Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require handling registrations, such as workshops, training classes, non-profit fund raisers, networking functions, or even a big event like a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You need to co-ordinate scheduling, dates, registration numbers, data administration, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give you more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can download and install a very inexpensive and professional online event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily set up multiple events and start receiving online registrations in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: 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 plugin is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually move completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
For more details go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages 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 an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response 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 literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to complete the enrollment process themselves.
Allowing your participants to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more energy on delivering a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party provider. This is made possible by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase optional add ons when you need added functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online signups outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process is performed wholly in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information obtained from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to end-users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to website owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
- Customized Notification Emails. Easily set up automatic registration and payment notification emails to communicate with your participants.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect booking payments prior to running the events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to configure the display settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing for your default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 provides three detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event participants at the door, or sending in paper registration forms for manual inputting later.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached maximum capacity. You can also make it a requirement waiting list members pay for their spots if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post reviews that can help others consider whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WP native commenting section.
- Keyword Rich URLs. Keyword rich Web links leverage your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly web links that have topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your events and improves your search rankings, helping you get a more targeted audience to your site.
- Multi-Language Plugin. Event Espresso is currently available in 15+ languages, and more languages are being added all the time.
- Exportable Information. You can export all of your information collected from event customers into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, devising new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Register Multiple Event Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or an organization to pay for multiple tickets and different ticket types at once. You control how many attendees are allowed to enroll in one registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Plugin Installation Updating. Event Espresso provides easy 1-click plugin updates to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your plugin installation up-to-date with new versions of WordPress.
- Staff Management. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Accurate Event Attendee Management. You control your attendees’ details; who has registered, which event they have registered for and what amount they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of attendees to Excel for additional reports, send custom payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your attendees on a person-by-person basis or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for general users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 permits more complex enhancements and customizations to the software.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility 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 mission, the company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also comes with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in notification emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to all tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as a comprehensive range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the capabilities of your event management system.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize many datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays event categories as a simple list. Clicking the category name shows all 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 comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template addon can display your event lists in a range of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart addon is suitable 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 addon allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives your potential customers the ability to register for 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 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 using an attractive graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin add on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track bookings, and accept payments from your web site.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”When you can get a company to expend more money switching systems just to use your plugin…you’ve really accomplished something.” David, House of Prayer
”I’m so excited to fire Eventbrite! Event Espresso has an amazing WP plugin for event management. We’re testing it now & are very impressed! In a nutshell Event Espresso saves us money & does everything Eventbrite did before. :)” Dustin Nay
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, event planner, or event management professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the support forum for new ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management process and enhance the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as so many of its plugin users attest:
”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 robust support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 software you can depend on to run your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition lets you install Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
Event Espresso regularly adds 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.
Search the software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to report errors and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of WP users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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