Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as seminars, group classes, non-profit fundraisers, social events, or even a large-scale 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 bookings is a time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, availability, registration numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for repeat events, give you more control, create a better customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based website or blog, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily schedule multiple events and start processing online bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize your event registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to enable future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Learn more here:
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 existing digital presence into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating 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 increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to perform the registration themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more time on planning a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy optional add-ons only when you need added functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online registrations 24 hrs a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing add ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite others who may be interested.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process is conducted entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data obtained from event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to start accepting registrations in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
- Customized Notification Email Message. Set up automated registration and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event participants.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospective attendees so they can choose the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and display contact details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily with pre-configured default pricing.
- Promotional Codes. You can leverage promotional and multiple discount codes to incentivize prospects to take action immediately, or simply make your events more affordable for others. This is also practical if you want to increase sales of events close to deadlines.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event attendees when they show up, or send in paper registration forms for manual submission later.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached the limit of attendees. Additionally, you can make it a requirement waiting list attendees pre-pay if you plan to expand capacity for the event.
- Private Notes On Contacts. Keep comments about users on their profile. Private notes lets you keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have interacted with them.
- Search Engine Friendly Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page Web links take advantage of your WP Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly permalinks with topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your website.
- Country Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the information gathered from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, devising marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Venue Profiles. The venue manager feature in EE 4 lets details about venues to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform users of the location of your event. The venue record displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes details like venue seating capacity, venue website, venue phone number, venue location details, map, etc. You can also list venue profiles in various locations of your WP theme as well as on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
- Attendee Records. You can manage your customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily accessible.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event attendees who have not fully paid for their enrollment with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click. Your invoices will reference registered attendees who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance owing, and include links to the event, a payment url and a link to download the invoice.
- Accurate Participant Management. You control your participants’ details; who has registered, which event they have booked and how much they 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 a list of attendees to a spreadsheet for additional uses, send customized payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your attendees individually or all at once.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for basic WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 enables more complex enhancements and customizations to the application.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for regular site visitors whenever you need to perform maintenance on your website. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in notification emails and email updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to further expand the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display your scheduled events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events manager add-on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of these recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name shows the events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: This add-on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add-on lets you display your event lists in a number of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add-on is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal 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 environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives potential customers 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 Multi-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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on allows you to automatically register attendees to a specific mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Below are just some of the many great testimonials that customers 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
“I just completed my first event using Event Espresso. I really believe without Event Espresso my event would not have been the success it was.” Cathy Earle, Women Only Weekend
”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
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, show planner, or event professional, there are just countless 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 support forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WP development rules. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its customers 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
The Event Espresso plugin provides comprehensive support with access to support forums, 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 solution you can count on to run and manage your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This edition enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. 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 specials being offered. Presently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use 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 your particular use-case, or to report errors and leave feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of WP users.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you intend to run an event that requires managing dates and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
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