Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training courses, non-profit fund-raisers, social functions, or even a big event such as a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event sign-ups is a complicated and time-consuming process. You need to manage scheduling, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data collection, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are lots of advantages 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 previous events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can download and install an inexpensive and professional online event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin allows you to easily schedule your event and start receiving bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been revamped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
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 emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to enrol themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more energy on organizing a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service provider. The cost is kept low 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 only when you need new features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new signups outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing add ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can remain entirely online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information gathered from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users through standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great built-in to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you configure multiple ticket types and set different pricing options, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. You can customize your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and components, and HTML or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect booking payments prior to running events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse attendee data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events fast with pre-configured default prices.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants at the door, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual registration later.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event has reached the maximum number of participants. You can also make it a requirement waiting list members pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for the event.
- Private Commenting On Contacts. Record notes about contacts on their profile and how you’ve assisted them. Private notes lets you keep records of when users contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have helped your customers.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build your event page in your own time-frame without publishing it to your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to publish it on your website, or schedule to publish your event page at a future time and date.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your WordPress themes. Your organization fields include: company name, address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email, phone number, tax number, business logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Upload Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that enables you to quickly upload a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, custom registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WordPress WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily insert images and write and edit your content without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- Registrant Profiles. Manage each attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily within reach.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential clients who have not fully paid for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance they owe, and include a link to the event, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Transaction Reports. Event reporting gives you information of all the registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you have collected.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are fully compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you create a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for web developers who are potential application errors.
- 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 mission, the software has been built using a 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 over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes registrant data in emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Addons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display the scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize many datetime events into a drop-down 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 be customized to show the event thumbnail instead of the date.
- EE4 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 registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add-on is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you manage the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your potential customers the ability to register for 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 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.
- Events Calendar Add-on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events in a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add on: The Event Espresso JSON API addon allows other applications, websites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Below are just some of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
“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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, festival promoter, or event management consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event customers.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as many of its satisfied plugin clients attest:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support with access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, one-on-one 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend 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 personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you will want to consider using one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This 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 Licensing – This license allows you to configure Event Espresso on five sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s documentation pages for 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 notify developers about errors and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run an event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling attendees, and reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticket Registration System
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