Do you currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training courses, non-profit fund raisers, social conferences, 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 can be a complex process. You will probably have to manage scheduling, dates, registration numbers, data administration, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are many benefits 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 duplicate repeat events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered site, you can easily set up an inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Registration Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily create multiple events and start receiving bookings in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize event registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being redeveloped 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 pricing. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits 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 existing web site into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to 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 improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling attendees to perform the sign-up process themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more attention on planning a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase optional add ons when you need added functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new registrations any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people who are 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, your event sign up process can remain entirely online, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information you acquire from your event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to website owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create multiple ticket types and specify different prices, number of tickets, and more.
- Event Calendar. Participants can easily find your events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 provides several options to handle taxes for your event and report tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display contact data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing for the default ticket.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track event attendees.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants when they show up, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual registration later.
- No Ticket Events. You can list events without requiring attendees to select tickets. Use Event Espresso for all types of events, not just those that need tickets.
- Private Contact Notes. Keep observations about event participants on their profile. Private notes enables you to keep a record of when event participants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you’ve helped your contacts.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be set up in more than 15 languages, with more languages planned.
- Bulk Import Event Data. EE 4 provides an advanced importing feature that enables you to upload a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import details about events, datetimes, ticketing details, pricing, registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert images and create your event descriptions without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any other WordPress post.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you network with a community of experienced event managers, programmers, designers, marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can interact with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event attendees who have not fully paid for their booking with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the balance owing, and include links to the event information, a payment url and a link to download a PDF invoice.
- Transaction Reporting. Event reports provides you with data of all of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 permits more complex developments and customizations to the application.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for normal site traffic when you need to carry out maintenance on your site. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated 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 company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including attendee data in emails and updates.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a group of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to significantly enhance 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 Management Add on: The Recurring Events management add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all of these recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name shows all events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: This add-on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take full advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event pricing when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users will have access to your special events. Members can also add personal data into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Users can also look up event history and make payment for future events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Versions: This addon lets you include other staff 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 others to help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain sections of your WP 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 add on.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add-on adds the capacity to create 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 handling check-in scans at the venue door. Customers 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events in an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on lets you auto-register attendees to a chosen autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
Testimonials
Below are some of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Thanks to you and the rest of the team for Event Espresso – Every time I get a signup for an event, I think about how much time EE saves me – and signups happen while I’m out on the water teaching kayaking, not answering the phone. :-)” Tue Brems Olesen, OnAdventure
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, festival promoter, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the forums for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with most WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP development rules. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as many of its end-users attest:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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 plugin you can rely on to run your events.
Product Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you should consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This option lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license allows you to configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
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 documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular situation, or to report errors and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of companies.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you currently run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling participants, and booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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