Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating registrations, such as workshops, community classes, charity fund-raisers, networking functions, or even a big event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event sign-ups is a time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage scheduling, dates, registration numbers, data processing and storage, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based digital presence, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin allows you to easily schedule an event and start receiving online bookings in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for event attendees to enroll on their own.
Letting your enrollees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you concentrate more of your resources on delivering a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy addons when you need new functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online signups outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features and addons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite friends who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process can remain entirely in digital form, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information you collect from event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to users through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Match your web site’s look and feel for your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and parts, and HTML and/or CSS.
- Tax Admin & Reporting. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of options to handle taxes for your event and report tax fee components to registrants who purchase tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to configure the display settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the risk of spamming and robots making false registrations by using reCAPTCHA features to provide human authentication.
- Promotional Codes. Set up promotional and discount codes to encourage prospects to make a decision immediately, or simply make your offers more appealing for others. Also useful if you want to sell out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event participants when they show up, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual processing later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and cannot attend your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential registrants to ask questions about your event and past customers to post reviews that can help others consider whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public comments are set up in the WordPress commenting settings.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop an event in your own time frame without displaying it live on your site. You can keep building your event pages until you are ready to go live, or schedule to publish your event page at a future date and time.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to be deployed throughout the plugin and your front-end templates. Organization fields include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email, phone, tax number, logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next event simply by checking a box.
- Event Venue Profiles. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 lets information about venues to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform potential registrants of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays details like venue seating capacity, venue web address, venue phone number, venue location details, map, etc. You can also display all of your venues throughout specific parts in your theme and on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, software programmers, designers, marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can engage with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and site visitors can help spread the word about your events using social sharing buttons.
- Transaction Reports. Event reports gives you data of all registrations and transactions, allowing you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for basic users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 facilitates more complex extensions and customizations to the application.
- Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely removed from the workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 goals, the company operates on a modular 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 over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in confirmation emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to all tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the functionality of managing an event.
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 the 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 many datetimes into a drop-down 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 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 add on is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add-on can display your event lists in a variety of exciting and interesting 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 promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add on gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. Registrants can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you modify the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also allows developers to build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon lets you automatically register participants to a particular mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers 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
”I recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, seminar promoter, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the user forum for useful ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow and improve the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive technical support, as many of its clients attest:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
Event Espresso provides great support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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 WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you will want to consider using one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This edition lets you set up Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This allows you to run Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to report problems and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of businesses.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run any event that requires scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling participants, and selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
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