Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need managing registrations, such as seminars, community classes, non-profit fund-raisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event such as an exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You need to manage event schedules, available dates and seating, participant numbers, data entry, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, 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 reduce costs, help you easily duplicate similar events, give you more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can easily set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily set up your event and start accepting online bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing online presence into an automated and fully featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling attendees to complete the enrolment process on their own.
Letting your enrollees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more attention on planning a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service. This is made possible through a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add ons only if you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event signups outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process can be performed entirely online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information collected from your event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to end-users through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), and these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. Customize your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s template options and components, as well as HTML or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospects and let them choose the ticket(s) that best fits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and display events details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing for your default ticket.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of registrants and confirm everyone who has attended.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached maximum attendance. You can also specify that waiting list registrants pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential registrants to ask questions about your event and past participants to post reviews that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public commenting are configured via the WordPress native commenting admin area.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events enable you to build your event page at your own leisure without displaying it live on your site. You can continue developing your events until you are ready to take it live, or schedule to publish your event pages at a future date and time.
- Country Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, including currency, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for many of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for all new events simply by checking a box.
- Venue Management. The venue manager in EE 4 allows details about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform registrants of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue details like venue capacity, venue site URL, phone number, physical and/or virtual location, Google map, etc. You can also list venues in different sections in your WordPress theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a specific venue.
- 1-Click Plugin Upgrading. Event Espresso offers simple one-click software upgrades to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your plugin installation working with new versions of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your website visitors can help promote your events 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 event information in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows you to have more control and options over your events and how the information displays to your site visitors.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular site traffic whenever you need to make changes on your site. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- 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 company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a very large range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance the functionality 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 your scheduled events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can add as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add-on: 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 image instead of the date.
- 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 any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template addon can display your event lists in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Add-on: The Ticketing addon adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the door. Customers can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- 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 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 allows web developers to design their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration Add-on: The MailChimp addon lets you auto-register attendees to a specific mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new addons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Below are just some of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, workshop planner, or event management professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time researching the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your participants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its plugin customers confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to manage your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you may want to consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 5 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 special offers. Currently, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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 software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about problems and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WP site owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you intend to run events that involve managing dates and venues, booking attendees, or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration System For WordPress
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