress Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert images and stylize your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- Automatic Updates. Event Espresso offers simple 1-click software installation upgrading to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Team Member Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- Accurate Attendee Management. You control your customers’ records; who has enrolled, for what event and how much they have 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 event attendee list to an Excel spreadsheet for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your customers on a person-by-person basis or as a group.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are 100% compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for normal site traffic when you need to perform maintenance on your site. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their site, 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 mission, the company operates on a modular 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 over 40 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – reduces the need to re-enter event data when adding new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a common set of 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 software users to further enhance the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events 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 occur within a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your web site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event pricing when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site will have access to these special events. Members can also add personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up event history and pay for events.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add-on is 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 allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration addon 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 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.
- Events Calendar Add-on: This add on uses the WP 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 software addon, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Congratulations on an absolutely fantastic plugin. I’m really impressed with its functionality and add on features and will definitely upgrade my client’s production site to the premium version (when ready for launch) to incorporate all the features. As I have told another client “this plugin is the cat’s meow”.” Pete Mansel
“I just completed my first event using Event Espresso. I really believe without Event Espresso my event would not have been the success it was.” Cathy Earle, Women Only Weekend
”Thank you, we just did 2 sell out seminars of 50 attendees in 48 hours using Event Espresso and it was awesome. My wife was able to pick up on the processing backend with ease. You have done a great job on getting this system together – very simple, clear and well laid out With powerful functionality. I am so glad I dumped the old booking application we had and gave Event Espresso a go. Just wanted to say thanks, and thanks for the very patient, friendly and speedy assistance in helping me to get it all set up at the start. Many thanks to you and your team. A grateful customer.” Nicholas de Castella, Emotional Intelligence Trainings
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, event promoter, or event management professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the forums for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive customer support, as so many of its satisfied customers 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
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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 a solution you can rely on to run your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you should consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This edition allows you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This license enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on 5 domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Note: The pricing above was current when 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 Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to notify developers about issues and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run an event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, registering participants, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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