Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as seminars, community courses, non-profit fund raisers, social events, or even a big event like an art exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations is a complex process. You will probably have to manage event schedules, date availability, registration numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower 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 quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can easily install a very inexpensive and professional online event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily set up multiple events and begin receiving registrations in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as it has been redeveloped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to perform the registration process on their own.
Allowing your participants to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more of your resources on creating a more unique event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd-party service provider. This is made possible through a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase addons only when you need new functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event sign-ups outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing addons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite friends who may be interested.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process remains wholly in digital form, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data gathered from event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its customers through standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great built-in to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure multiple ticket types and specify different prices, number of tickets, and more.
- Customized Notification Emails. Set up automatic registration and payment notification email messages to communicate with event clients.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect registration payments before running the events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration information for any added participants.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the likelihood of spammers and bot software programs creating fake registrations with reCAPTCHA option that authenticate human activity.
- Promotional Codes. Leverage promotion and multiple discount codes to incentivize prospects to make a decision now, or simply make your events more appealing for price-sensitive customers. Also useful for helping to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event participants at the door, or send in paper forms for manual processing later.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is full. You can also make it a requirement waiting list members pay for their spots if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- RSS Feeds. Keep your customers updated about your events, bring in more visitors and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop your event over time without publishing it to your website. You can keep working on your event pages until you are ready to take things live, or schedule to publish your event at a later date and time.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of all aspects of your event’s registration and ticketing, and also lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event designs, payment processing, list waiting, attendee limits, printable tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for your events, you can set up as your default ticket for your new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Register Multiple Event Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or people to buy multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. You control how many attendees are allowed to enrol in one registration by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage each customer’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily within reach.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and site visitors can help increase exposure for your events using social media sharing buttons.
- Accurate Event Attendee Manager. You have control of your attendees’ date; who has enrolled, which event they have booked and how much they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to a spreadsheet for additional reports, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your customers on a person-by-person basis or all at once.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over the content of your event page and how the information displays to visitors.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular website visitors whenever website maintenance is required. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: 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 modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a series of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to significantly expand the functionality of the event management system.
Some of these add-ons include:
- EE4 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 an event does not have a featured image available, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your web site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users will have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also view event history and make payment for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Versions: This add-on lets you include other users in the event management process and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers the ability to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and give them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain sections of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- 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 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 Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template addon gives you an easy-to-use system that allows you to 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 enables web developers to build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon lets you automatically register attendees to a specific mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Customers – Testimonials
Below are some of the many testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”I searched long and hard to find something that would serve my needs. This is, by far, the most complete and comprehensive solution I have found.” Bill Hepper, We Teach Live
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, concert promoter, or event professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow and improve the experience of your attendees.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive user support, as so many of its users attest:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
Event Espresso provides robust support that includes 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to run your events.
Event Espresso Price
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration System For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report issues and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you plan to run events that require managing dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, and/or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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