Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as workshops, group classes, not-for-profit fund-raisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event bookings can be a complex process. You will most likely need to co-ordinate event schedules, availability, registration numbers, data administration, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce previously-run events, give you more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based digital presence, you can install an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily schedule your event and start accepting bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize event registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Plugin Benefits
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 online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels 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 practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to enrol by themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more of your time on delivering a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party provider. This is made possible by using a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add-ons when you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event signups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process is completed entirely online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data acquired from your event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to end-users via built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with several payment gateways, allowing you to collect registration payments prior to running the events.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary registrant’s information for any additional attendees.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the default ticket price for your default ticket.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track your attendees.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event attendees and check-in everyone who has attended.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is full. You can also make it a requirement wait-list attendees pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential registrants to ask questions about your event and past attendees to post reviews that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public comments are specified in the WordPress commenting section.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events allow you to build your event page in your own time-frame without publishing it to your website. You can continue developing your event until you are ready to publish it live to your website, or schedule to publish your event page at a future date and time.
- Country Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings to be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency name, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, etc.
- Bulk Import Events. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing feature that enables you to quickly import a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload information about events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, custom registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily add photos and write your event descriptions without having to know HTML or CSS, just like any standard WordPress post.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you network with a community of experienced event managers, developers, designers, internet marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Member Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in an event description.
- 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 templates to display events in your own custom way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are fully compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to create a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for web developers who are potential problems.
- 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 software has been built using a modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow software users to further expand the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: 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 the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- 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 attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files add on allows you to override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you include others in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission 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 assign them different permissions with different privileges, allowing others to 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 WP 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.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: 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 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.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you 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 allows web developers to build custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- JSON API Add on: The Event Espresso JSON API addon enables other software applications, web tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are just some of the testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”My clients have used Event Espresso for Transportation (Cadet Bus for leave), Parties (tailgates and brewery tours), and Horse-back riding lessons and camps. What a terrific plug-in and fantastic support from Seth!” Nina, Blue Iris Web Design
”I have to say that it has been the right choice for me…I’ve been extremely pleased with the way my site is working.” Robin, RobinTime
”At first we looked at CVENT for one of our clients and they wanted $16,000 per year for 3000 event attendees + fees totaling $22k. That is before Staff and Webinar fees. Worst of all we had to prepay the $16k amount even if we never used all 3000 attendees. That was when we looked at Event Espresso and we realized we could build our own event system for less than 16K. For the most part we have been very satisfied with our decision. The real ROI will come next year when they don’t have to pay another 16k-22K! Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman (Long Version), KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, concert planner, or event management professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your event customers.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent user support, as many of its clients attest:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
Event Espresso provides great support with access to a support forum, in-depth 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to run your events.
Software Pricing
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 may want to consider using one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This license option lets you install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This edition lets you set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional 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 online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to report problems and leave feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WP site owners.
If you own a WordPress web site and you currently run an event that requires managing dates, times and venues, registering participants, and selling tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
***