Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training courses, non-profit fundraisers, social functions, or even a big event such as a music show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?

Managing event sign-ups is a time-consuming process. You may need to manage calendar schedules, date availability, participant numbers, data processing, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event participants.

There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily replicate previous events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and increase your sales.

The problem is that this can be very costly.

The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.

Announcing …

Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticketing Registration System For WordPress

Plugin Description

The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily create an event and begin accepting online bookings literally in a few minutes.

(Set up multiple events and take online bookings with Event Espresso)

Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.

Create custom event registration forms

You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing software.

Access detailed information about your event attendees

Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the plugin is being rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.

Learn more here:

• Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management System

Plugin Benefits

Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:

Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System

Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.

Higher Business Productivity

By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations and signups manually.

Essentially, you are enabling attendees to enrol by themselves.

Letting your enrollees to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more attention on creating a more enjoyable event.

More Control Over The User Experience

As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.

Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:

• Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons only if you need added features.
• Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online signups outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested in attending.
• Green Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process can remain entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
• All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data you obtain from event participants.

Plugin Features

Event Espresso delivers functionality to users through standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.

Event Espresso offers many built-in to WP users. Here are just a few:

• Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to use in very little time.
• Customized Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you gather unique data using custom event registration forms on your web site to plan a tailored experience for your clients.
• Event Calendar. Participants can easily find your events and add these to their schedule using a calendar.
• Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect money prior to running events.
• Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WP theme and display registrant data throughout other areas of your site.
• Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing for your default ticket.
• Discount & Promotional Codes. Leverage promotional and multiple discount codes to incentivize prospects to take action immediately, or make your events more appealing for others. This is also practical for helping to sell-out events close to deadlines.
• Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of registrants and confirm everyone who has attended.
• No Ticket Events. You can create events without making it necessary for participants to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any kind of event, not just those that need tickets.
• Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your event page by allowing potential attendees to ask questions about your event and previous customers to post feedback that can help others decide whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WordPress default commenting system.
• Keyword-Rich Event Page URLs. Keyword rich Web links take advantage of your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly web links that use topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your content and improves your search rankings, helping you bring a more targeted audience to your website.
• Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing, and lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event designs, payment processing, wait lists, limits on attendees, print-ready ticketing and more.
• Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for your events, you can easily set one of those tickets as your default ticket for all new events simply by checking a box.
• Venue Profiles. The venue manager in EE 4 lets details about venues to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform users of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you add venue details like venue seating capacity, venue site URL, phone number, venue location details, map, etc. You can also list venue profiles throughout specific parts on your theme as well as on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
• Attendee Profiles. You can manage each attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily accessible.
• Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event clients 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, give them the balance they owe, and include a link to the event, a payment link and a link where they can download the invoice.
• Categorize Events. If you have multiple types of events such as free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different kinds of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your attendees to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that interest your visitors.

Extra features include:

• Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 allows for more complex extensions and customizations to the application.
• Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers when potential problems.
• Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, 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 goals, the software has been built using a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.

The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:

• Duplicating events – reduces the need to re-enter event details when creating new events.
• Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to all tickets).
• Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.

Event Espresso Add-Ons

As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow software users to further enhance the functionality of events.

Some of these add ons include:

• Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display your scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
• Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes many datetime events into a dropdown 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 an event thumbnail image instead of the date.
• EE4 Events Social Sharing Addon: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
• Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template addon can display your events in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
• Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Editions: This addon lets you include others in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, so others can help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
• Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing addon adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on gives you the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at the venue door. People can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
• Events Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template addon gives you an easy-to-use system that lets you change the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also enables developers to build custom templates using one of the templates included as a source template.
• JSON API Addon: The new Event Espresso JSON API addon enables other applications, online tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an Application Programming Interface (API).

Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.

For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:

• Event Espresso

User Testimonials

Below are some of the many great testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:

”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District

”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy

”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 an education services provider, trainer, show promoter, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.

After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the forums for useful ideas and practical ways to improve your event management process and improve the experience of your customers.

Product Support

Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive customer support, as so many of its satisfied users attest:

”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles

The Event Espresso software provides exceptional support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, email support and even a monthly VIP member pass giving 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 a plugin you can count on to run your events.

Product Licensing Pricing

Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin versions below:

• Personal License – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
• Everything License – This edition lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
• Developer Edition – This license allows you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.

Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso

Please Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.

Additional Info

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 plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to report issues and leave feedback.

For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.

The Bottom Line

Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of people.

If you own a WordPress website and you intend to run events that involve managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, and booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.

For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress

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