Do you currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating registrations, such as seminars, group courses, non-profit fund-raisers, networking conferences, or even a large-scale event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex and time-consuming process. You need to co-ordinate scheduling, availability, attendee numbers, data collection, payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for previously-run events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based digital presence, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily create multiple events and start accepting online registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into an automated and fully featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to register on their own.
Allowing your clients to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more of your time on planning a memorable event.
Full 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.
Some additional benefits include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you 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 to a minimum through a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add-ons only if you need new features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event registrations outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite their friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process can remain wholly online, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information you acquire from event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of features to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in no time.
- Custom Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can gather specific information using custom event registration forms on your web site to create a great experience for your event participants.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Attendees can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using the calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of ways to handle taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fee components to customers when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spammers and bots creating bogus registrations by using reCAPTCHA option that confirm human activity.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 comes with three useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of registrants and confirm those who attend.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your events page by encouraging potential attendees to ask questions about your event and previous attendees to post feedback that can help others consider whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public comments are set up in the WP commenting settings.
- Keyword Rich Event Page URLs. Keyword rich event page URLs take advantage of your WP Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly web links with topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your website.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be run in over 15 languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Exportable Information. You can export all of your information gathered from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for creating reports, planning new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Venue Management. The venue manager in EE 4 lets details about a venue to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your site to inform site visitors of the location of your event. The venue profile has many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you add details such as venue seating capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, physical, location map, etc. You can also display venues throughout specific parts of your WP theme and on a venue listing 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.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage each registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily within reach.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- Accurate Attendee Manager. You control your customers’ date; who has enrolled, for what event and how much they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to a CSV file for additional reports, send custom payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your clients individually or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for basic WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 permits more complex developments and customizations to the plugin.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to create a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers when potential application errors.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, Event Espresso’s aim 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 and 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 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the functionality of events.
Some of these addons 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 an event does not have a featured image available, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize many datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that occur in a certain date range.
- 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 Add-on: The Custom Template addon is capable of displaying your event lists in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Editions: This add-on lets you involve other users in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the ability to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and assign 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 areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain sections 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 addon.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential attendees the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees 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 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 addon provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that allows you to 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 design custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on enables other applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
Plugin Users – Feedback
Here are some of the many testimonials that 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
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, festival promoter, or event professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time visiting the forums for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your registrants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its satisfied end-users attest:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
Event Espresso provides great support including access to a support forum, 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 WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This lets you set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This allows you to run Event Espresso on 5 sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to report problems and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run any event that requires managing dates and venues, booking attendees, or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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