Do you currently run or plan to run events that need to accept registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fund-raisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event like a community fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, availability, participant numbers, data collection and admin, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a better user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can download and install a very inexpensive and professional online event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software lets you easily create multiple events and begin processing registrations in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing applications.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event participants to enroll themselves.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you concentrate more of your energy on creating a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a third party provider. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy optional add-ons when you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online registrations outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can be transacted entirely online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information you obtain from your event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to users via standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to website owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
- Customized Event Registration Forms. With Event Espresso you can collect specific data using custom event registration forms on your web pages to plan a tailored experience for your customers.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Customize your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and parts, plus HTML and/or CSS.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to administer taxes for your event and report tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and reuse attendee details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the risk of spamming and robots making fake registrations on your web site with reCAPTCHA settings to provide human validation.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track your attendees.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your customers are and how you have previously engaged with them. Your Contact Profile section records the name, biography, contact details, event registration details, private comments, and more about each attendee.
- No-Ticket Events. Create events without making it necessary for participants to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any type of event, not only when tickets are for sale.
- Private Contact Notes. Record observations about users on their profile and how you have helped them. Private commenting lets you keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have helped your contacts.
- Works With The Most Recent Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build aesthetically beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Multi-Language Plugin. Event Espresso is is available in 15+ languages, with more translations planned.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for most of your events, you can set up as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- Multiple Participant Enrolments. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or people to order multiple tickets and different types of tickets at the same time. You decide how many people are able to register in one registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you engage with an expert community of experienced event managers and plugin users. 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+.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your site visitors can help create a wider exposure for your event using social media sharing buttons.
- 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 custom way.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for most users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 permits more complex extensions and customizations to the software.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers who are diagnosing 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 that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in emails and email updates.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a common set of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to further expand the capabilities of your event management system.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display your upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events management addon allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many events in advance as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays the categories in a simple list. Clicking a category name displays the events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on is 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 addon allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential attendees the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants 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.
- Events Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add-on: The Event Espresso JSON API addon allows other applications, web tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new addons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
Testimonials
Below are just some of the many great testimonials that customers have written 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
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, conference promoter, or event professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the user forum for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent customer support, as many of its users confirm:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
The Event Espresso plugin provides incredible support with access to a support forum, 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to run your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This lets you set up Event Espresso on one domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This option allows you to run Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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 software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about errors and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run any event that requires managing dates and venues, booking participants, or selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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