Do you currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings, such as seminars, group courses, non-profit fund raisers, marketing events, or even a big event such as a regional festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event sign-ups is a complex process. You will most likely be required to manage scheduling, date availability, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce repeat events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered web site, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Management & Registration Software For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily schedule an event and start processing bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as it is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to enroll on their own.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more resources on creating a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept low through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy optional addons when you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event signups 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite others who may also be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can be kept entirely in digital form, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data gathered from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to end-users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration. With Event Espresso you can gather unique information using custom event registration forms on your web pages to prepare a customized experience for your attendees.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Easily configure automated registration and payment confirmation emails to communicate with event participants.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospects and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display contact data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing for your system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event attendees and check-in everyone who attends.
- No Ticket Events. List events without making it necessary for registrants to book tickets. Use Event Espresso for any kind of event, not only when tickets are for sale.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Keep your customers updated about your events, drive quality traffic and expand your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Search Engine Friendly Page URLs. Keyword-rich URLs take advantage of your WP Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” permalinks that use relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and improves your search rankings, helping you drive more traffic to your website.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. The organization fields include: business name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, email address, telephone, VAT/tax number, logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Exportable Data. You can export all the data collected from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, planning marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Event Venue Profiles. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 allows details about a venue to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform potential registrants of the location of your event. The venue record has many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays information like venue capacity, venue website, venue phone number, venue location details, maps, etc. You can also list venues on specific parts on your WordPress theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a particular venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, developers, designers, marketers and business owners who also use the plugin. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your site visitors can spread the word about your events using social media sharing buttons.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can also customize your page templates to display events in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are 100% compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you generate a log file with debugging data which can be useful for web developers who are troubleshooting.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And 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 and 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 customer data in emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further expand the capabilities of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Grid Template Add-on: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If the 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 enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to search for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: This add-on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add-on lets you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart addon is great 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 lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives your potential customers 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.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template addon gives event managers an easy-to-use system that allows you to change 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 enables web developers to build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on permits other software applications, web tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
Testimonials
Below are some of the many testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”I have been using Event Espresso to run my festival and have been very happy with how it has worked out. They have provided tremendous support and their iPhone app is amazing and easy to use. I suggest using it for your event.” Alex Grant, Byron Spirit Festival
”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
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, workshop planner, or event consultant, there are just 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 inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent user support, as so many of its satisfied clients confirm:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
The software provides comprehensive support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This edition allows you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you run Event Espresso on one domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you configure Event Espresso on five sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your specific use-case, or to notify developers about issues and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, and reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Management Software
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