Do you currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings or registrations, such as seminars, community courses, not-for-profit fund-raisers, social events, or even a large-scale event such as an art exhibition, 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 complex process. You will probably need to co-ordinate scheduling, date availability, attendee numbers, data collection, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to participants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate previous events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based web site, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily create multiple events and start receiving bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
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 online presence into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options 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 improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to perform the enrollment process on their own.
Allowing your customers to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more time on planning a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase optional add-ons when you need new functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new bookings outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process can remain wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data gathered from your event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect unique information using custom event registration forms on your web pages to create a great experience for your attendees.
- Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your events and add these to their schedule using a calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration details for any added attendees.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing of the default ticket.
- Discount Codes. Provide promotion and discount codes to incentivize prospects to make a decision immediately, or simply make your offerings more appealing for others. Also useful for helping to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you understand who your customers are and how you’ve done business with them. Your Contact Profile page records the name, biography, contact details, event registration data, comments, etc. about each client.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can join a waiting list if your event has reached the maximum number of participants. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-list registrants pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for your event.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Keep your site visitors up-to-date about your events, bring in more visitors and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Most Recent WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create visually attractive event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings to be used for your events, including currency name, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, and so on.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for your events, you can easily set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next event simply by checking a box.
- Venue Profiles. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 allows information about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform registrants of the location of your event. The venue record displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you add details such as venue seating capacity, venue site URL, telephone number, venue address, directions map, etc. You can also display venue profiles in different sections in your WordPress theme and on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a particular venue.
- Registrant Records. You can manage your registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their information organized and easily within reach.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event attendees who have not paid in full for their admission with a standard but personalized invoice with one click. Your invoices will reference registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the amount they owe, and include links to the event, a payment link and a url to download the invoice.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can also customize your page templates to display events in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are fully compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to output a log file with debugging data that can be useful for developers who are troubleshooting.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: According to the mission statement 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 mission, the software has been built using a modular and highly efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in notification emails and email updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to further enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays event categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name shows all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your web site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template addon is capable of displaying your event lists in a range of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Versions: This add on lets you include others in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers the ability to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and give them different permissions with different privileges, so others can help you manage your events or the events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain sections 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.
- 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 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 Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template add on gives you 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 their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration Addon: The MailChimp add on allows you to automatically register participants to a particular autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Customers – Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”It’s been very comprehensive and covers exactly the aspects of event registration that we needed for our site plus some features that we didn’t even need but could still use in the future. Very Excellent Plugin!” Tristan Hall, Area 12:2 Youth Group
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, workshop promoter, or event management consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, search the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your event participants.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its satisfied plugin end-users confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
The Event Espresso software provides incredible support that includes 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to run your events.
Product Licensing Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you will want to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This license option enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 sites. It 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 special offers. Presently, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the 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 to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to notify developers about issues and leave feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of users.
If you own a WordPress website and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and/or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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