Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as workshops, community classes, non-profit fund raisers, networking functions, or even a large-scale event such as a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You may be required to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and seating, attendee numbers, data entry, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give you more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can easily set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Management Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily set up multiple events and start processing bookings in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details go here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a fully-featured event management site … 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 virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for participants to perform the registration process themselves.
Allowing your participants to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you spend more attention on planning a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a third party provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase addons only when you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new sign-ups 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with others who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process remains entirely online, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data you acquire from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that users can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique built-in to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to use in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you configure as many different types of tickets as you need and specify separate pricing options, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- Event Calendar. Registrants can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
- Tax Admin & Reporting Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you several ways to administer taxes for an event and report tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- 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 attendee’s registration details for any additional participants.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the likelihood of spammers and bot software programs creating false registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA settings that confirm human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track event attendees.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of attendees and check in everyone who has attended.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. You can also specify that wait-list attendees pre-pay if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- RSS Event Feeds. Provide automatic updates to customers, drive quality traffic and widen your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build an event page over multiple work sessions without displaying it live on your site. You can continue developing your event until you are ready to publish it on your website, or schedule to publish your event page at a future time and date.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso has been translated into 15+ languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Exportable Information. You can output all of your information gathered from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for producing reports, implementing new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WordPress WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add graphic images and stylize your event descriptions without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any WP post or page.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you engage with a community of experienced event managers, software programmers, web designers, marketers and business owners who also use the plugin. You can interact with other members of the Event Espresso community through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential attendees who have not fully paid for their enrollment with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click. Your invoices will reference registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the balance they owe, and include a link to the event information, a payment url and a link where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Accurate Event Participant Manager. You have control of your customers’ information; who has enrolled, for what event and what amount they have paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to a spreadsheet for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your participants individually or as a group.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for general users, and also extremely robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 allows for more complex enhancements and customizations to the plugin.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular site traffic when website maintenance is required. You can still work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s objective 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 in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in notification emails and newsletters.
- 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
In addition to a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to significantly enhance the functionality 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, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- 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 be customized to show the event thumbnail image instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add-on lets you display your event lists in a range of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on 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 offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your 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 cart. With the Multi-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 Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add on provides you 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 lets developers build their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon lets you auto-register participants to a specified mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
Customer Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso rocks! I use it for my dance class registrations. Unlike most dance studios where people have to call or send an email in advance, Event Espresso puts a registration form right there in front of the user and allows me to collect valuable information from the user during the registration process with custom questions such as “Do you have previous dance experience?” or “How did you hear about us?”. It also gives my site a professional look and feel.” Ral, Ral’eau Salsa Dance Company
”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, KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
”I’m using it on multiple sites and enjoying it. It’s simple and as others have stated… fast service and real help.” Arlen Nagata
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, show planner, or event management professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, visit the support forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great end-user support, as many of its clients 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
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This lets you set up Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This option enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site 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 the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to notify developers about problems and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress users.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run an event that requires scheduling dates and venues, booking attendees, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticket Registration Plugin
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