Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need handling registrations, such as workshops, group classes, non-profit fund raisers, marketing conferences, or even a big event like a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a time-consuming process. You may need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, date availability, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate repeat events, give you more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can easily install a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create your event and begin accepting bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating 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 literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and signups manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event participants to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your participants to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more time on organizing a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a 3rd-party service. This is made possible by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons only if you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event signups any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process can be performed wholly in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data collected from event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that users can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique built-in to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Forms. With Event Espresso you can collect unique data using a custom event registration form on your site to prepare a tailored experience for your event participants.
- Customized Notification Email Message. Configure automatic booking and payment confirmation emails to communicate with your participants.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect money prior to running the events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse contact data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events fast by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- Discount Codes. Leverage promotional and discount codes to incentivize visitors to register immediately, or make your offerings more attractive for price-sensitive prospects. Also useful for helping to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to know who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can and cannot register for your events.
- RSS Feeds. Provide automatic updates to users, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of prospects with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Search Engine Friendly Event Page URLs. Keyword rich event page URLs leverage your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” urls with topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and improves your search rankings, helping you bring a more targeted audience to your site.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, attendee limits, printable ticketing and more.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for your events, you can easily set up as your default ticket for your new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add photos and write your content without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any WP post or page.
- Attendee Records. You can manage your registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily accessible.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your site visitors can help publicize your events using social media sharing buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events like free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different kinds of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize these to make it easier for event participants to locate what they’re searching for. You can list all 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 other events in the categories that appeal to your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for basic WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 allows for more complex developments and customizations to the plugin.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you generate a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for web developers when potential problems.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their website, Event Espresso’s objective 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 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 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes participant data in emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to each ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Addons
In addition to a very large range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to further expand the capabilities of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Addon: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If an event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can create as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of these recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays the categories as a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays all events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add on allows you to override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This add-on lets you include others in the event management process and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and give them different permissions with different capabilities, so your staff 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 parts 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 add-on gives your potential customers the ability to book 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 shopping 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software add-on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant 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 plugin, including new add-ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Below are just some of the testimonials that satisfied customers 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
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, concert promoter, or event professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the forums for tips and practical ways to improve your event management process or improve the experience of your customers.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with all 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 end-user support, as so many of its end-users confirm:
”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 great support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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 WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This lets you configure Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This option enables you to install 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 Edition – This license allows you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please 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 site.
Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to report issues and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run any event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, or selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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