Do you currently run or plan to run events that require handling registrations, such as seminars, community classes, non-profit fund-raisers, social functions, or even a large-scale event such as a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups is a time-consuming process. You need to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate previously-run events, give you more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based website or blog, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily create an event and start accepting bookings literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the software is being revamped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating 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 increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for event attendees to enrol on their own.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you invest more time on creating a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add-ons when you need added features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online sign-ups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can be completed entirely online, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information you collect from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect specific data using a custom event registration form on your website to create a unique experience for your customers.
- Event Calendar. Registrants can easily see your events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional attendees.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing for your system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 comes with three built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 provides you with the tools to gain a better understanding of who your customers are and how you have previously done business with your customers. The Contact Profile page stores the name, biography, contact details, event registration information, private comments, etc. about each customer.
- No-Ticket Events. List events without making it necessary for registrants to book tickets. Use Event Espresso for all forms of events, not just those that need tickets.
- Public Commenting. Add social interactivity to your events by allowing potential registrants to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post comments that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public comments are set using the WP commenting settings.
- SEO Friendly Page URLs. Keyword-rich Web links take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly web links that include relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your events.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing processes, and lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event page designs, payment processing, list waiting, attendee limits, print-ready tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for most of your events, you can easily set one of those tickets as your default ticket for all new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue management feature in Event Espresso 4 lets details about a venue to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform registrants of your event’s location. The venue profile has many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes information such as venue capacity, venue site URL, telephone number, physical and/or virtual location, map, etc. You can also display venue profiles in various locations on your theme and on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a given venue.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, web developers, designers, marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in any event description.
- Accurate Event Attendee Management. You control your participants’ records; who has registered, for what event and how much they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of event attendees to Excel for additional uses, send custom payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your participants on a person-by-person basis or all at once.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you output a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers when potential errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the mission statement 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 objectives, 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 40+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to further enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display the upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown 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 Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add-on is capable of displaying your events in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add on is 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 addon allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential attendees the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants 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 Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events in an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API add on permits other applications, web tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new addons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso rocks! I use it for my dance class registrations. Unlike most dance studios where people have to call or send an email in advance, Event Espresso puts a registration form right there in front of the user and allows me to collect valuable information from the user during the registration process with custom questions such as “Do you have previous dance experience?” or “How did you hear about us?”. It also gives my site a professional look and feel.” Ral, Ral’eau Salsa Dance Company
“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
”Thank you, we just did 2 sell out seminars of 50 attendees in 48 hours using Event Espresso and it was awesome. My wife was able to pick up on the processing backend with ease. You have done a great job on getting this system together – very simple, clear and well laid out With powerful functionality. I am so glad I dumped the old booking application we had and gave Event Espresso a go. Just wanted to say thanks, and thanks for the very patient, friendly and speedy assistance in helping me to get it all set up at the start. Many thanks to you and your team. A grateful customer.” Nicholas de Castella, Emotional Intelligence Trainings
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, concert planner, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the user forum for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive technical support, as so many of its satisfied customers 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
The software provides comprehensive support including access to support forums, comprehensive 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 solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to run your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you may want to consider downloading one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This edition enables you to run 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 Edition – This license option lets you run Event Espresso on one site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on five sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about bugs and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you plan to run any event that involves scheduling dates and venues, booking attendees, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
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