Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training classes, non-profit fund raisers, social conferences, or even a big event like an arts & crafts, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a complex and time-consuming process. You will most likely be required to manage scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, registration numbers, data administration, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce similar events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP allows you to easily schedule an event and start accepting online bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into an automated and fully featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for participants to enroll on their own.
Letting your enrollees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more of your attention on creating a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third-party service. This is made possible by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase add ons when you need additional features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new bookings any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process remains wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data you acquire from event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to users via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure multiple ticket types and specify different pricing options, ticket quantity limits, and more.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Registrants can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using a calendar.
- Tax Admin And Reporting Options. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to handle taxes for an event and report tax fees to customers who purchase tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows event managers to configure the settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the chance of spammers and bot software programs creating fake registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA features to provide human validation.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event participants and check in those who have attended.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can and can’t participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your events by encouraging potential registrants to interact with you online via commenting and past participants to post reviews that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for comments are set in the WP commenting admin area.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build an event page at your own leisure without publishing it to your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to publish it to your website, or schedule to publish your event pages at a later date and time.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to be used throughout the software and your front-end templates. The organization fields include: company name, address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, phone, tax number, logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for most of your events, you can set up as your default ticket for any new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Register Multiple Participants. EE 4 allows an individual or people to order multiple tickets and different types of tickets at the same time. You control how many attendees are able to enroll in a single booking session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- 1-Click Plugin Updates. Event Espresso provides 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.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and website visitors can tell others about your event using social sharing buttons.
- Accurate Participant Management. You have control of your participants’ records; who has registered, which event they have booked and what amount 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 reports, send custom payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your customers on a person-by-person basis or all at once.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over your content and how your information displays to your prospects.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for normal site visitors when you need to carry out maintenance on your site. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to further expand the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming 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 organizes the events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can also be customized to display an event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website can have access to your special events. Members can also store personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking 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 perfect 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 from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives potential attendees 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 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 Addon: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories via an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add-on: The MailChimp add on lets you auto-register attendees to a selected autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Below are just some of the testimonials that satisfied users have posted about Event Espresso:
”EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
“Love the plugin, we only use it once a year for a race we have in February. This saved us tons of time in data entry. In addition, we had more runners register than any other year. We attribute that to the ease of registering online. Thanks for your work.” Ed, Friends of Oscar Scherer Park
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, show promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event registrants.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with most WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its users confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
The software provides exceptional support that includes access to support forums, 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 an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you should consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license allows you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This license option lets you set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration Plugin For WordPress
Please 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 website.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to notify developers about bugs and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of WP users.
If you own a WordPress web site and you plan to run any event that requires managing dates and venues, booking participants, or selling tickets, 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 – WordPress Event Management And Ticket Registration Software
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